November 2002 Archives

Nu, These New Rabbis, What Chutzpah, Huh? Judaism has decried proselytism, at least since Rome officially adopted Christianity, but a new wave of showbizzy American rabbis seem to be wowing their audiences. Their logic, apparently, is that there's nothing wrong with preaching to the converted. The refusal to engage in propaganda [scroll down to "Jewish Propagandism"] and conversion campaigns (since, unlike the other two great monotheisms, there is no need to be a Jew to have a place in the world to come) is often seen as one of the most attractive features of Judaism [see Part III], although many think its implied exclusivity and indifference to the world at large (and its religions) may actually foster antisemitism. Are things about to change? Should they? Whatever your view, have a happy Hannukah!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:53 PM PST - 15 comments

TextArc is an interactive program that reproduces the text of more than 2,000 books as works of art.
The software converts the text into an interactive map that allows viewers to quickly see relationships between words and characters at a glance, even without having read the book. Try it with Alice in Wonderland. (Links opens a full-screen window.)
posted by Mwongozi at 4:41 PM PST - 9 comments

Out of the mist of the beginning of our era there looms a pageant of mythical figures whose vast, superhuman contours might people the walls of another Sistine Chapel. Their countenances and gestures, the roles in which they are cast, the drama which they enact, would yield images different from the biblical ones on which the imagination of the beholder was reared, yet strangely familiar to him and disturbingly moving. The stage would be the same, the theme as transcending: the creation of the world, the destiny of man, fall and redemption, the first and the last things. But how much more numerous would be the cast, how much more bizarre the symbolism, how much more extravagant the emotions!
Hans Jonas
Into the Gnostic.

Of magicians, miracle workers, saints and sinners of early Christianities and other mystery religions--including but not limited to Valentinus, Simon Magus, Mithras, Marcion, Manicheans, Mandeans, the Winged Hermes, the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary, among many other Apocrypha and Pseudepigraphica, the Cathars and Apollonious of Tyana. Not to mention Philip K. Dick.
posted by y2karl at 3:20 PM PST - 11 comments

Conservatives dispute Bush on Islam Bush critics, we are told, though they support him believe his statements about Islam are basically political and that Islam is not a peace-loving religion. Though I am not sure on this issue, I do not think citing a passage or two in this or that holy scripture is sufficient to apply to any religion, since what it does (or has done) differs often from what it's stated position is. In this article I find myself torn between disliking in general anything that right-wing conservatives utter and also disliking anything that Bush has to say! My shortcoming, no doubt.
posted by Postroad at 1:43 PM PST - 43 comments

Fashion? What Fashion? Does any woman really care about fashion? Or put it another way: "fashion" . Doesn't each woman just shop for herself? For what she likes and looks good on - and to - her? Perhaps the idea of fashion (and the fact that most designers are men) is a man thing. And a gay man thing at that. It's very interesting and welcome but, when it comes to theory (as opposed to praxis), completely beside the point. I find it a pity some feminists (like Jenny Diski and Elaine Showalter) are becoming swayed and hesitant on this.
posted by Schweppes Girl at 1:14 PM PST - 12 comments

Djibouti As the United States builds up its combat power in the Horn of Africa, tiny Djibouti has emerged as the staging area for Washington's campaign against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups in the region. But Djibouti is also a telling example of a problem that has bedeviled the Bush administration's war on terror: the struggle to harmonize its own military goals with the needs of the countries in which it is operating. Put simply, the administration seems to be better at taking the fight to its enemies than helping its friends.(NYT)
posted by elwoodwiles at 1:04 PM PST - 3 comments

Caution: Violent metaphors can blow up in your face. This one (see paragraph two)—which I discovered a day or so before the D.C. snipers were apprehended—struck me at the time as a particularly unfortunate demonstration as to why, especially considering this ad agency is based just outside Washington. George Lakoff, an undisputed Heavyweight Metaphorician of the World, turns the tables and uses human metaphors rather neatly to think about 9/11. And apparently, there are workshops that teach how to make nonviolent metaphors more vivid and, the logic goes, make violence less attractive. So, the explosive question: does hostile language encourage conflict or reflect it? Peace out.
posted by micropublishery at 9:27 AM PST - 10 comments

Can Poetry Matter - Part 2 (nyt reg req) "Today photography is considered by many to be the most effective way to convey the plight of war's combatants, victims and mourners. But during World War I it was through poetry that many Britons came to share the horror of life and death in the muddy trenches of northern France.....To this day, every time Britons go to war, the opening lines of Rupert Brooke's 1914 poem, "The Soldier," are remembered: "If I should die, think only this of me:/That there's some corner of a foreign field/That is forever England."..."
posted by Voyageman at 8:45 AM PST - 10 comments

I recently rode the Falkirk Wheel, perhaps the least well known of a number of UK projects marking the Millenium, which fuse stunning design with ingenious engineering. [more inside]
posted by gravelshoes at 7:07 AM PST - 17 comments

When I was nine, I saw a woman in a traditional Japanese bath house, covered with a full-body tattoo.[more]
posted by hama7 at 5:44 AM PST - 29 comments

Art goes to Mars. This may be the very first art that our species sends into space, unless you count the little naked folks on the Voyager plaque, or broadcast television. In a somewhat bold move, they've chosen shock artist putter-of-sharks-in-formaldehyde Damien Hirst. Is it me, or would the chosen painting be much dorkier if this were NASA rather than the European Space Agency? Like a duck or something.
posted by condour75 at 12:30 AM PST - 12 comments

Are baseball caps more flattering to the British bella figura than sandals and socks?
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 11:09 PM PST - 26 comments

Selling a used item as a copyright infringement? Used knitting patterns are often resold by the original buyer when they've used them. "Alice Starmore(R)" is a company that makes patterns and yarns for knitters. Ebay is a big clearinghouse for knitters, and "Alice Starmore(R)" has repeatedly insisted that ANY auction of their yarns or patterns be pulled as the auctions violate their trademark and/or copyrights. So the knitters are getting a defense fund together to claim anti-trust and restraint of trade. Didn't we sort this all out over selling used books and cd's already? You really shouldn't mess with people who have a hobby that makes them adept with big metal needles. (BTW Alice Starmore is from the Hebrides, hence the whole "KnittingBeyond..." business.)
posted by Salmonberry at 7:40 PM PST - 19 comments

This stuff is nasty! Have anyone out there ever tried Marmite? It looks like something you might pack your wheel bearings in. The taste isn't much better. Maybe it's just a British thing?
posted by reidfleming at 3:37 PM PST - 69 comments

Remembering Our Dead: An online memorial to honor "those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice." The list includes Marsha Johnson - a key participant in the 1969 Stonewall Riots - as well as the recently murdered Gwen Araujo (whose funeral was thoughtfully blogged by Philo at East West). November 20th was the 4th Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance.
posted by mediareport at 2:55 PM PST - 36 comments

Boycott GAP. Several groups see sweatshops as dangerous and inhumane. Yet there remains rejuvenation through globalization.
posted by the fire you left me at 2:27 PM PST - 28 comments

Bush anything but moronic, according to author According to the author Bush may be sociopathic. I find this scary, but I am also very skeptical about it. What do you guys think? Any psychologist out there that know anything about this?
posted by tljenson at 12:38 PM PST - 51 comments

Got a health question? Go Ask Alice! Fielding questions ranging from the common cold to way out there sexual dysfunctions, Go Ask Alice!--Columbia University's "Q&A Internet Service"--handles even the most bizarre sounding questions with honesty, humor, and good advice. I visit this site about once a week, and have learned quite a bit.
posted by WolfDaddy at 11:43 AM PST - 8 comments

Welcome to Magdalene Asylums. Now a film, the Asylums were generally staffed by the Sisters of Mercy, and were found throughout Ireland and Scotland.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 10:23 AM PST - 7 comments

"You'd better listen to what you've been told / You better listen to the radio." Just when you thought Internet radio was dead, Canada's national radio broadcaster is providing an alternative: an Internet Radio Magazine . Their weekly cultural offering presents arts, entertainment, and news -- complete with an eclectic, ear-pleasing soundtrack. You'll come for the clever use of the medium and good content, but you'll stay because there's nowhere else on the Web where you'll find the Joel Plaskett Emergency and the Weakerthans in regular rotation. This isn't your father's public broadcaster.
posted by mrmcsurly at 9:06 AM PST - 12 comments

Just say 'no' to Bose. Bose speakers may be the best known brand to many people, but ask an audiophile about them, and be prepared for flames. Is this just snobbery and elitism? This guy walks you through why Bose speakers are a very poor choice for the money, Bose's deceptive marketing practices, and even gives you a list of better alternatives. [more inside]
posted by Slithy_Tove at 7:34 AM PST - 89 comments

Millionaires' Havens, Heavens And Hell Holes: Ghastly, depressing Monaco comes in for a deserved drubbing from Philip Delves Broughton in this week's Spectator. The idea of billionaires surfing the Web looking for a hide-out makes me giggle and gag, but it appears poor people can play too. Have a look at (free!) e-zine Escape From America; run your index finger down a list of tax havens and choose the ~~paradise~~ place you'd scarper off to, if your money problems, whether from excess or lack of money, ever become too [sorry...] taxing.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:34 AM PST - 9 comments

Cold weather politics? The antarctic treaty was written in 1959 and adopted in 1961 and has been signed by 27 countries. It has helped to keep the antarctic region a real no-mans land where science instead of politics is the target. And of course it looks quite nice as well.
posted by sebas at 2:00 AM PST - 9 comments

You've been Crossed. Comedian's comedian David Cross would rather open for bands than typical comics and has had some funny roles in some unfunny movies and TV shows, but Cross has taken centre stage with his new double comedy album on Sub Pop and several biting columns in vice magazine. There is also a newly published behind-the -scenes look at his cult sketch comedy show ("Mr. Show") and Cross recently appeared at a Autism fundraiser called "Clash of the Titans" alongside his Mr. Show alumni and Janeane Garafolo, Triumph the Insult Comic dog and the Kids in the Hall (here is a related auction and show review). Even though it looks like the feature "Run Ronnie Run" has been shelved by New Line, the future is looking bright for Mr. Cross (including the possible addition of more live dates for "Hooray for America" in the spring). For a brief look inside his mind, check these out.
posted by boost ventilator at 8:35 PM PST - 15 comments

We Didn't Start The Fire in Flash. Hilarious and educational. All together now ... [via LMG]
posted by feelinglistless at 4:19 PM PST - 26 comments

Side-view trailbike game (java) Addictive timewaster. (It's Friday where I am)
posted by mhjb at 4:08 PM PST - 17 comments

"Cryptophis nigrescens killed my computer." ... "my computer was making a strange hissing noise last night and this morning when I turned it on there was a crackling noise and some smoke then nothing, if I bring it in can you fix it?"

One of my colleagues took this tech support call and has the photographs to prove it.
posted by snarfodox at 3:58 PM PST - 19 comments

Bomb Shelter Gets Makeover Got an old bomb shelter sitting around? Wondering what to do with it? Why not turn it into a shopping mall? Across China, more than 3,700 hotels and dormitories and 1,270 shops and restaurants have been created in former bomb shelters, according to an article in Beijing Youth Weekly last year. In Beijing, a youth hostel has been established in a bomb shelter below Wangfujing, the glitziest shopping street in the city. An estimated 20,000 workers are employed in businesses in former bomb shelters in Beijing alone.
posted by orange swan at 2:12 PM PST - 6 comments

Spiders weave huge natural wonder in B.C. It was bound to happen sooner or later.
posted by nemesis at 1:07 PM PST - 17 comments

Ghost Town Gallery 1300 Pictures from 174 Ghost Towns and historic places. (They've also got maps.)
posted by Fabulon7 at 11:50 AM PST - 16 comments

The Massey Lectures are the CBC's annual effort to give exposure to eminent minds working on 'big ideas' in the realm of social criticism. This year's lecturer, Margaret Visser, undertakes a very engaging attempt to explain and undermine fatalism. The site links to transcripts and audio files of some past lectures. Some Canadian book-learnin' for those of you who aren't sleepily digesting your Thanksgiving turkey!
posted by stonerose at 11:02 AM PST - 3 comments

Canadian Royal Commission: medicare a 'moral enterprise, not business venture'. After 18 months of talking to Canadians, former premier of Sastatchewan, Roy Romanow, has releases the final report from the royal commission on health care. The word is: public is good, and it's gonna cost us. Also see CBC coverage including video of the release.
posted by stevengarrity at 10:30 AM PST - 60 comments

William Burroughs--Thanksgiving Prayer Worth recalling, since today is Thanksgiving in the United States.
posted by Rebis at 10:28 AM PST - 19 comments

Well, now that his cover is blown, he'll probably be hired to work for Henry Kissinger on the 9-11 coverup, or with Admiral Poindexter, on "Big Brother." Whips and chains and weapons of mass destruction.
posted by kablam at 7:32 AM PST - 23 comments

Thanksgiving Bill of Fare - "If you will boile chickens, young turkeys, peahens, or any house fowl daintily, you shall, after you have trimmed them, drawn them, trussed them, and washed them, fill their bellies as full of parsley as they can hold; then boil them with salt and water only till they be enough." When sated with peahens and house fowl you might have enjoyed a taste of Pumpion Pie. Early colonial cuisine probably borrowed heavily from the New Booke of Cookerie from London and were no doubt greatly influenced by native recipes and cooking customs.
posted by madamjujujive at 6:04 AM PST - 7 comments

Shhh! American Prisoners Being Held in Afghanistan This report is from Pravda, the Russian newspaper. I have not seen any media posting of this story and I wonder whether the story is false or our media does not want to go into this. Anyone at MF hear of this before?
posted by Postroad at 5:22 AM PST - 17 comments

Ruavista explores city streets and urban life through all kinds of signs: street graphics, architecture, street sounds. Put simply, a fantastic resource for urban photography.
posted by chill at 4:47 AM PST - 3 comments

don't breath
google shoots out some adds for cheap perfume with a search for perfume allegies...apropriate. but really...it's could be bad.
posted by lightweight at 4:00 AM PST - 15 comments

Israelis targeted in Kenya attacks
On the day of important primary elections in Israel as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon faces a party leadership challenge from Foreign Minister Binyamin Netanyahu ahead of January's general election, suicide car bombers have killed at least eight people at an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, just as two missiles were fired (but did not hit) at an Israeli jet that had taken off from the city's airport. The Kenyan ambassador to Israel suspects these attacks were carried out by al-Qaeda, and this theory is being checked on as I write.
posted by tomcosgrave at 3:20 AM PST - 14 comments

A Funny Sort of Empire: Are Americans really so imperial?
posted by hama7 at 2:47 AM PST - 31 comments

Bad Flash! A little respect, gentlemen, please! Er, it's not that I'm a vegetarian, but, just this once, I think I'll stick to the hors-d'oeuvre and the Wild Turkey on the rocks, thank you very much. But have a happy Thanksgiving all the same - and don't let this Flash animation or that NYT registration ruin your appetite!
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 1:46 AM PST - 1 comments

Shuttle Views the Earth: Geology from Space. Also see the Human Imprints set. [via milov]
posted by riffola at 7:27 PM PST - 5 comments

Why Does Dan Savage Owe Katie a Hitachi Magic Wand? It all started when Dan Savage informed his readers that he liked to fantasize about Brad Pitt coming on Ashton Kutcher's face. He was later inspired to have a contest in which readers sent in their sexual fantasies. He said that readers whose sexual fantasies were selected for publication would receive five dollars. I sent in a fanstasy I had when I was six years old (you'll read about it later). In a subsequent column, he canceled the contest, saying that all the fantasies he had received were boring. I shrugged it off, until...
posted by grumblebee at 4:01 PM PST - 42 comments

The Self-Healing Minefield From the current Village Voice: "Utilizing commercial off-the-shelf computer chips and 'healing' software, the networked minefield detects rude attempts to clear it, deduces which parts of itself have been removed, and signals its remaining munitions to close the hole using best-fit mathematics."

Bonus ubertasteless Flash animation courtesy of DARPA here. Color me fascinated and repulsed in equal measure.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 2:33 PM PST - 40 comments

The White Cube Gallery's current show features the work of two artists that produced ethnic religious imagery. The pieces appear ancient and authentic on first pass, but second glances reveal some element of McDonald's trademark logos, food, and/or characters. [via BoingBoing]
posted by mathowie at 2:31 PM PST - 7 comments

This isn't irony. The Department of Justice wants to deny justice to the families who have to deal with kids with autism I guess if you're a vaccine manufacturer, you don't want people to know that what you're putting in kids is gonna screw their lives up forever, right? That would cost you alot of money

If the Vaccine makers are scared about huge rewards for families harmed by their products, they should have made sure their vaccines didn't cause children to develop autism
posted by RobbieFal at 2:28 PM PST - 43 comments

Henry Kissinger has been named head of the "independent commission" to investigate the Sept. 11 attacks. President Bush named Kissinger head upon signing bill to establish the commission. Kissinger has a controversial history and arguable distance from "independence". Given that, can the American people have any reasonable expectation of an honest inspection by their government of what lead up to that day? Will the burning questions even be asked, let alone answered?
posted by brantstrand at 1:51 PM PST - 46 comments

Riding the dog gets some folks home to loved ones or care takers. For a few, the bus is home. Reno News and Review's Deidre Pike takes a look at Reno, Nevada's Homeless Evaluation Liaison Program (HELP). Other cities have taken notice, and have begun to consider similar programs modeled after Reno's.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 1:29 PM PST - 2 comments

Slimeball!!!!! Quadruple post, I know, but it is the day before Thanksgiving, and if your boss is making you be in the office this afternoon you should at least make the best of it.
posted by trigfunctions at 12:46 PM PST - 16 comments

Lessons From the First Bush/Iraq War

How familiar do these words sound today?
* This year, however, we are wallowing in the sordid aftermath of the revelations of the misguided administration policy that brought about that war. We have been treated to details of how the administration bent over backwards in its misguided effort to support the regime of Saddam Hussein on the very eve of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
......`Public disclosure of classified information harms the national security,' Attorney General William Barr instructed the House Banking Committee last week. `. . . in light of your recent disclosures, the executive branch will not provide any more classified information'--unless the wrongdoing is kept secret. `Your threat to withhold documents,' responded Chairman Gonzalez, `has all the earmarks of a classic effort to obstruct a proper and legitimate investigation . . . none of the documents compromise, in any fashion whatsoever, the national security or intelligence sources and methods.'
.....Policy blunders are not crimes. But perverting the purpose of appropriated funds is a crime; lying to Congress compounds that crime; and obstructing justice to cover up the original crime is a criminal conspiracy

Will we, as a country, learn from our recent history or are we doomed to repeat the same mistakes?
posted by nofundy at 12:07 PM PST - 49 comments

Are Online Depression Quizzes Depressingly Useless? Or is there something to them? There are certainly a lot of them about, posted by respectable institutions. And they don't seem far removed or less complete than the set of questions doctors will ask you to help them decide whether you're depressed or not. In other words, if I were to take all four quizzes and divided my results by four or something, would I be any wiser? Is the fact that they're very private an advantage? So many questions! [First link, for which I assume you don't need to have had a baby this month in order to answer, via Bifurcated Rivets.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 11:49 AM PST - 18 comments

Strange Bedfellows fight tyranny? - Bob Barr, Dick Armey to join ACLU Quoth James Madison: (Federalist Papers #47) - "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." and Benjamin Franklin:"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." William Safire Slammed the Bush Adminstration (Nov 15) over John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness program. NOW: Bob Barr, a gun-rights anti-gay firebrand conservative to join the ACLU? Dick Armey's joining as a consultant? Say that again? And Nat Hentoff reports that the Journal Gazette of Fort Wayne, Indiana ran a broadside called (sept. 8) "Attacks on Liberty" - "In the name of national security, President Bush, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and even Congress have pulled strand after strand out of the constitutional fabric that distinguishes the United States from other nations. . . . Actions taken over the past year are eerily reminiscent of tyranny portrayed in the most nightmarish works of fiction" MEANWHILE...an email of an editorial by right wing radio personality Chuck Baldwin, "Bush Government 'Out of Control' ("The Bush administration seems determined to turn our country into the most elaborate and sophisticated police state ever devised") first published in an online Christian Fundamentalist antiabortion newpaper is making the (right wing) rounds. It asks: "Does that mean one must leave the Republican Party in order to fight for liberty?" [antitroll protection dislaimer: most Democrats signed the Patriot Act, the principle cause of concern behind the statements and editorials linked to on this post]
posted by troutfishing at 10:53 AM PST - 25 comments

A warning shot in the dark: For connoisseurs of clever turns of phrase: The phrase "a warning shot in the dark" popped out at me from a Google News preview panel as being a mixed metaphor. Indeed, a Google search reveals that the phrase has never before been used on the entire Web, which is rather amazing. Delving into the story, it appears by paragraph three that the mixed metaphors are appropriate, in this case.
posted by beagle at 9:41 AM PST - 35 comments

Direct links to Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. And yet we aim for War with Iraq.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 9:29 AM PST - 37 comments

Return of the vast right-wing conspiracy? Al Gore is quoted in the New York Observer: "Fox News Network, The Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh—there’s a bunch of them, and some of them are financed by wealthy ultra-conservative billionaires who make political deals with Republican administrations and the rest of the media …. Most of the media [has] been slow to recognize the pervasive impact of this fifth column in their ranks—that is, day after day, injecting the daily Republican talking points into the definition of what’s objective as stated by the news media as a whole." Has Al Gore lost his mind?
posted by Durwood at 9:19 AM PST - 114 comments

Should advertising be allowed to contain caricatures and satire of major figures without their permission? My opinion is yes they bloody well should. Good luck to the producers with hunting down Osama.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 8:40 AM PST - 15 comments

“A nation is little more and nothing less than a conversation. [T]he conversation that is the United States has continued for more than 200 years as a lover's quarrel between equality and justice.” A gallery of ways this “conversation” is still taking place in the ways we live the Constitution’s 27 Amendments every day.
posted by arco at 8:18 AM PST - 9 comments

General Pervez Musharraf VS. Zombies. Does the Pakistani leader really have any business being in a pub in England drinking and attacking the undead? Let's hear it for quiet, non-stereotypical uses of turbanized humans. (I wish Boutros-Boutros Ghali would make an appearance in Spongebob Squarepants)
posted by clango at 7:27 AM PST - 8 comments

Face transplant surgery appears to be nearing reality. A conference taking place this week will discuss the issue, which is not without controversy. How would you feel about a loved one who had been severely disfigured getting a new and different face? Would you be willing to donate your face after you had died?
posted by CoolHandPuke at 7:13 AM PST - 32 comments

Cooking has never been so endearing. ....and I am now certainly a convert to using the internet for recipes. So far I have racked up a madras, pasta and now I'm gunning for casserole recipes. Truly a delicious use of the net, n'est pas? ( first link via FlipFlopFlyin)
posted by Frasermoo at 7:09 AM PST - 26 comments

Rock n Roll! We know that Sex and Drugs ain't good for us, but researchers at McGill University are using very fancy devices to learn how our brains react to music. (Probably not much to discuss, but it's an interesting article)
posted by adamms222 at 5:34 AM PST - 6 comments

Bush is soft on tobacco Just say No! Unless you are in cahoots with Big Tobacco. On issues such as this, I do not hold Bush or his party solely guilty but instead view it as The American Way--lobby groups, gifts, elections handouts--all of which blur party lines.
posted by Postroad at 4:57 AM PST - 15 comments

Is the Internet in danger of collapse from a disaster or terrorist attack? The Internet was a product of DARPA and designed during the Cold War because it was thought that the centralized phone system networks providing most or all of the National Defense communications networks- used at that time would not survive a nuclear attack disabling our ability to communicate with our troops. At the suggestion of the RAND Corporation and a number of Scientists the design scheme was to make the Internet a system with no central control in order to make it difficult for an enemy to disable our countries ability to communicate during a War. Has the decentralized Internet now become a threat to our very Centralized Goverment that initially created it-and other Goverments? Why would terrorist organizations want to destroy something that they in fact use themselves? Or perhap the researchers are right that the emergence of large centralized hubs brought forth by the increased commercialization of the Net has in fact made the Internet more vulnerable to attack or disaster! Perhaps there are lessons in this story regarding the whole Centralization/ Decentralization dichotomy that Goverments, and Individuals can learn from?
posted by thedailygrowl at 11:24 PM PST - 9 comments

First Human Clone to be Born in January. Discuss.
posted by McBain at 11:15 PM PST - 39 comments

boxplorer
one of the most interesting website interpreters i've ever seen. i'll just quote the site: The Internet BOXPLORER browser offers a rectangular view of the World Wide Web. It abstracts web page layouts to produce what are frequently rather colorful compositions. BOXPLORER purifies the Web, making it safe for children of all ages -- free from controversy and advertising. Translation - very interesting graphic renditions of any site you enter.
posted by tatochip at 8:00 PM PST - 25 comments

Linguistics in Bashkortostan. Russian philology within the Republic of Bashkortostan.
posted by plexi at 7:55 PM PST - 5 comments

Happy Thanksgiving or Is It? In 1939, Franklin Delano Roosevelt responed to pressure from the National Retail Dry Goods Association to move the official date of Thanksgiving back one week to the next-to-last Thursday of the month. FDR hoped that this would enliven the economy by adding one week to the Christmas shopping season, but he received considerable political flak for tampering with what many viewed as a sacred religious holiday. (Thanksgiving is considered sacred even though it only became a national holiday due to lobbying by the editor of a 19th century woman's magazine.) New Deal-era Republicans were especially bothered by the calendar change and one essayist at the American Enterprise Institute still seems to carry a grudge. Congress later resolved the issue by passing a resolution in 1941 that designated Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday of November.
posted by jonp72 at 6:52 PM PST - 11 comments

Andrew McCrae, 23, surrendered without incident about 10 a.m. after a standoff this morning. He alegaledly confessed to the murder of Police Office David Mobilio of Red Bluff, CA on San Francisoco's IndyMedia website yesterday. Before the standoff ended, he told a Concord Monitor reporter "I killed a police officer in Red Bluff, California, in an effort to draw attention to police brutality." [more inside]
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 4:19 PM PST - 42 comments

Run Ricky Run. Ricky Williams, running-back for the Miami Dolphins, gets an A for effort for designing and maintaining his own website. He keeps a journal where he sounds off on everything from battling fame and the perks that come with it, to meeting his idol (Jim Brown). He even talks about money problems, just on a much larger scale then you or I would have.
posted by Starchile at 2:43 PM PST - 15 comments

Bush Pardons Turkey. Ratio of the number of pardons George W. Bush has issued turkeys to those he has issued human beings : 2:1
posted by four panels at 2:32 PM PST - 35 comments

Does anyone here remember Daniel Ellsberg of the PentagonPapers fame? Well he may be relevant again and not only that, maybe essential.
posted by donfactor at 2:16 PM PST - 15 comments

Ever Try Getting Wine Shipped in the U.S.? Looks like Montana had set up a "wine connoisseur" rule that allowed for some shipping into the state if you filled out some paperwork, blah blah blah. PAIN! As someone who enjoys a good wine and wanted to order a bunch of it earlier in '02 when I was in Sonoma, CA and have it shipped home, only to be crushed when I couldn't have it done, I'm looking for a way to get this to work. Anyone else come across these various laws? Anyone else live in a state where they CAN get wine shipped in to them? 13 states allow reciprocal shipping from other partner states, and 14 others have some strict rules about it. Will opening these rules up allow minors an easy way to get alcohol? Some great links at the bottom of the article, too.
posted by djspicerack at 2:12 PM PST - 30 comments

Sex Crimes and equal treatment "under the law." (pun anyone?)

Outraged prosecutors said Thursday that they will appeal the sentence given to Edwin "Ed" Mann, a former Orlando Police Department sex-crimes detective, for having a sexual affair with a 14-year-old girl who had earlier dated his son.

Mann, a former leader in Cops for Christ, pleaded guilty last week to four felony charges resulting from an ongoing sexual relationship he had with the girl two years ago when he was a sex-crimes detective.

Do you think being "religious" and policeman merits special treatment from a judge?
posted by nofundy at 11:46 AM PST - 37 comments

"A placid boat ride past sets of harmonizing, doe-eyed dolls just doesn't cut it for kids raised on Quake and MTV." Epcot's new Mission: Space to feature intense g-force and weightlessness simulation. How is this possible and still be Disney-safe? Even though that caught my attention, the article is really about how Disney's creative engineers are having trouble staying a few steps ahead of the tech-savvy kiddies.
posted by archimago at 11:40 AM PST - 15 comments

They call it "PTSlaveryD": Post-Traumatic Slavery Disorder. A Boston psychologist says "Black and Latino males are showing up in droves" with the symptoms. The Wall Street Journal invited readers to take it a step further - Post Traumatic Big Bang Disorder, anyone?
posted by Oriole Adams at 10:11 AM PST - 40 comments

My Tivo thinks I'm a gay pregnant man! This article documents the struggles that some people have gone to in order to gear Tivo's programming to their interests. As one man said of himself: " [I] often [order] cooking shows, which softens TiVo's view of [me]. "I don't want it thinking I'm an ax murderer,".
posted by Raichle at 9:47 AM PST - 33 comments

Apple's own 'Switch' parody ads with Will Ferrell.
posted by Sal Amander at 9:44 AM PST - 29 comments

Watch Bill Plympton create his new animation Hair High right before your eyes! I left the ani-cam on yesterday and the only conclusion I came to was that it takes a really, really, really long time to draw animations.
posted by Stan Chin at 9:16 AM PST - 7 comments

Caley Meals, is a sex columnist. What seperates her from the crowd of them, is that she is published in a college school newspaper. Jokingly, in her first column she states that, "I will try to keep the students of Madison with their heads in the right place: the gutter." She then goes on to cover imortant topics such as, how to work the college sex life around a roomie, the drunken bootie call, fornication with food, female domination and many others. Is it real journalism or only riding on pure shock value? "Writing about sex is about as interesting as talking about sex, which is to say it's not interesting at all compared to the real thing. But at least it can be a little naughty."
posted by Recockulous at 8:43 AM PST - 38 comments

Philosopher John Rawls dead at 81. Highly regarded philosopher and Harvard professor John Rawls passed away Sunday at age 81. He is perhaps best known for his work on the Concept of Justice. You can also see his bibliography.
posted by xmutex at 8:14 AM PST - 15 comments

Clown Crack. Pointed, political, possibly offensive cartoons.
posted by the fire you left me at 7:33 AM PST - 40 comments

Wilson A. Bentley spent half a lifetime photographing snowflakes. The Smithsonian rejected his huge collection of photographs, on which his book was based. Now Buffalo, New York, a major snow capital, will feature Bentley's work in its "Winter Wonders" exhibit. More snowflakes can be seen on Cal Tech's snow crystals site (last cited in MeFi last January). Another city obsessed with snow is Asahikawa, Japan, home of the Austrian-inspired Snow Crystal Museum. The scientifically inclined may prefer this paper on the formation of ice-crystal patterns.
posted by SealWyf at 6:58 AM PST - 11 comments

When you take a good storyteller with keys to much of campus, a desire to get into everyplace else, and a need to bring about change through "constructive vandalism" and then wait for the statute of limitations to pass, you wind up with the published stories of Stealth Force Beta. Those folks who never had fun in college didn't get isolated in the middle of the desert with a bunch of nerds.
posted by ewagoner at 6:49 AM PST - 6 comments

"Yo, homeboy, are you hungry for some mad hip hop flava? Sink your grill-piece into Master P's Platinum Bar-B-Que. Want somethin' sweeter? Lil' Romeo's Bar-B-Quein' with Honey! If cheese is the flava you need, try Warren G's Cheezie Nacho!"
The most bizarre niche snack marketing since Arafat's cheese puffs.
posted by mikrophon at 6:33 AM PST - 30 comments

Some of the best comics ever are online. Some independent, some ubiquitous, and all too cool for syndication. Does anyone else know any good online comics?
posted by Keyser Soze at 5:41 AM PST - 43 comments

Hooray! Great news for those who love to communicate - Microsoft have released a new version of their popular Windows/MSN/.NET Messenger software! So, let's glance at the new features: there's a great new look with a spinny logo thingy, and... and, erm... well... it's had some features removed... like the ability to use third-party add-ons... and, oh but wait, there's new pop-up advertising and alleged spy-ware! Oh...
posted by Pretty_Generic at 5:29 AM PST - 20 comments

The World Currency Gallery at Banknotes.com is excellent for old, new, and obsolete banknotes, and the dmoz.org currency result is enormous. [more]
posted by hama7 at 5:05 AM PST - 7 comments

We all know about the new Department of Homeland Security, but did you know about the Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency?
posted by JoanArkham at 4:31 AM PST - 9 comments

Pamie returns! In an update to this old thread, Pamela Ribon is once again writing online. As some may know, Pamela's original site was named Squishy (a.k.a. Pamie's Panties), and it was part of the first generation of online journals.
posted by gd779 at 3:31 AM PST - 5 comments

Scott Kim's Inversions - an inversion is a word or name written so it reads in more than one way.
posted by mhjb at 2:32 AM PST - 10 comments

Where To Stay In Portugal And Spain: You could do worse than try Secret Places, an ambitious and delightful website that has the advantage of emphasizing unusual and charming accommodation. I don't know about Spain, but the places they recommend in Portugal, the Azores and Madeira are top notch and not at all touristy. These are the fairly priced rural inns, private homes and hotels we Portuguese repair to when our batteries need recharging. Although Portugal is a big tourist destination and there are loads of accommodation websites, I'm sorry to say that this is the first I've seen that's any good. I'm not so sure about the other hotel chain websites highly praised in a New York Times article [ registration required; with pop-ups], although the Ian Schrager Hotels [with pop-ups] one is quite attractive (in an early Nineties way) and very efficient reservation-wise.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 1:57 AM PST - 37 comments

Ages back there was a link, here at MeFi, to a project aimed at creating a DVD full of PC demos from back in the day. Well, they've finished. (They say if you pre-order now you'll get it in time for Christmas.)
posted by krisjohn at 12:51 AM PST - 3 comments

Interview with Google Nate Tyler, Public Relations Manager at Google Inc. answering a few interesting questions.
posted by jayantk at 12:50 AM PST - 2 comments

This is probably the most upsetting job post I've ever come across. I don't know whether I should pity this couple or be really disturbed by them.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 8:56 PM PST - 36 comments

Alter Ego What if you could live your life over again? This straightforward virtual life simulator is fun and involving, and I almost wonder if I didn't learn a thing or two in the process. Wonderful implementation of the concept.
posted by oissubke at 7:32 PM PST - 19 comments

Yesterday's NYT magazine section (reg req'd) featured a profile of Jack Osbourne---whose family's show premieres its second season tomorrow---and discussed the unpleasant repercussions of his new fame: a prescription to Zoloft, a discontinued high school education and severe threats that warrant his own eye-patched bodyguard. Is this kind of exposure (especially in a reality TV context) too much for a 17 year old kid to handle?
posted by adrober at 6:48 PM PST - 17 comments

Deep, way deep inside Iraq This aired very recently on PBS but I just caught it online -- the link is the second of four video clips following U.K. journalist Sam Kiley reporting on perception and reality in Jordan and Iraq and contains the most horrific footage of Saddam supporters you're likely to ever see. Be warned, it's not pretty.
posted by subpixel at 5:13 PM PST - 28 comments

This article is about new border crossing security measures that are supposedly in the works. Cross the U.S. border in a few years, and a hidden camera may zero in on you from 150 metres away, able to recognize you by the shape of your face, perhaps by the telltale markings of your eyeball or even in the way you walk past the border guard. In milliseconds, a supercomputer would sift through a massive "data warehouse," able to dip into your life: Credit-card purchases, travel patterns, health and banking records would all be scanned. Your old telephone conversations -- in any language -- would be instantly available, along with e-mails that you sent years ago. Perhaps they'll even be able to read your MetaFilter posts.
posted by orange swan at 2:05 PM PST - 36 comments

Oregon Prescription Drug Research. AARP provides a guide to the first publicly funded, unbiased source of information comparing the effectiveness and safety of several categories of prescription drugs.
posted by semmi at 12:55 PM PST - 3 comments

MOON: Because you've been everywhere else. [warning: sound and flash]
"Moon Resort and Casino will be an escape into the future with hundreds of attractions including a giant lunar-themed aquatic center, exclusive shopping complex, terrestrial biosphere, moon buggy rides, and its own International Space Station. Nestled between the [10,000 room] hotel's dramatic wings will be the centerpiece of the resort, the Moon itself, towering over 350 feet and housing the world's largest casino." The creator is not without controversy, but Robin Leach is already on board.
posted by me3dia at 12:09 PM PST - 19 comments

Come all ye lads of high renown, / That love to drink good ale that's brown and peruse a collection of Broadside Ballads from Glasgow. There are many other sites pertaining to broadside ballads, but none with such a wealth of scanned reproductions. Also includes the full text of Hawkie: The Autobiography of a Gangrel.
posted by staggernation at 11:58 AM PST - 3 comments

"We are summoning forth the proletariat around the globe to aid us in this revolution. We call on the common man to rise up in revolt against this evil of typographical ignorance. We believe in the gospel message "ban comic sans."
posted by m@ at 11:56 AM PST - 52 comments

A letter to the American people from Osama bin Laden is being circulated among Islamists in Britain. Although there's no way to confirm it's authenticity, the Observer claims that senior Arab journalists in the Middle Eastern media believe the letter is authentic, and calls it "the most comprehensive explanation of bin Laden's ideology to be issued for several years."
posted by homunculus at 10:53 AM PST - 73 comments

How mushrooms will save the world "I have a strategy for creating ecological footprints on other planets," says the Johnny Appleseed of mushrooms. "By using a consortium of fungi and seeds and other microorganisms, you could actually seed other planets with little plops. You could actually start keystone species and go to creating vegetation on planets." And the Internet is one big giant 'shroom. Fascinating article on how mushrooms may hold the key to environmental clean ups. And so much more!
posted by archimago at 10:46 AM PST - 9 comments

KEEP BIG BROTHER'S HANDS OFF THE INTERNET Ashcroft as Senator! That was then. This is now. Does it still apply?
posted by Postroad at 10:32 AM PST - 16 comments

You Have The Right To Remain Silent
or...maybe not...
Police can hold people in custody and force them to talk, so long as their incriminating statements are not used to prosecute them, U.S. Solicitor Gen. Theodore B. Olson and Michael Chertoff, the chief of the Justice Department's criminal division, say in their brief to the court. It "will chill legitimate law enforcement efforts to obtain potentially life-saving information during emergencies," including terrorism alerts, if police and FBI agents can be sued for coercive questioning, they add

Are YOU ready to talk or will I have to get my rubber hose and smash your face with my club?
posted by nofundy at 8:58 AM PST - 93 comments

fancyteeth : strange and beautiful flash animation from Mr Wellington and Mr Peters at Mantlepies.
posted by gravelshoes at 8:37 AM PST - 8 comments

Disgust is universal it seems. Can anyone think of any other universal disgusts out there?
posted by ideola at 7:49 AM PST - 11 comments

Is Gore the New Nixon? The disembodied heads of Al Gore and Tricky Dick shared the screen in Futurama's season premiere. But the kinship between the two men goes deeper. Nixon won the White House twice, in spite of his critics and his own lack of charisma. Gore's done it once -- why not a second time? The Situation Room's analysis (which was inspired by Frank Rich's piece on Gore in Saturday's NY Times) offers food for thought, as the first outlines of the 2004 campaigns begin to take shape.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 7:38 AM PST - 44 comments

If you have sex before marriage, you will die. Why is fear so often used to promote an agenda?
posted by The Jesse Helms at 7:29 AM PST - 37 comments

AltaVista goes back to its roots I regularly used AltaVista when I first came to the web but now haven't used it as a Search Engine for many months. Portals, and MSN in particular seem to be very popular but I'm unable to see the attraction (smacks of spoon-feeding idiots "content" who can't find it themselves) so I'm pleased to see AltaVista changing back to what they do best. Can't see me switching back from Google though..
posted by jontyjago at 7:03 AM PST - 12 comments

Video on Demand Is Finally Taking Hold by the way of Time Warner Cable. We've read this news before, but this time they're promising to start providing the service at buyable prices "by the end of the year throughout 1.2 million subscribers in New York City" (the slogan "Now Anything's Possible" is already on their site). Choose, play, pause and rewind any program you want, from film to tv series, it's all there for you. It "may be the most significant development for the Couch Potato Nation since the remote control". And the cable tv providers take the lead over the satellite television providers (DirecTV, EchoStar), who just can't offer video on-demand like that.
posted by nandop at 5:27 AM PST - 15 comments

Kollaboration freestyle dance clip - this video clip offers nearly 2 minutes of some of the most amazing and intriguing dance you've likely seen in awhile. It's a clip from Kollaboration, a Korean-American talent show sponsored by prokreation. The show's aim is to break down Asian stereotypes. thanks milk & cookies.
posted by madamjujujive at 4:48 AM PST - 28 comments

Guide Horses! Aww...
posted by Pretty_Generic at 2:56 AM PST - 13 comments

If You Were Rich Would You Collect Modern First Editions? Well, it's difficult to browse Christie's upcoming auction of 20th century books and manuscripts; the stock of a well-known bookseller such as Ken Lopez or even go "bargain-hunting" at Amazon without understanding their appeal... [More inside.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 1:25 AM PST - 21 comments

Vintage Synth Explorer - I'm an unquestionable electronic music freak, and this site makes me drool every time I read it. You can find everything from the Roland holy trinity - the 303, 808 and 909 to the most obscure little Korg Mini Pops 35. This site is just totally sweet. Yum
posted by ookamaka at 12:52 AM PST - 21 comments

Buying on-line? We're from the Government and we're here to help you. [more inside]
posted by dg at 10:19 PM PST - 2 comments

Ted's Caving diary I strongly suggest reading this late at night and alone for full effect. The homebuilt look of the site adds to the frisson. (more inside...)
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 10:16 PM PST - 45 comments

Hegemon, hyperpower, empire. "As the United States marches to war, no other label quite seems to capture the scope of American power or the scale of its ambition."
posted by four panels at 9:44 PM PST - 3 comments

Roswell Smoking Gun? Army General said to be holding document in press photo (Not the one they used obviously) that reveals proof of cover-up: "Using a digital photo scanner to enlarge and enhance words printed on the folded piece of paper Ramey held, and using another computer program to select the most likely words, researcher David Rudiak, who has a Ph.D. in physics from UC Berkeley, found two key phrases: "the victims of the wreck" and "in the 'disc' they will ship."
posted by Hilfy at 8:26 PM PST - 36 comments

What is the Darknet? Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Darknet is. Okay, actually, it's a term that some Microsoft computer scientists came up with to refer to all the different ways that internet users can swap copyrighted materials. In a paper they authored [DOC] for a workshop on Digital Rights Management (DRM), these engineers predict that the Darknet will grow ever stronger and more efficient while DRM technologies will make legal right holders less able to compete with Darknet and are ultimately "doomed to failure."
posted by boltman at 7:39 PM PST - 38 comments

Three Dog Eves--They really do understand us--even better than our cousin chimpanzees. Well, at least when food's involved.
As to how wolves became dogs, the current understanding seems to be they tamed themselves--in a Survival of the Friendliest. Here's more on animal linguistics. As for cats, well, Stephen Budiansky in The Character of Cats suggests they aren't even really tame. Hence, unlike dogs, cats haven't bothered to pick up our language--they've taught us Cat talk instead. Take the test and see. A woof out to Australian Broadcast Coporation's five part Animal Attraction series is called for here. C--Miao baby!
posted by y2karl at 6:09 PM PST - 11 comments

Winston Churchill has been voted as the Greatest Briton in a BBC survey. Yes, he gave some great speeches when he needed to, but who gave him the language to make them? Who is missing from the list?
posted by feelinglistless at 4:54 PM PST - 65 comments

Afterlife Telegrams. For a fee of $10 per word (5 word minimum), our customers can have a telegram delivered to someone who has passed away. This is done with the help of terminally ill volunteers who memorize the telegrams before passing away, and then deliver the telegrams after they have passed away.
posted by Wet Spot at 4:47 PM PST - 27 comments

Devoted to late nineteenth century adventure novels? Irredeemably neurotic? For you, there is Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton universe, in which such extraordinary gentlemen as Dracula and Sherlock Holmes are related through complex genealogies dating back to a peculiar meteorological event in the British countryside. This is meta-nerdiness.
posted by Hildago at 3:50 PM PST - 7 comments

Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple. Was it a religion, a revolutionary social movement, a cult, or a combination of them all?
posted by semmi at 8:41 PM PST - 5 comments

Claes Oldenburg is a contemporary sculptor known for making common objects larger than life. Among other pieces, he has placed a spoon and cherry in Minneapolis, a giant clothespin in Philadelphia (the City of Brotherly Love), and last Thursday he anointed San Francisco as the City of Love.
posted by entrustNoOne at 8:03 PM PST - 17 comments

The Portfolio. A different kind of web site (courtesy k10k). Gr ea t (and sometimes not-so-great) collection of sites that have developed unique ways of presenting their work. (more inside)
posted by poopy at 11:20 AM PST - 27 comments

The CIA's Freedom Fighter's Manual is chock full of helpful hints like how to be lazy and how to screw things up at work! For more government comic hijinks, check out the FBI's Black Panther Coloring Book. Find out more information here via Social Design Notes.
posted by Stan Chin at 9:53 AM PST - 11 comments

Stone Clonez: Rawk by Dawk. "...these gemstone characters are real and millions of years old. No artist will draw them, no computer will generate them, and they have been available all this time. Until now no one could figure out how to bring them into our world."
posted by agentfresh at 8:55 AM PST - 3 comments

Ah, the power of cheese. Whether you prefer French, or Italian, or Greek, or even the more pedestrian varieties, you have to admit that some cheese just doesn't sound very appealing.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 8:48 AM PST - 26 comments

Photos of neked boys popping up during your powerpoint presentations at work? Could be a computer virus.
posted by found missing at 7:05 AM PST - 27 comments

Le Beaujolais nouveau est arrivé, but the wine's popularity has more to do with clever marketing than the quality of the wine itself. "Why it was decided to make the region's humblest juice—a wine mainly borne of its worst vineyards, a wine barely removed from the fermentation vat, a wine that is nothing more than pleasantly tart barroom swill—its international standard bearer is a question that will undoubtedly puzzle marketing students for generations to come."
posted by mcwetboy at 5:32 AM PST - 22 comments

Piss in art.
posted by pekar wood at 4:59 AM PST - 1 comments

The Upper Crust Of Bread: What happens when the greatest bread-maker in France, Lionel Poilâne, talks to America's finest baker, Peter Reinhart, and her most fanatical bread-taster, Edward Behr? I'll tell you what: a scrumptious, crackling and very knowledgeable conversation about the the wonders of the baguette, the complexities of simple bread and the deliciousness ["Forgiveness for mistranslations"] of the staff of life in general. Last year, for the first time ever, an American baker beat the French competition to win the "Best Bread in the World" award. Will what recently happened with wine in the New World now happen with bread? Will the Americans [peanut butter and jelly sandwiches notwithstanding] begin abandoning industrial, pre-sliced and sweetened white bread, just as Europe increasingly and depressingly succumbs to it? [Main link requires Real Audio.].
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:26 AM PST - 29 comments

President Bush is pressuring Iraq because he says that they support terror (there is some evidence of that). So what about Saudi Arabia? "Sources familiar with the evidence say the payments—amounting to about $3,500 a month—came from an account at Washington’s Riggs Bank in the name of Princess Haifa Al-Faisal, the wife of Saudi Ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and the daughter of the late Saudi King Faisal." And why were CIA/FBI investigations of the Saudi connection reigned in? When Bush met that very same Prince Bandar in August, somehow the issue never came up. Don't want to step on Dad's toes, you know.
posted by owillis at 12:27 AM PST - 18 comments

An official Q&A with the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, alludes to some extremely scary/interesting tidbits-- the Office of Strategic Influence is still alive, John Poindexter can do anything he pleases with DARPA, we just might renew nuclear weapons testing. Don't worry, though. Rummy sez: "Anyone who is concerned ought not be. Anyone with any concern ought to be able to sleep well tonight. Nothing terrible is going to happen."
posted by LimePi at 12:11 AM PST - 7 comments

Literary Flash Friday. "Life of Pi", this year's Booker Prize winner, and the sources of "inspiration" of its author were discussed here some days ago. Now you can enjoy the interactive promo of the novel (requires Flash and a fast connection I'm afraid).
posted by blogenstock at 9:50 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Muslim rioters force cancellation of Miss World beauty contest: Lagos not favourite in race for Mr.Gay Africa comp.
posted by dash_slot- at 5:33 PM PST - 34 comments

Lusty Linens! "Inspiring lovemaking and pleasure with our beautifully designed, finely crafted erotic bed linen and other home accessories." Perfect holiday gifts for your favorite pervert!
posted by adrober at 5:14 PM PST - 4 comments

The Burden of Profit. Two Texas energy companies, both closely tied to the Bush White House, are lining up administration support for nearly $900 million in public financing for a Peruvian natural gas project that will cut through one of the world's most pristine tropical rain forests. (via homunculus)
posted by four panels at 4:46 PM PST - 9 comments

Are tonnes of strange quark matter zipping through the Earth?

One event occurred on 22 October, 1993, when, according to the researchers, something entered the Earth off Antarctica and left it south of India 0.73 of a second later.

But we may never know the answer:

In 1993 the US Geological Survey stopped collecting data...

posted by anser at 4:01 PM PST - 18 comments

War With Iraq - As Predictable As Chess There is still a good chance we can avoid war with Iraq. Saddam Hussein has never won a war, and his military forces surely foresee their own destruction. Numerous assassination attempts by them (some involving the Republican Guard) have failed. They are likely trying again, even now. Therein lies our best hope. What if they fail again? Then invasion by the U.S. is inevitable.
posted by daHIFI at 2:33 PM PST - 20 comments

Counting in base-14. "Just because we use a decimal system doesn't mean everyone does. "The teseradecimal lifestyle is thus not just a way of life. It is not only a method of regulating marriage, birth, succession, and other aspects of village life. It is also a theory of history where genesis, finality, and apocalypse are laid out on the space between the pinky and the nose."
Alex Golub illuminates the counting system of the Ipili tribe of Papua New Guinea, in response to much discussion of the ethnomathmatics at Leuschke.org. [more inside]
posted by me3dia at 2:27 PM PST - 21 comments

Loosening clean air rules... This from the guy hailing from the smoggiest state around. Is this really who should be making such a decision? Things don't look so good now, so why loosen the rules? Do we want one of these?
posted by Espoo2 at 1:45 PM PST - 22 comments

World's smallest book. How does one read a book that is .9 by .9 millimeters? Chekov's "Chameleon" has just been recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records (though the website hasn't been updated yet.) The hobby is apparently addictive, with societies at major universities and international groups as well. There's even a yearly Conclave. Personally, I'd be afraid that I'd lose something that small. Palkovic mentions it in the article, but says they always show up. File under slightly obsessive hobby.
posted by valval22 at 12:26 PM PST - 5 comments

My laptop gets pretty hot but I never imagined it could cause burns! In fact this is probably the only injury that can be caused by a computer, apart from electrocution?
posted by chrid at 12:17 PM PST - 30 comments

Misinterpreting Osama's Message: Erring on the Side of Danger (via AlterNet) Bin Laden's messages are mistaken for unconditional threats and vows to attack. They are really conditional warnings that whatever we do, they will respond in kind. Some new insights from reading between the lines of OBL's communiques without lapsing into left wing apologia (More inside)
posted by BentPenguin at 12:00 PM PST - 17 comments

Aiee!! Pelorosaurus by god knows who, Corythosaurus illustrated by Zdenek Burian, Ornitholestes by Charles Knight--Dinosaur Illustrations has led me to two wonderful sites: Early Image and Paper Dinosaurs, 1824-1969 - An Exhibition of Original Publications From the Collections of the Linda Hall Library, as well as many other little treasures .
posted by y2karl at 11:17 AM PST - 3 comments

G.I. Joe is a Real American Hero. Now you can get some new guys for him to fight against.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 10:36 AM PST - 32 comments

Rachel Marsden Back in the News: A few years back, a Simon Fraser University (Vancouver) swimming coach was fired after it was found that he had sexually harassed a student. But then the coach was "later reinstated when an external mediator found procedural errors in the university's investigation of the case." The student later became a right-wing journalist. Now she herself is being charged with harassment. By the way, her own site is down from all the traffic today.
posted by 314/ at 10:02 AM PST - 14 comments

JFK Assassination: Up close and personal After years of silence, they're finally talking. Here's a first-hand account from my family who were about 10 yards away from the shot that killed JFK. They are clearly visible in the Zapruder film. Spooky.
posted by sparky at 9:24 AM PST - 38 comments

TV night or a drag show? Gay retirement homes are starting to open as the Stonewall Generation grows old. A study by the Brookdale Centre on Ageing at Hunter College in New York found that fewer than one in five elderly gays have a life partner and only one in ten has children. By contrast, nearly half the overall general senior population has a spouse and four in five have children. America’s first, of course, was in Florida.
posted by gottabefunky at 9:10 AM PST - 13 comments

More Evidance that Cannabis can lead to Mental Illness. The link between regular cannabis use and later depression and schizophrenia has been significantly strengthened by three new studies. One of the key conclusions of the research is that people who start smoking cannabis as adolescents are at the greatest risk of later developing mental health problems. Studying 1600 Australian school pupils aged 14 to 15 for seven years, daily cannabis use was associated with a five-fold increased risk of depression at the age of 20.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 8:40 AM PST - 83 comments

They're Nippiting it in the bud. I suppose you can't blame them. A director or costumer puts an actor in a tight wet shirt on a chilly nippy set on purpose, right? Well, no need to poke, err, put up with it anymore. But should you so desire, you can still achieve the exact opposite effect as well. (I'm fresh out of Flash, so thought I'd post this sad development as part of LowBrowFriday. Sorry...)
posted by Shane at 7:13 AM PST - 27 comments

Gently strain your brain this Friday morning with some pop quizzes. Besides today's test, there are more in the archives. Sort of an educational way to pass the time (or your employer's time).
posted by Oriole Adams at 6:38 AM PST - 6 comments

Dildo's illegal in Texas? Apparently so. Let me get this straight... in a state where you can carry loaded firearms on your hip, if you get caught with more than 6 dildos or other "pleasure devices", it's a FELONY? Absolutely amazing. Texas is like a whole other country. It also helps explain a lot. (via obscurestore)
posted by Ynoxas at 6:04 AM PST - 78 comments

"I don't want anyone saying, ‘I'll give you two firefighters for an airline pilot.' " The latest in a long line of trading cards? (aka Top Trumps)
posted by MintSauce at 5:49 AM PST - 2 comments

Ellen Feiss speaks! In her first-ever interview, she breaks her silence and answers the question many of you have been asking: "by the time I made it it was like 10, so I was really tired. The funny thing was, I was on drugs! I was on Benedryl, my allergy medication, so I was really out of it anyway. That's why my eyes were all red, because I have seasonal allergies. But no one believes me." (via MacRumors; see also Wired)
posted by mcwetboy at 3:01 AM PST - 48 comments

Hit the Fan! Here's a great little game that's been floating around my "to post" box for a few days just waiting for Flash Friday here at MeFi. The object is to propel a mound of fecal matter with your ping-pong paddle so that it connects with the rotary air circulation device. Once you get some practice, try springing one off the stapler or landing it in the coffee cup. Even better yet, go for a "Mac attack" and ricochette one off the iMac screen into the blades. They did a fairly good job of creating a sound effects for the moment when the caca hits the old ventilador too - so how can you lose?
posted by RevGreg at 2:41 AM PST - 16 comments

Flash with no name - think you've seen every bizarre Japanese flash? Good chance you haven't seen this one yet. I am at a loss for a title. This is not safe for work. This is not safe for children or small animals. Do not take with medication. Mock the message, not the messenger.
posted by madamjujujive at 9:44 PM PST - 29 comments

Left Gets Nod from Right on Copyright Law - A darling of the conservative movement, federal Judge Richard Posner criticizes the Sonny Bono Act and attacks the Patent and Trademark Office for granting "very questionable" business method patents at a lecture organized by the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution. (via How Appealing)
posted by ajr at 7:26 PM PST - 11 comments

Spot the hoaxes!
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 7:23 PM PST - 15 comments

Bill Maher back on cable? AP is reporting that Bill Maher will host a late-night talk show on HBO starting Feb. 21. The hour-long news and comedy program, which has yet to be titled, will air once a week for 20 episodes. I personally think ABC were a bunch of pussies for cancelling him, and I think the new show will rock. What do you think?
posted by RylandDotNet at 7:12 PM PST - 26 comments

al queda and pakistan an excellent interview supporting an excellent frontline presentation on al queda - is the US winning or losing the war on terrorism?
posted by specialk420 at 7:09 PM PST - 20 comments

Still getting those Nigerian scam spams? Brad Christensen is too -- but he seems to be enjoying them. (And he's not the only one, either.)
posted by ook at 4:58 PM PST - 26 comments

Stringing broadband connections through the city sewer system is a dirty smelly job but something has to do it! Check out the companies and the sewer-bots that are doing this dirty work.
posted by thedailygrowl at 3:30 PM PST - 9 comments

High School Girls Basketball team destroys opponent 115-2. Is sportsmanship about to go the way of the dodo? More and more teams are pushing for winning (and winning by a lot) more than just playing well. Is it the coach's fault? Could it be that the players are just too good and they couldn't 'help' crushing their opponent by over 100 points? (I say that, of course, in jest)
posted by gwong at 2:41 PM PST - 60 comments

Today is The Great American Smokeout. If you can't bring yourself to quit, though, then you can quit quitting smoking!
posted by thatweirdguy2 at 1:04 PM PST - 58 comments

Karl Frank Kleinpaste is on trial defending himself for tax evasion claiming that he lives in the 'Democratic Republic of Pennsylvania' and is therefore not duty bound to pay federal income tax. Some think that this will not go very well for him while others encourage the masses to do the same.
posted by Raichle at 12:23 PM PST - 28 comments

FCC commissioner Michael Copps seeks indecency definition overhaul.
The current definition of indecency to me should be capturing for enforcement purposes some of these programs and it is not. We are only having a paucity of enforcement actions against programming that is palpably and demonstrably indecent.
Is it really time to redefine indecency, or to reexamine why exactly it is we are defining indecency to begin with?
posted by mikrophon at 12:05 PM PST - 36 comments

Bastard Pop is one of the more interesting developments in popular music in the last few years, but copyright laws preclude its distribution in stores. To hear it, you'll need to fire up your P2P or scour the internet. If you're not satisfied with the offerings, all you need is your home computer to make your own songs. Ever wonder what happens if you cross Joy Division with Missy Elliott?
posted by mert at 12:02 PM PST - 31 comments

Mix It Up Day is an effort from the people at Tolerance.org to get teens to sit with other social groups at lunch in the cafeteria today. Coming from a racially diverse "inner city" Midwest high school, I've seen how teens will naturally segregate themselves, so this seems like an interesting proposal. Kids who participated seemed excited about the opportunity, but will they keep "mixing it up" tomorrow, next week, as they become adults?
posted by katieinshoes at 11:08 AM PST - 23 comments

Is state government finally doing something right? Who knows? this seems legit enough. Apparently, if you register you can get cyber security alerts delivered to your mailbox. Can I register if I'm from say, Nebraska? Furthermore, how real is the threat to Florida's cyber infrastructure anyways?
posted by Captain Supermarket at 10:46 AM PST - 11 comments

Need a quick pick-me-up? Electroshock therapy, police-style! Video of an abusive prisoner being incapacitated with a non-lethal, handheld, electrical device. Instant mood transformation is achieved. (1.5m of quicktime) More videos available here. There's also a video (13m of mpeg) of volunteers being zapped, not available on the page above. (Much laughter on that last one, because, you know... pain is funny.) Probably not for the squeamish. via mister pants
posted by crunchland at 10:34 AM PST - 6 comments

Enforcing silence: American media are unsurprisingly preparing to publish details of Vancouver's Pickton case despite a Canadian publication ban. Are media blackouts censorship, necessary for justice, or both? Or are they just doomed to fail when you can just, you know, do stuff like this?
posted by transient at 10:11 AM PST - 22 comments

Can someone syndicate this man? Cartoons on the back of business cards. Beats the lame ones you often find in say, The New Yorker. Courtesy of Capital Influx.
posted by Dukebloo at 9:35 AM PST - 26 comments

Is "a 25-cent bullet" the solution to men who abuse women? (Via Obscurestore) NY State legislator Wanda Hudak claims social services are overloaded by women of "low moral character" and the men who abuse them. This seems to be a week for blunt ideas about abusive relationships: in the NYTimes Magazine (reg req) Deborah Sontag challenges the "doctrinaire thinking about the nature of domestic violence" which posits men as uncontrollable ogres and women as meek victims. Thoughts?
posted by serafinapekkala at 8:54 AM PST - 39 comments

All Fall Down: Remember the famous explosion sequence in Antonioni's Zabriskie Point? Fiona Villela says: "Flying toward the viewer, these many shards of shiny bits and pieces that once served a utilitarian purpose when part of a greater object here exist in and of themselves in a purely dazzling spectacle. This is the only way Antonioni can see the beauty of American capitalism, as a rainbow of shattered objects lost in space and time. ". What is the (undeniable) pleasure of watching big structures, that took years to build, destroyed in a few seconds? And has September 11 taken the fun out of implosion voyeurism? [Via memepool; original post by yoyology; Real required.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:53 AM PST - 18 comments

Online database of abusive priests. Disturbing to browse through especially since the list probably contains only a fraction of the perpetrators.
posted by Degaz at 8:50 AM PST - 5 comments

A pinhead editorial writer's adventure in the No Spin Zone. Not intending to post another partisan attack on Bill O'Reilly, but rather an interesting example from start to finish of how the host of a "fair" debate show calls every shot from minute one, and why, frankly, it's just not worth it to watch American news channels anymore. [More within...]
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 7:59 AM PST - 46 comments

Outdoor Sculptures from Australia. This is a great collection of evocative outdoor sculptures from Australia. The setting is not bad, too. Outdoor art is very well supported in my city (sorry- no images). Is it a big deal where you live?
posted by SandeepKrishnamurthy at 7:46 AM PST - 5 comments

Now, in response to yesterdays shocking data that Americans are an unworldly, culturally ignorant batch, we bring you a much needed ethnographic survey. Take time to learn about The Semen Warriors of New Guinea. Not since the Yanomamo, have anthropologists found a group so vital to our quest of understanding the limits and details of human nature.
posted by dgaicun at 7:13 AM PST - 70 comments

"Bobby Fisher's Pathetic Endgame." An interesting account of Bobby Fisher's decline from greatness to absolutelycrazyness. I used to really like Searching for Bobby Fisher when I was younger, but for some reason I always thought he had disappeared or something mysterious. The truth makes me sad. (Via Plastic.com)
posted by hughbot at 7:03 AM PST - 12 comments

Black Friday. The meaning of which brings either joy, bewilderment or disgust. Several retailers have sent DMCA notices to several deal hunting sites forcing them to remove any ads or information that reveal any specials that will be offered. WTF!? What other inane uses will the DMCA be used for?
posted by the biscuit man at 6:33 AM PST - 17 comments

Someone's magnificent obsession: an exhaustive list of movies which have contained jugglers, or scenes involving juggling. There are many, many more than you could have possibly imagined, if you're the type who actually spends times imagining such things. There are also lists of movies which contain bagpipes, accordians, librarians, and math.
posted by iconomy at 5:11 AM PST - 20 comments

A married couple are walking from South Africa to the tip of Argentina, with a quick boat ride over the Bering Strait. Their 65Mm (that's megametre) route follows that which early man used to spread across the world's continents.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 4:21 AM PST - 23 comments

"Twexus does contain 15800 images today". Twexus is an enigmatic, engaging little database-driven photoart site that rewards you with new site features as your page views increase. I can't seem to tear free from the hypnotic effect of the "symmetry" page that concerns itself with my opinion on each proffered image. sorry, gotta go... must... return... to... twexus...
posted by taz at 2:34 AM PST - 15 comments

Paging Dr. Frankenstein A team of geneticists has announced that it is going to create an artificial lifeform. The project raises philosophical, ethical and practical questions. For instance, if a man-made organism proved able to survive and reproduce only under a narrow range of laboratory conditions, could it really be considered life? More broadly, do scientists have any moral right to create new organisms? (From the Washington Post. First-time users may be asked to provide demographic information.)
posted by Man-Thing at 1:34 AM PST - 37 comments

Vaudeville Slang. A boffo glossary of the language of American Vaudeville. Visit the main site for tons of links to famous performers and theatres. For more hokum, you can visit here to watch and hear some actual Vaudeville acts. No applesauce!
posted by Joey Michaels at 1:19 AM PST - 5 comments

The Day I Joined the KKK Was Super Fucking Gay.
posted by holloway at 6:48 PM PST - 65 comments

Culture jamming The Sims. As discussed here a couple of months ago, the much loved McDonald's Corporation has a major deal with Electronic Arts. But with hundreds of virtual burger restaurants in Simsville - what's to stop gamers turning into virtual anti-globalisation vigilantes?
posted by bwerdmuller at 6:15 PM PST - 19 comments

In the long stretch of culinary history, the creation of the menu was a notable development. In the U.S., New York is the restaurant capital, and the New York Public Library has an enormous collection of menus, many of which they are currently displaying in a third-floor gallery. If you're in NYC (or will be visiting this winter) and are interested in such things, don't miss it; it's showing until March 1.
posted by languagehat at 6:02 PM PST - 14 comments

No matter how smooth you polish this turd, the sickly stench will haunt you forever.
Hilarious shorts on auteur filmmaking. The Sequel, too. (via k10k, via natzke)
posted by cinderful at 4:30 PM PST - 33 comments

An international survey for National Geographic finds that of Americans surveyed between 18 and 24, half couldn't find New York on a map of the US, only one in seven can find Iraq on a map of the world, and one in nine couldn't find the United States on that same map. Sweden averaged 40 correct answers out of 56. The US averaged 23. What is the US doing wrong that countries like Sweden are doing right in education and world awareness?
posted by AaRdVarK at 2:59 PM PST - 127 comments

Tom Wham designed so many of the games I loved when I was a kid. Tucked away in the pages of Dragon Magazine were such classics as The Awful Green Things From Outer Space (Epilogue here), Snit's Revenge, Elefant Hunt and more. Little tiny games with little cutout paper pieces you would lose instantly, they were something to cherish.
posted by Kafkaesque at 2:37 PM PST - 13 comments

hubcapcreatures.com Beautiful creatures made from hubcaps. My particular favorite is this dragon.
posted by snez at 2:18 PM PST - 16 comments

Early tests show 100% success for cervical cancer vaccine "It appears to be the real thing,'' said Dr. Christopher Crum, a pathologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. "You're looking at some very compelling evidence that this vaccine will prevent cervical cancer.''
posted by nickmark at 2:09 PM PST - 12 comments

The Ladder Theory... a theory of adult male/female interaction. While some may find this a bit offensive, it is quite interesting. It includes rating systems, attraction breakdowns, scenarios, consequences, and manifestations.
posted by darian at 1:15 PM PST - 76 comments

New Plans for the World Trade Center. Call Frank Gehry, and keep Eric Owen Moss far, far away.
posted by four panels at 1:01 PM PST - 41 comments

Mount Athos is the center of Eastern Orthodox Monasticism. It's located in the northeast of Greece and is an amazing place. If you're a man and planning a pilgrimage, make sure to read this first. And if you're a woman planning a pilgrimage, make sure to read this first. [more inside]
posted by soundofsuburbia at 10:29 AM PST - 15 comments

$0.99 song downloads are here! Universal Music Group will release 43,000 songs as digital downloads. The tracks will be available to US consumers for $0.99 for individual songs, and $9.99 for the entire album. There's only one little problem, the songs are available as either Liquid Audio or Windows Media.
posted by riffola at 10:28 AM PST - 41 comments

White House Wages Stealth War on Condoms The government is waging a covert war on condoms. Fact sheets on the effectiveness of condoms in preventing the transmission of the AIDS virus have disappeared from government sites. Right wing activists have been appointed to the the presidential AIDS panel. Government audits of AIDS activist groups who protest these policies have begun. So, apparently only evil-doers have sex outside of marriage, and they deserve to die horrible deaths.
posted by dejah420 at 10:14 AM PST - 166 comments

Seamless City is a project made possible by proliferation of gigabytes of affordable disk space, digital cameras, photo composition applications, and a lot of time. Take a 30 mile pedestrian tour of San Francisco.
posted by mnology at 10:14 AM PST - 8 comments

eddie bracken, 1940s slapstick comedian, passed on over the weekend. the star of hail the conquering hero and the controversial miracle of morgan's creek, bracken was often regarded as the onscreen alter ego of pioneering writer/director preston sturges. unfortunately, he correctly predicted that his appearance at film forum would be his last.
posted by pxe2000 at 9:40 AM PST - 6 comments

Can Mercenaries Protect Hamid Karzai? The US govt is hiring private mercenaries to do it's dirty work overseas. In short, by hiring private military contractors such as DynCorp, the U.S. government has found an effective way to conduct foreign policy by proxy and in secret. These proxies cannot be monitored, are effectively immune from all criminal sanctions, and are dangerously hard to control since they answer to corporate bosses, not military brass. (easy registration required)
posted by Coop at 9:37 AM PST - 12 comments

"I was willing to bet that there was going to be a universe, and I hit the nail on the head." The other day we had Avram Davidson, which got me thinking of Calvino's Invisible Cities, but all the recent talk about black holes made me remember that Italo Calvino is at his most charming when he's playing with physics, math, and cosmology in Cosmicomics.
posted by vraxoin at 8:17 AM PST - 15 comments

Gigposters.com is a huge gallery of band gig posters, most lovingly silkscreened by hand. It has a good collection of favorites like Art Chantry and Pearl Jam, but also recent upstarts Aesthetic Apparatus. My favorites are on the other end of the musical spectrum, as I have several of the great country posters of Hatch Show Print. What happens when these posters are left up long after the gig? Why, they only become more charming with age.
posted by Stan Chin at 8:02 AM PST - 16 comments

Salon Opens up Premium ... sort of. Salon will now let you read premium content in exchange for viewing an ad. Is this a signal that paid content isn't working for them, a groundbreaking way to bring in ad revenue (as they claim), both, or neither?
posted by risenc at 7:55 AM PST - 35 comments

100 year average shows "stock market prefers Democratic presidents to Republicans" - "President George W. Bush inherited the lousy end of the business cycle...[however]...Slate ran the numbers and found that since 1900, Democratic presidents have produced a 12.3 percent annual total return on the S&P 500, but Republicans only an 8 percent return. [from Slate] Meanwhile, deficit spending [NYT reg. req.] is back in fashion -Guess I'm putting my $ in gold.....
posted by troutfishing at 7:44 AM PST - 49 comments

Frightening Archaeology: Dark Passage is scarier than Infiltration; less cosy than Lost America; and more disturbing than Ruins of Detroit or any other ruination already investigated on Metafilter. In fact, it's probably the extreme incarnation of the thriving world of websites about abandoned buildings, full of spooky mental asylums, echoes of depravity and twisted archaeology - like a spaced-out online version of Brad Anderson's Session 9. Or the real thing. To make matters worse, it also falls disconcertingly into the "What's this all about?" category. Brrrrr.... [QT/WM required for the last link only - please disregard "Purchase" title and enjoy Nine Inch Nails soundtrack. Via Linkfilter.]
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 3:26 AM PST - 42 comments

Turducken: it's been discussed on MeFi before (here and here), but now it's gone mainstream: an article and recipe in the NYTimes. Anybody having one next week?
posted by josephtate at 2:49 AM PST - 21 comments

The Tulse Luper Suitcases is an extravagantly ambitious (and typically pretentious) multimedia work-in-progress by idiosyncratic writer/director Peter Greenaway. The contents of the 92 suitcases are summarised here. (Originally via memepool).
posted by misteraitch at 2:42 AM PST - 3 comments

It's getting to be that time again. Some people like it. Some people feed it to the homeless. Some people seek to destroy them since they last forever . Some people find them funny. You can make your own; free range, drops, stuffed in meat, with SPAM or Vegan.
posted by srboisvert at 8:45 PM PST - 3 comments

Time Magazine's 2002 Best Inventions
I love my toys and gadgets, and I especially fancy the Air Surfer, @ $75 it looks like the glider for klutzes like me. However, I'm not ready just yet to take the hoots of derision that this Bluetooth Mobile Phone Headset will bring. This new chip looks set to improve digital photography... I do fancy that! But will Foveon have the muscle to bring the X3 to fruition?
This, though, is as close as we'll ever get to 'vaporware': Nasa's AeroGel... find out what earthly purpose it could serve.
Some on the list are little more than product placements (I'm looking at 'Breathe Strips' and 'Ultra-Cashmere' now), and some - Mr. Dyson's Cyclonic spin vacuum, I'm surprised to see - are hardly new. Others [Nano-Tex, Date Rape Drug Spotter & The Scramjet] I'm sure we've discussed before (but they don't figure in Mefi searches).
How many of these will change our lives - and how many will improve them? Is there something cool missing from the list? - something tells me that their gushing over their discovery of '3D Online Entertainment' ["...you can do it all and more in Second Life, a startlingly lifelike 3-D virtual world now evolving on the Internet"] gives it the Kiss O' Death. [...via blogdex]

posted by dash_slot- at 8:26 PM PST - 11 comments

Tracing Baby Boomer Attitudes Then and Now: A Comparative Look at the Attitudes of Baby Boomers in the 1970s and 2002 From an AARP study..."we gathered attitudinal surveys conducted in the early to mid 1970s, when these leading edge baby boomers were in their 20s. We then asked the same questions of this same group today, now that they are in their 50s."
posted by Oxydude at 6:13 PM PST - 6 comments

The National Religious Partnership for the Environment is preparing a grass roots campaign linking fuel economy to morality. The group includes members from the Catholic, Jewish and Evangelical faiths.

Why is this important? With BIG religion vs BIG Oil, where does this leave the Republicans?
posted by CrazyJub at 4:50 PM PST - 21 comments

Black Holes Merge. Massive layoffs expected throughout galaxy. Analysts predict big payoffs for the economy, however. "A burst of gravitational waves that could warp the very fabric of space will go a long way towards increasing shareholding value," said one economist. Both black holes had recently suffered a dramatic drop in stock price, and were under the threat of hostile takeover from industry leader Black Hole 86184-B before the merger was announced, which took Wall Street pundits off guard. "Much to our surprise, we found that both were active black holes," Stefanie Komossa of the Max Planck Astro-Economics Institute in Germany, said in a statement. Proponents of big business greeted the announcement with pleasure: "This supports the idea that black holes can grow to enormous masses in the centres of galaxies by merging with other black holes."
posted by tweebiscuit at 2:43 PM PST - 17 comments

Art Crimes. With a new Tracy Emin exhibition at the Stedilijk, who knows what an afternoon holds.
posted by plexi at 1:33 PM PST - 18 comments

Another massive celestial object, with a companion star in tow, has been discovered hurtling through the Milky Way. Unlike similar discoveries confirming the bow shock theory of stellar dynamics, this week's phenomenon is considerably older, as it's an aftereffect of the galactic core's formation. The French and Argentine astromoners making the discovery believe what they've witnessed may be a black hole, though theoretically, the collasped matter may be a gravistar.
posted by Smart Dalek at 1:29 PM PST - 10 comments

We all knew the day would come, the time to put the "you" in P2P: Buy your own piece of Napster at their bankruptcy auction. December 11th, live and webcast, their impressive set of top o' the line (for 2001) equipment is up for grabs.
posted by mathowie at 12:56 PM PST - 9 comments

Orbitz Marketing head says Pop-ups are Great! Yes, I got this from Fark, but it is still worth a look. The article includes the marketer's e-mail address. Let him know what you think about his ads!
posted by trigfunctions at 11:53 AM PST - 27 comments

Cloaca While it's a shame that contemporary "art" seems to require some form of bodily waste product in order to be considered an act of genius, I have to say that this particular one is fascinating. It eats a meal, digests it, and then ... does the obvious.
posted by oissubke at 11:46 AM PST - 38 comments

Inside the JFK medical files. Very interesting article from Sunday's NY Times (reg. req'd) about the long-term health of John F. Kennedy, from World War II to his death. Corresponding Yahoo News item here also. [more inside...]
posted by PeteyStock at 11:26 AM PST - 11 comments

Previously discussed here, the Body World exhibition in, London, Brick Lane is hosting what is to be the last publicly performed autopsy before they are banned. I've seen the exhibition and felt that it was done very well, but I'm not sure ill be attending the autopsy with as much haste. Macabre voyeurism or lay man intrigue? Its being rumored that is may also be televised on channel 4
posted by monkeyJuice at 11:12 AM PST - 15 comments

Before there were blogs, before there was the Web, there were zines. Most MeFi folk know this - right? - but it seems to be astonishing news to the Washington Post. Maybe not everybody here was part of the zine scene back in the 80s and early 90s, but I bet a lot of you were. My question: Am I just an out-of-touch curmudgeon or is it insulting to do an article like this on a "Zine Guide" (which I haven't seen - I haven't touched a zine in about five years, probably) without even mentioning the Alpha and Omega of the genre, Mike Gunderloy's Factsheet Five?
posted by soyjoy at 10:13 AM PST - 48 comments

The United States Senate's Website has been redesigned. Checking on today's Senate activities, I was pleasantly surprised to find the redesign. Poking around it is very easy to use, in comparison to other Government websites.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 9:48 AM PST - 14 comments

Seattle - Then & Now It's wider than you think. It's an old image atop a modern one of the Seattle "coastline." Javascript enables one to reveal the new image. Wow.
posted by folktrash at 9:38 AM PST - 37 comments

Can Poetry Matter? Written 11 years ago but still relevant today. Will the spectacular $100 million gift to Poetry Magazine (see below) make a difference? Or will the spark be ignited as poetic forms muscle their way in and around other mediums, as with Def Jam Poetry which will now looks like will have another season on HBO, and has now opened on Broadway; “singing poets” such as Floetry (soon to play live at SOB in NYC), Abiyah , and revivals of classic masters The Last Poets. Purists may cringe.
posted by Voyageman at 9:30 AM PST - 10 comments

Bread and Circuses The Texas Prison Museum as an odd mix of entertainment and education. If someone gives it $100 million will the prison museum unenroll from the Kroger Share Card Program and lose the value of 1% of participants' grocery purchases? A veritable treasure trove of the absurd and frightening. What's your favorite? Mine are the pavers. We could get up a collection for one from Metafilter. Who's with me?
posted by elgoose at 9:26 AM PST - 2 comments

Let your voice be heard. The Copyright Office is Taking Comments On The DMCA, starting today. You can read the law as a PDF Here. They are requesting written comments from all interested parties, including representatives of copyright owners, educational institutions, libraries and archives, scholars, researchers and members of the public, in order to elicit evidence on whether noninfringing uses of certain classes of works are, or are likely to be, adversely affected by this prohibition on the circumvention of measures that control access to copyrighted works.
posted by Blake at 6:51 AM PST - 26 comments

Here is the News. The old news, that is: the entire 3500 hour British Pathé Film Archive covering news, sport, social history and entertainment from 1896 to 1970, with low-res clips available for free, was launched today.
posted by rory at 4:45 AM PST - 15 comments

To Boggan Or Not To Boggan On A Tuesday: that is the question. Jus don't let the disrespect shown to Johnny Cash or the deliberately annoying Schwarzenegger commentary put you off this great little game - or dare get past level 6 either! [Flash required and via Bifurcated Rivets, of course.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:58 AM PST - 15 comments

James Coburn passes on...
RIP James...
posted by tomcosgrave at 2:37 AM PST - 20 comments

Secret U.S. court OKs electronic spying Big Brother much? John Ashcroft is well on his way to becoming the next J. Edgar Hoover, or worse. The government can already secretly spy on what books we're reading, thanks to the Patriot Act. Previous MeFi threads have covered the evils of Total Information Awareness and how it makes everyone a suspect. Now a "secret court" gives the government a green light to spy while the ACLU tried to figure out if there is any recourse.
posted by Dok Millennium at 2:29 AM PST - 39 comments

Collateral Damage: The Health and Environmental Costs of War on Iraq. The terror of the war on terror: "A war against Iraq could kill half a million people, warns a new report by medical experts - and most would be civilians." The report (pdf format) is from Medact, the British affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. One of the report's conclusions: "It cannot be emphasised too strongly that even a best-case scenario of a limited war of short duration, perhaps comparable to 1991, would have much greater impact on the Iraqi people and would initially kill three times the number who died on September 11."
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 12:29 AM PST - 49 comments

Cyprus was another world.

The city of Paphos might have been designed and built by a Grecian architect dreamy with the drugs called talaquin or mandragora: in marble yellow as unmixed cream, marble pink as sweetmeats, marble the green of pistuquim nuts, veined marble and grained marble, honey-colored and rose-red, the buildings climbed along the hills and frothed among the hollows. Tier after tier of overtall pillars, capitals of a profusion of carvings to make Corinthian seem ascetic, pediments lush with bas-reliefs, four-fold arches at every corner and crossing, statues so huge that they loomed over the housetops, statues so small that whole troops of them flocked and frolicked under every building's eaves, groves and gardens everywhere, fountains playing, water spouting . . .

Paphos.

Avram Davidson

He was the autodidact's autodidact; cognoscenti's cognocenti; the polymath's polymath, one who knew the minutiae of freemasonry, heraldry-any number of categories of the arcane, major and minor; front to back; top to bottom. Long before the genre Steam punk was named, he'd already defined the Other Nineteenth Century. And he wrote the most sumptuous prose.

Come step within the heirodule enclosure
posted by y2karl at 10:09 PM PST - 17 comments

An astonishing bequest of $100 million to Poetry Magazine instantly turns a 4-person literary journal into the wealthiest poetry organization on the planet. The benefactress, Ruth Lilly, has given millions to libraries and medical research labs in the midwest. But poetry has never been showered with such munificence until now. What will this donation achieve beyond ensuring the existence of the journal into perpetuity?
posted by dougb at 8:57 PM PST - 48 comments

The Campbell's Chunky Soup Curse strikes again. Well, as sports prognostications go, it's no sillier than the Sports Illustrated Jinx.
yes, via fark, but I dressed it up.
posted by yhbc at 7:32 PM PST - 11 comments

The JetSet Society What if the passengers on any given plane actually lived there? One guy's musings, with sections on the Economy, Love and Death, and of course, Religion.
posted by amberglow at 6:40 PM PST - 2 comments

Tropical America intriguing Flash game about forgotten histories of the Americas, inspired by the works of David Alfaro Siqueiros.
posted by none at 4:27 PM PST - 2 comments

At last, someone has created an on-line petition that in its own way, though user participation has proved its own point. I especially think that because Bill Gates AND Elvis Presley have both signed it, gives the whole exercise immediate merit. Has an on-line petition ever succeeded at anything?
posted by Smooth at 4:26 PM PST - 15 comments

Homeland Security "Goodies". "The bill the president supported was 35 pages long. The bill that I've been asked to vote on on Monday or Tuesday is 484 pages long, filled with special-interest legislation, loaded up by the House Republicans in the last few days," Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) The most egregious, Democrats say, is language to protect pharmaceutical companies from lawsuits over the vaccines they create and their side effects, including wiping out lawsuits already in court.
posted by Espoo2 at 3:56 PM PST - 39 comments

Am I the only one finding this URL odd, considering the content: But for those of you interested in more devilish Jakob fun, check out use.it.or.lose.it
posted by TNLNYC at 3:14 PM PST - 16 comments

Al Gore Tells All! Okay, maybe not all, but he does give his first extended interview since the 2000 election to Liza Mundy of the Washington Post. Mundy discussed the interview further in a live forum earlier today. Required reading for political junkies. [via Tapped]
posted by boltman at 2:11 PM PST - 32 comments

Salaries of presidents at private US colleges and universities. The Chronicle of Higher Education releases results of country-wide survey (complete database available only with subscription). The salaries and benefits of presidents at public universities from previous report.
posted by shoos at 11:37 AM PST - 20 comments

John Pound. Illustrator for over 400 Garbage Pail Kids, Meanie Babies, Silly CDs, Trashcan Trolls, and Wacky Packages. Find your Garbage Pail Kid name, then find your card in this gallery (Hopefully, before the Geocities site is overloaded. And it also shares a peculiar injoke MeFi address).
posted by Stan Chin at 9:09 AM PST - 21 comments

Please address me as Reverend Carlos from now on. Thank you. For I have been ordained a Minister, in two minutes flat, by the Universal Life Church and possess the official document to prove it. Tomorrow I'll be starting my own religion - your contributions and suggestions for a good name for my Church are most welcome. [Sacred instructions inside].
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 8:13 AM PST - 64 comments

chip glitch Robbie Floyd - seemed agape even hours after learning of his defeat Wednesday. "It was hard to believe that that type of mistake had happened," he said.
posted by specialk420 at 7:56 AM PST - 8 comments

Fans of first-person shooter games are flocking to Natural Selection (review 1, review 2), the Marines vs Aliens modification that uses the engine of Half-Life. It is a stunning game and focuses greatly on cooperation with your team (it currently is only playable through network). The designers are still working out balancing the strengths and abilities between human and xenomorph but the anxiety of trying to defend the marine base while the mammoth-sized aliens are battering the door down is a delight to all of us who always wanted to be like Drake, Vasquez and Hicks (and Hudson). Download it here (reg req'd) and find games to join over at Gamespy (their Arcade download makes it super-easy). Note: you do need to have a retail version of Half-Life to play the game.
posted by ao4047 at 7:36 AM PST - 33 comments

Pre-order your Ginger today! Amazon scores exclusive selling rights, apparently.
posted by adamms222 at 6:48 AM PST - 70 comments

Pentagon readies microwave bomb for Baghdad There go the blogs in Iraq! Might be worthwhile going to war just to test this new toy, says one cynic, the poster of this link.
posted by Postroad at 6:37 AM PST - 20 comments

Today, the music critics at pitchfork.com posted the first half of their "Top 100 Albums of the 1980s" feature.
posted by Pinwheel at 6:36 AM PST - 51 comments

Ryoan-ji (Temple of the Peaceful Dragon) is possibly the best known of all rock gardens. The entire design consists of fifteen rocks arranged in a large bed of raked gravel, and on the outskirts there are many benches so that visitors may contemplate its meaning and find inner peace. Ryoan-ji inspired the design of the very first mini-zen garden, according to the self-proclaimed inventor, who also pays homage to Ryoan-ji with beautiful photographs. For those who might like to try making their own source of inner peace and harmony, not to mention taking up that awkward space on their coffee table, check out the unabashedly exuberant version by Crafty Chica, who always celebrates her Mexican-American roots with color and verve and quirky charm.
posted by iconomy at 5:11 AM PST - 9 comments

Stanford Web Credibility “Our goal is to understand what leads people to believe what they find on the Web. We hope this knowledge will enhance Web site design and promote future research on Web credibility.” A project of the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, who offer ten guidelines for a web site’s credibility.
posted by raaka at 4:41 AM PST - 12 comments

Kunstbar is funny, cultured and very well executed. [Flash]
posted by Pretty_Generic at 3:47 AM PST - 23 comments

I've never had a cup of coffee in my life. Can't stand the smell. However, if I were able to watch Reverend Billy's Starbucks Spat Theatre I'd be living there 24/7. Has anyone witnessed one of these performances? [via an email i got from bud]
posted by dobbs at 8:56 PM PST - 15 comments

Our Next Contestant In "The Great Internet Mooch-O-Rama". Little Jackie is sad. Why is she sad? Because people have been mean to her. Why have they been mean to her? Because they don't understand the financial plight which has driven her to spam Usenet groups in a desperate plea to...well, to be slightly more comfortable than she already is. [more]
posted by tpoh.org at 1:12 PM PST - 37 comments

Journalist Bill Wyman threatened with legal action for having same name as Rolling Stones member. Via Google News.
posted by stevenf at 1:08 PM PST - 38 comments

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
posted by Beholder at 1:07 PM PST - 29 comments

The Commander in Chief commanding. But while Mr. Bush was waiting for the military, at his direction, the CIA led by George Tenet, was already on the ground buying Afghan warlords. Bob Woodward, reveals this an other behind the scenes activity in the Bush's Cabinet just after 9/11.
posted by hockeyman at 1:06 PM PST - 9 comments

Pssst... Wanna see some hardcore little muffin movies [main link] by Amy Winfrey? Still interested? Log in here to watch her equally excellent Big Bunny films too. [Username and password: mefimefi; Flash required; Bunny films supposedly not suitable for anyone under the age of 13 ]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 11:53 AM PST - 21 comments

The Apothecary's Drawer is the "play page" of writer and science journalist Ray Girvan. Here you'll find the Web equivalent of stuffed alligators, brass astrolabes and jars of leeches: an eclectic choice of links to scientific and artistic sites worldwide. Give it a try.
posted by Morphic at 10:49 AM PST - 6 comments

Present day Thomas Edison strikes again. More fine stuff from the guy who brought you the Segway HT. Dean Kamen, and his fine folks at DekaResearch, appear to have invented a device which promises to save countless lives across the globe, power villages, and runs on water. What's next? The perpetual motion machine?
posted by IndigoSkye at 9:37 AM PST - 55 comments

God of the Month Club - unsure of your belief system yet yearn for some spirituality? Why limit yourself to one - sample a different God or Goddess every month. Learn about the belief and worship systems surrounding White Buffalo Woman, the Horned God, Green Men, Morpheus, Hecate, Vulcan, Freya or the ever-popular Venus, just to name a few.
posted by madamjujujive at 6:54 AM PST - 22 comments

Is Bottled Beer Taking Over The World? This Oxford-based search machine has got to be the most international and complete on the web. But only a few years ago, in most styles of beer, it was considered a poor alternative to draught and cask-conditioned ales. Now it looks like globalization and the boho culture are bringing the bottle (and the can) back. Or perhaps there's not that much of a difference? It's only beer, after all. [Sunday flash supplement: Al Yankovic's beer song and something called "Titties and Beer".]
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 4:47 AM PST - 30 comments

The Swastika, Swastika links, and a complete index.
posted by hama7 at 2:33 AM PST - 64 comments

Aspects of the Victorian Book is a Sunday morning kind of site, a relaxed but vivid tour of 19th century British publishing that explores production techniques such as lithography, binding and illustration, and looks at the printed works of the period (including forms such as the inexpensive "Yellowbacks" and their cousins, the usually lurid "Penny Dreadfuls").
posted by taz at 1:16 AM PST - 6 comments

AnarchistParenting.com As any parent knows, kids are heavily into anarchy. It seems that some parents are, too. Personally, I like to keep my anarchy where it belongs: fairytales (which are also the only places it works.)
posted by agentfresh at 12:11 AM PST - 38 comments

They're back--and promise to as brighter or brighter than last year:
NASA scientists' predictions for the 2002 Leonid meteor storm.

Such meteor storms rarely happen in consecutive years, but 2001 and 2002 are exceptions. Experts have just released their predictions: Depending on where you live (Europe and the Americas are favored) Leonid meteor rates in 2002 should equal or exceed 2001 levels.

That's the good news. The bad news is that the Moon will be full when the storm begins on Nov. 19th. Glaring moonlight will completely overwhelm many faint shooting stars. Indeed, I often hear that the Moon is going to "ruin the show."

We shall see.
posted by y2karl at 11:35 PM PST - 22 comments

Artwork by Natalie Merchant. [Really nice site also.]
posted by JohnR at 9:49 PM PST - 21 comments

This Is a Headline For an Essay About Meta (NY Times Magazine). A multi-aspect discussion of our favorite prefix, with a few appropriately cheeky observations. "The more high-minded it is, apparently, the easier it is for meta to annoy."
posted by werty at 9:20 PM PST - 26 comments

Yale Grad Students Expose Their University's Connection to Slavery A furor has developed at Yale University over a report indicting Yale funders and alumni from the 17th to 19th centuries for owning slaves or supporting the institution of slavery. The authors of the report even show that nine out of ten residential colleges at Yale are named after known slaveowners or pro-slavery advocates. The university points out that the report was union-funded, accusing the union of trying to make Yale look bad during labor negotiations. Yes, but does that make it any less true?
posted by jonp72 at 3:46 PM PST - 26 comments

Peace protest really takes off. I live in West Marin, where some people take their peace protests fairly seriously, and this has been the topic of conversation pretty much in every little town that the Point Reyes Light covers since Thursday's issue of the paper came out. I can just see the White House staff and Dubya's dad when they get a load of this. "See, those people in Marin County are all nuts, just like John Walker Lindh!"
posted by Lynsey at 3:19 PM PST - 19 comments

Venda Girls' Initiation Schools is a fascinating collection of material from the observation of the Initiation of Venda girls in South Africa in the 1950's by ethnomusicologist John Blacking. Included are songs, virtual divination dice, video, and mostly collected descriptions and local interpretations of the various stages and rituals of the schools with a primary emphasis on music in this context. Quite a bit here for a mostly linear navigation architecture, but it's the results of some very interesting work available on the web just the same.
posted by mblandi at 2:54 PM PST - 1 comments

Kings Quest 9, Leisure Suit Larry 8, and Space Quest 7. Sierra's legendary Adventure Gaming francises are stuck in vaporware purgatory. No new Larry according to Al Lowe, but KS9 goes on developed by fans without Roberta Williams, and Scott Murphy's (of The Two Guys from Andromeda) attempt at SQ7 got cancelled. No word from Jane Jenson on a new Gabriel Knight, Police Quest still lives on, although no longer in adventure format. Of course what I was REALLY researching for was the possiblity of a sequel to The Adventures of Willy Beamish. Oh well, at least you can still rock out to all the old Sierra Tunes. Overall, not a bad legacy for a company whose first adventure game was Softporn.
posted by Stan Chin at 2:02 PM PST - 31 comments

Forgive being a day late on the Friday Flash tradition, but WHAT THE HELL? (.swf link) Link via Tom Tomorrow.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 12:12 PM PST - 42 comments

Indecent proposal? "People usually find love and marriage in the traditional way. You meet, fall in love and tie the knot...What if there's a better way? MARRIED BY AMERICA (tentative title) is a groundbreaking reality-based show that invites the viewing audience to be your personal matchmaker." How else would you expect beautiful people to meet?
posted by boost ventilator at 12:07 PM PST - 7 comments

But...But Wallace Stevens Sounds So...English! Here's an extraordinary wealth of poets' voices from The Factory School Digital Audio Archive. Natural curiosity, of course, kicks in with the prosaic question of what your favourite poets sound like. Some are unexpectedly pompous; others are a bit Beverly Hillbillies; a few are steeped in real gravitas. But why does reading a particular poet, in years and years of silence, make one suppose he or she hasn't a living voice like the rest of us? Wallace Stevens and Anne Sexton, for instance, surprised me immensely... [Via wood's lot; requiring Real; a few links broken.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 11:26 AM PST - 17 comments

'Literature of fact' The high wall which seperates fact and fiction has a small door in it through which people can step. A piece which discusses how someone writing a supposed eyewitness account of an event always tends to fictionalise, even unconciously, in order to make the subject interesting, the idea being that just because a book is in that section, it might not actually be completely non-fiction.
posted by feelinglistless at 8:50 AM PST - 12 comments

Jim Romenesko gets a facelift. So far, the feedback for the site's new look has been overwhelmingly negative. Blech, says one AP reporter. It will get better, says a New York Post columnist. What say you?
posted by Ljubljana at 8:40 AM PST - 24 comments

Letters from kids to Einstein - NYT article. I love the simple outlook kids have. The few replies from Einstein included seem to have the same simple flavor. We could use more Einsteins, not just brain but conscience.
posted by yoga at 7:52 AM PST - 9 comments

GeoNative. Placenames in minority and indigenous languages.
posted by plep at 7:13 AM PST - 7 comments

Biological Incident Even the food industry is concerned when medicinally-modified crops spread their genes to food crops. How can accidental or intentional contamination be stopped? Is even the USDA's power to quarantine and destroy enough?
posted by kablam at 7:04 AM PST - 2 comments

criteria for optimal web design. i found this site very useful, if you're into web design and development; although it seems focused to the beginner (because of the Q&A layout), it has very useful information
posted by trismegisto at 6:38 AM PST - 12 comments

Rachel: "Look, she is breastfeeding. Look!" [Phoebe was pummelled by Wizard_cev]
"These images were recorded by the performers during our visit to the "Hulk" server. Note the yellow text at the top of the screen shots which are dialogue from the performance. The blue speakers bubbles represent our characters typing their lines. The other gamers depicted are constantly killing us. Scroll to the right to view additional images."
Conceptual artist Joseph DeLappe and his mates hybridize The Ultimate Shoot-'em-Up with the Acme of Sit-Com: now the teen boys and the teen girls can play together!
posted by dash_slot- at 4:10 AM PST - 21 comments

Goethe's Werther exclaims "Ossian has, in heart, supplanted Homer" (more at ex-classics)
Napoleon carried a copy of Ossian with him and even commissioned a painting by Ingres. Ossian, son of Fingal, was a Gaelic Bard from the 3rd century A.D. and the author of an epic text discovered and translated in the 18th century by one James Macpherson. His works enthralled the artistic elite. Schubert set them to music. Goethe assisted in the German translation. Others, including Samuel Johnson were more skeptical and, in the end, were proven right - Ossian was a (well-constructed) hoax.
posted by Winterfell at 2:31 AM PST - 11 comments

Movie piracy 'like terrorism' The drive to protect movie copyright needed to be "as concentrated an international event as the war on terrorism", according to Star Wars producer Rick McCallum.
posted by helloboys at 12:59 AM PST - 32 comments

Secret Santa. Previously mentioned here, a year ago. "Got your own Web site? Got an Amazon wishlist? If the answer to both of these is yes, and you like the idea of giving and receiving, you should definitely sign up." Well, it's that time of year again.
posted by crunchland at 9:07 PM PST - 14 comments

Gasp! The mask comes off.
posted by Espoo2 at 6:02 PM PST - 77 comments

Before there was McSweeney's... Phyllis Johnson published 10 issues of Aspen, a multimedia magazine in a box to which the USPS denied second-class mail rates. After a few issues that stayed close to the ski resort in terms of theme, the magazine began bringing in guest editors and addressing cutting edge art and media, in New York, Britain, Asia, and the minds of cultural critics and psychedlic drug users. Andy Warhol participated in Issue 3 and the Fluxus movement dominated Issue 8. There were 10 issues in all, the first 9 of which are featured in this new web adaptation at Ubuweb. At the risk of only posting whenever Andrew Stafford unveils another cool web-native multimedia art project, I thought a lot of Metafiltrates would appreciate this interpretation of Aspen Magazine
posted by xian at 4:56 PM PST - 11 comments

Real X-rated movies based on another movie title . And you thought you came up with "Inrearendence Day" yourself.
posted by tweebiscuit at 3:36 PM PST - 37 comments

1901 Back on it's feet again... At last it's the 1901 show!(the date not the time) and the UK Public Record Office 1901 Census is up and testing again after having crashed due to overdemand earlier in theyear. And it works! I've discovered my great grandfather was a wheelwright and that his eldest son was a labourer at the gas works (I saw my first naked girlfriend in a bedroom in the shadow of that very gasworks!) and that I had a great great Uncle Percy!
posted by terrymiles at 3:27 PM PST - 4 comments

In the late 18th or early 19th century a group of runaway slaves and serfs fled from Kentucky into the Ohio Territory, where they inter-married with Natives and formed a tribe - red, white & black - called the Ben Ishmael tribe. The Ishmaels (who seem to have been Islamically inclined) followed an annual nomadic route through the territory, hunting & fishing, and finding work as tinkers and minstrels. They were polygamists, and drank no alcohol. Every winter they returned to their original settlement, where a village had grown.

But eventually the US Govt. opened the Territory to settlement, and the ~official~ pioneers arrived. Around the Ishmael village a town began to spring up, called Cincinnati. Soon it was a big city. But Ishmael village was still there, engulfed & surrounded by "civilization." Now it was a ~slum~.

Maroons, Ramapaughs, Jackson Whites, the Moors of Delaware, Melungeons, the Ben Ishmaels--hat tip to Footnotes of History on that last--Red Bones, Brass Ankles, Turks, Lumbees, Croatans and other lost tribes and rebel slave communities.

The questions raised are what is race, tribe and family ...among others.

Included by extension are Hakim Bey, The Moorish Orthodox Church, various tribes of Black Indians, Jukes, Kallikaks, Margaret Sanger, The Bell Curve and Heather Locklear. (Step within the tent for the latter's interpetive dance)
posted by y2karl at 3:27 PM PST - 38 comments

PubScience Shut Down "Having persuaded the Energy Department to pull the plug on PubScience, a Web site that offered free access to scientific and technical articles, commercial publishers are taking aim at government-funded information services offering free legal and agricultural data."
posted by frykitty at 2:59 PM PST - 35 comments

Art from physics: it's a groovy gas. It's transonic flight. It's a pi-muon death cycle. It's a dark matter detector. It's a Super-Kamiokande with 9000 neutrino eyes. Dream on!
posted by Morphic at 1:44 PM PST - 6 comments

Sa k a prifé? With lists of Louisianan Creole grammar and vocabulary and a few real audio files, you'll be navigating your pirogue through the swamps in no time, or, at least, ordering correctly at your favorite Cajun restaurant.
posted by Katemonkey at 1:33 PM PST - 9 comments

Amazing Pencil Lead Sculptor Dante Ghetti carves intricate, tiny sculptures out of the lead of draftsman's pencils, using the pencil stub as the mount for the finished piece; amazing. I realize this post doesn't offer much in the way of vigorous debate ("I like tiny sculptures" "They suck. You suck!"), but what can I say, I think it's pretty damn cool. (from BoingBoing)
posted by jonson at 1:25 PM PST - 21 comments

Coolest sun picture ever - sunspot closeup... The Swedish Institute for Solar Physics web site has some other cool pictures. (As an aside, I wonder what equivalent shutter speed, aperture, and focal length would be?)
posted by notsnot at 1:21 PM PST - 15 comments

Diana Hsieh, a blogger in California, is being sued for suggesting that a link exists between Scientology and Front Sight, the largest firearms training facility in the country. Now another site is being threatened with legal action by Front Sight, because of negative comments posted by users on their message board. Light of Reason has some well-written entries about these events (search for "scientology" on their page).
posted by TreeHugger at 12:57 PM PST - 8 comments

It's not Just a Label, it's a Lifestyle. I really dig the Flash site for Sean "P Puffy Diddy Daddy" Comb's new clothing line. It's a fancy and somewhat restrained use of Flash, but with an UCR (unintentional comedy rating) through the roof. Choose your own sountrack while you explore the catwalk shots. "It's how you freak it baby," indeed.
posted by sixfoot6 at 12:03 PM PST - 20 comments

Propaganda - Disinformation: The Masters of the Lie What if the U.S. projected a holographic image of Allah floating over Baghdad urging the Iraqi people and Army to rise up against Saddam, a senior Air Force officer asked in 1990? The hubris and racism of American Psyops, who knows what the military is plotting now?
posted by letterneversent at 11:38 AM PST - 60 comments

The History of the Shuar. The Jivaro are one of the few native clans in South America who successfully revolted against the Spanish Conquest, but they're more famous for their shrunken heads- this site not only has the history, but also a pretty fascinating gallery. Of course, if you're just interested in the shrunken heads, Doc Bwana's Museum of Shrunken Heads will most certainly meet your shrunken-head viewing needs. (Probably safe for work, but I wouldn't read it while eating lunch.)
posted by headspace at 11:22 AM PST - 5 comments

Who is Hans Blix? A 74 year old Swede with a long career in international law, he was recently featured as Time person of the week and is, obviously, something of a key figure in U.S.-U.N.-Iraq interaction. You can also examine his brief U.N. Bio (linked in title), a BBC Profile for an introduction, and a number of his past speeches and remarks (link to another CV on that site, too). Is he the man for the inspection job, or a a man who has and will again be fooled by Hussein?
posted by namespan at 11:20 AM PST - 5 comments

The similarity of the painting to Mickey Mouse is so astounding that the Disney concern could even lose its world-wide copyright licence. Art historian Eduard Mahlknecht believes the similarity to Mickey is pure coincidence. He told Austrian daily Krone "St Christopher was often depicted surrounded by various animals and sea-life, and in this case something that resembles Mickey Mouse.
posted by quonsar at 11:10 AM PST - 26 comments

Amazing and hilarious found footage of LSD being tested on British troops (mpg) "The men began to relax and to giggle...One hour and ten minutes after taking the drug, with one man climbing a tree to feed the birds, the troop commander gave up...He himself then relapsed into laughter. [via the great New World Disorder]
posted by mediareport at 11:07 AM PST - 50 comments

Are newspapers becoming opinionpapers? Interesting article on the current preponderance of op-ed materials in newspapers. The papers are cutting back on news, especially international news, in favour of news lite or opinion columns. Or what's styled as opinion but is really pieces by "columnists" who are totally self-referential and whose idea of research is interviewing their own friends. The article is very Can-Con (high Canadian content) but it'll be interesting if Me-Fiers from other countries weigh in with data/observations about their own media. Canadian media doesn't probably doesn't stand alone in this trend.
posted by orange swan at 10:31 AM PST - 19 comments

Moors murderer Myra Hindley is dead The serial killer was serving her 36th year behind bars at nearby Highpoint Prison, Suffolk. Hindley and Ian Brady, 64, were jailed for life in 1966 for the sexual abuse, torture and murder of three youngsters. In 1987 they confessed to two more child killings.
posted by tomcosgrave at 10:00 AM PST - 13 comments

South African mining giant begins providing triple coctail for HIV treatment. Something optimistic for a Friday post: AngloGold along with DeBeers is offering its employees HIV Triple cocktail treatment for free. With almost 30% of some of these companies' workforce affected with the HIV virus, is this an example of merging corporate and social interests or is this a sign of honest corporate citizenship?
posted by phyrewerx at 9:43 AM PST - 18 comments

The Digital Michelangelo Project A team of 30 faculty, staff, and students from Stanford University and the University of Washington spent the 1998-99 academic year in Italy scanning the sculptures and architecture of Michelangelo. They are now working on building 3D models from the data. (more inside)
posted by snez at 9:31 AM PST - 6 comments

Collective Memory. A collection of sites which are creating collective memory on the web. A personal favourite is TimeSlips, a storytelling project with people with Alzheimer's.
posted by plep at 4:43 AM PST - 5 comments

The Voyage of Terry Waite's Clogs I first saw this a couple of days ago and the more I think about the logistics and reasoning behind this the stranger it becomes. I like the fact this probably wouldn't happen in any other country than England, but all the same you do have to wonder why it happened. For those non-Brits Terry Waite was the Archbishop of Canterbury's envoy to Beirut in the 80s and was held hostage for 5 years by a militant islamic group.
posted by jontyjago at 3:47 AM PST - 10 comments

Amateurs, Mere Amateurs still make significant contributions to astronomy [The Canadian Laval group's website is typically enthusiastic] and may yet make a difference in other sciences, according to Freeman J. Dyson in this review of Steve Guttenberg lookalike Timothy Ferris's latest book [Here's an enticing glimpse of his home-made Rocky Hill Observatory.]. I wonder just how much easier it's becoming for amateurs to contribute to specific areas of scientific knowledge? Or is it, in fact, increasingly more difficult? And would it still be strictly limited to the observational sciences?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:57 AM PST - 8 comments

Shy Kids. "Each realistic Shy Kid (UK time out dolls) is lovingly hand-crafted and each one is different. Standing around 29"-34" approximately the same height as a two year old, your Shy Kid can be leant against a wall, couch or anywhere you desire."
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 12:11 AM PST - 39 comments

U.S. states ranked according to smartness. The ranking was based on such factors as average high school dropout rate, how much teachers earn and how frequently they are attacked, etc. There are probably some other relevant factors they might have included, but didn't. What criteria do you think would be most appropriate for measuring a state's relative intelligence?
posted by shoos at 10:53 PM PST - 47 comments

Pocket Calclulator Show looks like it started as a sideline of a shortwave radio show about "products from the electronics revolution of the 1970s and 1980s", but its of primary interest for their collections of classic nerd toys. Thrill to the memories in the Digital Watch Museum, the Walkman Museum, the Boombox Museum, and especially the collection of Magical Gadgets, which includes a not-so-useful-anymore cb radio to 8-track adapter, an incredible casio talking clock/calculator (listen to it talk!), and, of course, that great pioneer of personal sound technology - the Bone Fone (it vibrates, you know!)
posted by yhbc at 8:46 PM PST - 7 comments

Rock paper scissors: The world championship: This year, for the first time, the annual Rock Paper Scissors international championship is open to the general public (as opposed to just professional RPS players. I had no idea there even were professional RPS players). Some interesting facts on RPS, including the answer to the age-old question: Does Rock crush Scissors or is Scissors dulled by Rock?
posted by Badmichelle at 8:34 PM PST - 26 comments

School district memo says seasonal festivities should not be labelled Christmas Merry annual winter celebration of the birth of a gender non-specific child who may or may not have existed in fact, whose mother was reputedly a virgin at the time of his or her birth and whose presumed father was widely regarded as one of many possible deities. And Happy New Year.
posted by islander at 8:14 PM PST - 46 comments

Slippery football players. Probably not a new way to avoid getting tackled, but an interesting use of technology nonetheless. It certainly didn't help them win. And who's gonna wash those uniforms, hmm? [OK, I haven't posted in a while, so forgive the formatting gaffes...]
posted by datawrangler at 1:34 PM PST - 10 comments

Is Gore Vidal nuts, or he is he just funnin' us? In his New York Observer column, Ron Rosenbaum takes a look at Vidal's 9/11 conspiracy theory, and proceeds to take it apart. Where's Norman Mailer when you need him?
posted by Man-Thing at 1:33 PM PST - 18 comments

It’s a big bad world out there, and some entrepreneurs are investing in your survival. Brick-and-mortar or online, stores sell everything from gas masks for kids to MRE’s. But some people just like to collect hazmat suits, and some want to make gas masks more aesthetically pleasing. I think I want to go to this fashion show.
posted by readymade at 1:05 PM PST - 11 comments

Lord Timothy Dexter (1747-1806) was one of the most colorful characters of early American history, described here as, among other things, an "Eccentric 18th Century Merchant - Investor with a Midas Touch - Impresario - Patron of the Arts, founding the 'World Mouserum of Grate Wonder and Gret Caricters' - progressive 'Libperel' - Self Appointed 'Consler of Trouth.'" This site includes a complete transcription of Dexter's punctuation-free magnum opus, A Pickle for the Knowing Ones featuring his famous Addenda.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:10 PM PST - 12 comments

Scientists do have senses of humor. Also, funny science cartoons appeal to many of us, like this one or this . Whacky patents also delight the mind and tickle the funny bone. Absurd humor makes us wonder what the heck is going on. And what the hell is Chindogu really all about? What are you favorite science sites with humor or absurdity?
posted by Morphic at 10:22 AM PST - 14 comments

The Teddy bear turns 100 this weekend and is arguably one of the most popular toys of all time. They're cute, they're cuddly, and they're comforting. They've inspired songs and stories. They've even helped Hell's Angels show their softer side with annual toy runs.
posted by fredosan at 10:02 AM PST - 5 comments

Fresh in from the 'perfect timing' department - not even 24 hours after the fire brigade goes on strike, the south west of England goes on flood watch and a Fireworks factory explodes. For some added fun, the army are banned from driving the modern fire engines and instead drive famous 'green godesses'.

Even ignoring the lack of cover (644 GGs replacing 4,311 normal engines) and lack of equipment the army fire teams have, should emergency services be able to strike?
posted by twine42 at 9:43 AM PST - 27 comments

last year i saw the land rover, yesterday i saw the boot bus. while it looks to be in support of a small commercial site, the bus is a 'grassroots' adventure to document and share information gathered during their endless journeys in a VW bus. feel free to share your favorite 'common-man' travel resource.
posted by donkeysuck at 9:11 AM PST - 3 comments

One Peep to rule them all, and in the darkness eat them. It's not Friday, but any day is a good day to see "Lord of The Rings" executed with marshmallow peeps. There's also a "PeepHenge" on the site...mmmmmmm, PeepHenge. (God bless Bifurcated Rivets.)
posted by serafinapekkala at 8:31 AM PST - 14 comments

Looking for those perfect noise-reducing, mini-headphones What do Wyclef Jean, Wilco, Jethro Tull, Blues Traveler, Everclear, Nikka Costa, Weezer, Pete Yorn, Tricky, Sum 41, Herbie Hancock, Barenaked Ladies, Oasis, and Phantom Planet share ? Apparently the love for Shures E-Series mini-headphones, briefly mentioned in todays NYT (reg req). The professional musician's alternative to the effete Bang and Olufsen and the monster Bose. Can personally no longer live without them.
posted by Voyageman at 8:13 AM PST - 59 comments

The true story of Ex Parte Quirin. The case that is cited to support the Bush administration's "Terrorism Tribunals" has gotten little scrutiny. Everyone knows that the Nazi saboteurs were part of a plot cracked by FBI agents and justly imprisoned and executed, and everyone may be wrong. Michael Belknap, a professor at California Western School of Law, aptly referred to Quirin as "a putrid pedigree" in a recent law review article. Kenneth Royall, a former military counsel in the case, described it as a lynching. And John P. Frank, a clerk to Hugo Black at the time of Quirin, denounced the court in his 1958 book Marble Palace for acting like a "butcher shop."
posted by norm at 7:39 AM PST - 5 comments

I know its the Guardian but does the US media really show such contempt? Anyone got any examples?
posted by lerrup at 7:13 AM PST - 22 comments

International High IQ Society tests. The site gives the impression that these tests are a lot more accurate at judging intelligence (whatever that is) that most of the junk on the web. What do you think? Do we have any 'universal geniuses'?
posted by Pretty_Generic at 5:45 AM PST - 109 comments

HOW TO GET RICH, by Jared Diamond.
[via Boing-Boing] An academic justification for the pluralist society? Clay Shirley (guest blogger @ B-B) makes the point: "In a finding that everyone worried about having a single global IP regime should read, Diamond concludes that innovation requires having several different legal, cultural and technological regimes at the same time, in competition with one another. Columbus had to go to several countries before he got funding for the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. Had there been a pan-European agreement on naval expeditions, he would never have left port." [More inside]
*Warning*: 12, easily read pages in link. I hope this thread is a grower...
posted by dash_slot- at 5:22 AM PST - 30 comments

You Are a Suspect A growing awareness by those on the right and on the left that our rights are now seriously in threat of total erosion in light of new Petnagon proposal to track all moves of citizens in giagantic data base. may require reg for NY Times.
posted by Postroad at 3:57 AM PST - 66 comments

A Bullet-Proof Mind? "Too much, and you end up with a My Lai.... Too little, and your soldiers will be defeated and killed." A balanced look at the reasons for, and consequences of, the reflex-based killing techniques in which U.S. Special Forces soldiers are trained. (NYTimes Magazine).
posted by josh at 9:35 PM PST - 33 comments

The Homeland Security Bill. It has passed the House, on to the Senate where it is believed that it will pass. The President will sign it. Yet the text of H.R.5710 is unavailable to the American public.
posted by four panels at 7:48 PM PST - 22 comments

Ten days ago in Yemen, a car carrying several men, including an American citizen, was blown up. They were deliberately killed by a missile fired from a CIA drone aircraft. The American is from Lackawanna, New York, about nine miles away from my house. When I first heard about this bombing, I thought of Orlando Letelier. Where are the lines now separating law enforcement and war, targeted strikes and murder?
posted by skoosh at 5:23 PM PST - 38 comments

Actors hired to heckle US troops in mock Arab town The military is taking pains to prepare naive recruits for the reality of their dirty work, and at the same time diminish the regard for native populations. Oh, people whining about being attacked is so routine. Don't they know we're trying to liberate them?
posted by letterneversent at 5:15 PM PST - 44 comments

Drudge Blows Past a Billion, Nobody Cares If we are to believe his counter, Matt Drudge cleared over a billion page views so far this year, a milestone, certainly, amid a collective yawn to those in the press or those on the web. How could this be? How could one man be apparently so popular while going so unrecognized? Is the Drudge Report the web's dirtiest little secret? And for those of you who are part of the billion, why on Earth do you go there? He doesn't write anything, really. And when he does it's not always true. And the final question is, why hasn't any of the major news services borrowed from his format or style, he's just a guy in a dumb hat after all. Isn't he?
posted by tsarfan at 4:44 PM PST - 38 comments

Hate crime police raid 150 homes 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'
posted by kablam at 4:41 PM PST - 14 comments

"Those are the sorts of people that I wanted to kill." The chief suspect in the Bali bombing joked and laughed with Indonesia's police chief last night during a bizarre public interrogation in which he told of his "delight" at the carnage caused by his crime.
posted by tpoh.org at 4:40 PM PST - 30 comments

Did the election of Bush create an environment that would allow a violent misogynist like Eminem to become famous? Or, does Eminem's popularity reflect how easily we are blinded by nice wrapping? This article looks into what this kind of popularity could indicate to us about our present social conditions.
posted by Raichle at 3:10 PM PST - 75 comments

Britain's Pubs to Entertain Longer Hours? Tony Blair Says Yes! In an effort to curb binge drinking and overall ruddy behavior after closing times at 11pm, Parliament has it before them to allow for extended bar hours, rather than fixed open and closing hours. Communities would have some sort of say in which pubs would be able to have which hours, probably based on distance to residential areas, etc. CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale was one of the formal organizations backing this plan. Open All Hours? is a group opposing the plan. Check it out!
posted by djspicerack at 2:31 PM PST - 32 comments

Cervantes no not THAT Cervantes silly, THIS Cervantes wrote the first half of Don Quixote in 1605. The popularity of the world's first novel was so great that an impostor book was published chronicling the continued misadventures of the Don Quixote and Sancho, so scandalously in fact that Cervantes himself had to write a second half ten years later which ends (SPOILER) with the death of Alonso Quixano and the end of all further tales. Now it seems some 400 years later its happening to our young Harry Potter!
posted by Pollomacho at 2:15 PM PST - 27 comments

Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Matter If You Are Fluent In Arabic, Despite Our Serious Need For That.... This story hits very close to home. This is a friend from college (Emory) who was just thrown out of the army when they discovered he had a boyfriend. Particularly ridiculous is the fact that he had just achieved fluency in Arabic and would have been (among other gay soldiers) extremely useful to the cause at present. Apparently, heterosexual couples discovered coupled in their rooms at the same inspection were given 10 days restriction and extra duty.
posted by adrober at 1:47 PM PST - 66 comments

saddam makes it tough for reporters to work, but this two-person US team gets uncut news out of iraq daily in audio, video, and print.
posted by jfc at 1:11 PM PST - 4 comments

Believe who, again? "So twice a week, for US$3,000 a month, the Iraqi student says, under condition of anonymity, that he took a taxi...to a Boston-area recording studio rented by the Rendon Group, a DC-based public relations firm with close ties to the US government. His job: translate and dub spoofed Saddam Hussein speeches and tongue-in-cheek newscasts for broadcast throughout Iraq." And other machinations of the PR-industrial complex in this piece from the Asia Times (courtesy of prwatch). Not so much funny "ha-ha" as funny "Ahhhhh!!! Ahhhh!"
posted by chandy72 at 12:08 PM PST - 12 comments

Victoria Beckham aka Posh Spice is fighting a move by second division Peterborough United to register their nickname POSH as a trademark for it's club merchandise claiming that the nickname is recognised around the world as belonging to her.

The term POSH is widely believed to have originated in the time of the British Raj when P&O passenger ship tickets were marked POSH -Port Out Starboard Home - port (left-hand side) berths were mostly in the shade when travelling out (easterly) and the starboard ones when coming back. So the best and most expensive berths were POSH. Unfortunately P&O say they have never issued such tickets and none have ever been found even though many tickets do exist from the time.

But this page from the US Navy METOC site claims it originated in Boston as a label for the luggage of wealthy passengers travelling from the US to Europe to indicate which side of the ship to place the luggage to protect it from the sun.

Should you be allowed to register a word in common usage as a trademark? If posh goes what word is next.
posted by stunned at 11:08 AM PST - 32 comments

149 ways to leave your lover: Hell Hath No Fury is a collection of women's breakup letters. (A few excerpts here.) Great premise for a book, but good breakup letters are very rare. Rather than embarrass yourself when dumping your not-so-significant-other, perhaps you should just fork over $149 and have a reverse-Cyrano write one for you.
posted by ptermit at 9:59 AM PST - 10 comments

The Beast cracks your child's mind when he reads Harry Potter. Yeah, you probably have seen this site before, but with the new movie coming out soon, it's worth revisiting. Incidently, Harry Potter: Witchcraft Repackaged comes out on DVD December 1, with never before seen extra footage.
posted by zedzebedia at 9:51 AM PST - 15 comments

A Mad Parody Of The Onion Well, if this isn't Meta, I don't know what is. Certainly, we all know about The Onion (and, indeed, our consensus is that we don't post Onion links here). The fine fellows at MAD magazine have hoisted the Area Men by their own petard. I hate to say it, 'cuz I think The Onion is often quite funny, but they've got it nailed. (via Heath Row's Media Diet)
posted by briank at 8:58 AM PST - 58 comments

The male contraceptive pill is 100% effective and will be available in 2005. Will you take it? Will men stop using condoms and STDs increase as a result? Can men be trusted to take it every day?
posted by norm29 at 8:08 AM PST - 66 comments

Picasso vs The Uncanny X-Men. Charles Bock with a really long essay digs up the old dead horse of "What Is Art?" Do you stare blankly at contemporary/conceptual art and try to get what critics and curators think is so great? Was Tolstoy right that truly great art must be able to communicate to laypeople with no art training? I myself love spending afternoons at Museums, not to look at the art, but to look at people confused out of their minds.
posted by Stan Chin at 7:42 AM PST - 28 comments

Paging Andy Warhol What happens during the 16th minute after you unexpectedly become famous? Here's a follow up story on the Coal Miners trapped and then rescued last July. You know its gonna get weirder, so lets get on with the show
posted by BentPenguin at 7:25 AM PST - 9 comments

Roger Ebert salutes Buster Keaton in an article in which he says the Great Stone Face is "the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies." High praise indeed! Any other Keaton fans out there? (This is from the Chicago Sun-times--I don't believe registration is required.) And if you want to see Buster smiling--sort of--here's a picture of him with one-time movie partner Fatty Arbuckle.
posted by Man-Thing at 7:22 AM PST - 19 comments

Taking the adage "be prepared" to the next level Eric, a thirty year old electrician from Lyons, France, has made the record books for having the "most practical suit of clothing". Often dubbed "The Human Penknife" Eric has no less that 1,300 useful objects, ranging from a humble toothbrush to a soldering iron, arranged in carefully designed pouches sewn into his clothing. What won't you leave home without?
posted by lucien at 4:37 AM PST - 29 comments

Potter Pirates Fail to Copy Film on the Internet and Potter Pirates Swap and Copy Film on the Internet. C'mon Reuters, which is it?!
posted by LinemanBear at 8:29 PM PST - 25 comments

Omar Zabir's Portal. It's a DHTML/Javascript tour de force. But is it for real, or a subtle joke? (IE only, I'm afraid, but worth booting Windows for).
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 7:37 PM PST - 41 comments

State Coalition Approves Internet Sales Tax Plan Ignoring, it seems, both Bush and Clinton, the states, greedy for money in these tight times, have a source of revenue from Net sales. And this will help retail stores on pricing (they must pay taxes), but how will it impact on the Net--or will Net sales manage to skirt a tax somehow? Are you for or against taxing net sales?
posted by Postroad at 4:46 PM PST - 36 comments

Argentinian Blood Pops? The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is warning consumers about "reddish-brown spots" that were found in Lipo Brand lollipops from Argentina. "Based on available information, consuming the candy is unlikely to pose a health risk...however, consumers may wish to exercise caution by not consuming this product." I guess you should always stick with candy you know is safe to eat.
posted by boost ventilator at 4:41 PM PST - 12 comments

Mmmmm. Pancakes. Called by many names - Blintz, Palascinta, Flensjes, Pannkuchen, Po-Ping - yes, you know they're yummy, but what do you know about their history or their religious significance? For instance, Shrove Tuesday is also known as Pancake Day and for the past 53 years, women in Olney, England and Liberal, Kansas race down the streets of their towns flipping pancakes, continuing an English tradition that goes back more than 500 years. (Melbourne, Australia has a Pancake Day race, too! ) The Russian Orthodox Church celebrates Shrovetide with a type of pancake called Blini, and I think most of us know that Latkes (potato pancakes) are a traditional part of the Hanukah feast. (Although apparently there is some debate on the virtues of Latkes over Hamentashen.) On a more secular note, we've just missed the 2002 Fall Flapjack Festival, held every year in Land O'Lakes, Florida. Glenn, Michigan has an annual Pancake Festival, too (since 1938). Hey! I'm getting hungry ... somebody pass the Maple Syrup!
posted by anastasiav at 3:56 PM PST - 34 comments

First vancomycin-resistant bacteria found in Detroit. This is worrisome, as vancomycin is usually the last antibiotic of choice when fighting a bacterial infection. Bacteria are both helpful and hurtful to the human body, but the little bugs seem to evolve much more quickly than humans own immune systems. Have we seen an end to antibiotics used in the fight against bacteria? What alternatives do we have?
posted by WolfDaddy at 3:29 PM PST - 37 comments

Yes, it's another Internet-only comic strip But this one would never make it past the security guard at your local newspaper. It happens to be really, really funny, especially if you appreciate humor on the warped side. What are the other worthwhile comics that may be flying under the radar due to their "not quite ready for mainstream" content?
posted by jeremias at 3:06 PM PST - 106 comments

Darwin Country A virtual visit to Shropshire - Roman Viroconium and Ironbridge; the microscope and apothecaries' weights and measures; Wenlock Priory and Darwin on garden roses.
posted by plep at 1:56 PM PST - 8 comments

The International Dunhuang Project, developed jointly by the British Library and the National Library of China, makes thousands manuscripts and paintings from ancient caves and temples along the Silk Road viewable to the public. The artifacts were found in the Dunhuang cave in China in 1900 and dispersed to museums around the world, but now they have been brought together on the web. And if you want some appropriate music to go with it, check out Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road Project.
posted by homunculus at 1:40 PM PST - 5 comments

The Smithsonian offers an online sampling of its Collection of Aeronautic Sheet Music. From the introduction: "...widespread fascination with flight has inspired an enormous output of historical drawings, paintings, advertisements and illustrations for publications. Some of the most colorful illustrations are those which adorn sheet music. In the Bella Landauer collection, you can find illustrations that range from the bizarre to the commonplace, from the humorous to the mundane. But most are colorful and interesting."
The collection is divided into categories such as "Ballooning", "Biplanes", and "Flying Machines". I love this one from 1914, called "A Hundred Years From Now".
posted by taz at 11:02 AM PST - 9 comments

Brew your own Biodiesel! My brother just bought a new VW Jetta Turbo Diesel, and one of his reasons for picking this particular car was it's ability to run on reformulated fatty acid alkyl esters.That got me Googling, and I found this site where you can purchase your own home-brew kits. They even have demo starter kits.
posted by 40 Watt at 10:58 AM PST - 42 comments

Broadwaybox.com Share theater Discount Codes with fellow theater goers in New York. Great idea. So simple. So perfect. Everyone wins.
posted by Voyageman at 10:21 AM PST - 11 comments

Cyprus the tiny island, smaller than Connecticut, fought over for millennia, divided by war between the Greeks and Turks. Is Cyprus finally going to come to a peaceful resolution and reunification, or will it be the lynch pin for the whole EU?
posted by Pollomacho at 9:27 AM PST - 22 comments

China. Abandons Communism. Gets AIDS. May be about to lose its shirt. While everybody on the pink side of Ebenezer Scrooge is pissing and moaning about the state of America, here's one American who thinks the state of the Middle Kingdom is at least equally interesting (as in ancient Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times.")
posted by jfuller at 9:16 AM PST - 11 comments

100 Questions and Answers About Arab Americans. While researching the Middle East conflict, I happened upon this journalist's guide from the Detroit Free Press containing background on Arab-American culture, language, and religion. Many of the questions are simplistic (some might even say moronic) and the answers obvious, but I found I learned a thing or two.
posted by VelvetHellvis at 8:50 AM PST - 21 comments

Mr. Print, Meet Ms. Web; Ms. Web Meet Mr. Print... As a long-time Argentinian exile, I'm quite proud to report that, amidst (and notwithstanding) the economic chaos, my favorite daily newspaper, Clarín, is experimenting with a (free and complete) Internet edition that ambitiously attempts to combine facsimiles of the printed pages with the Web-friendly version. It even has (perhaps excessively) an estimated time for reading! What do you think? [In Spanish, but, for the purposes of the present evaluation, not important. Please click on "Ingresar".]
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 2:12 AM PST - 14 comments

Are you being served, Ma'am? Need an update on the latest twists and turns in top-rated British soap opera 'Royal Family'? It's an endless saga of hidden homosexual rape, trollops, locked boxes, yacht orgies, bungled police raids, regal amnesia, tittle-tattle, KFC, naked princesses in fur coats, and endless amounts of rocks.
posted by humuhumu at 1:09 AM PST - 43 comments

If you see only one /switch spoof this season, see this one. [quicktime movie] And decide whether you want to /switch... to Canada.
posted by condour75 at 12:04 AM PST - 71 comments

KidPub is an enchanting little website that I rediscovered after rediscovering a list of my circa-1995 bookmarks. (And it looks today almost exactly like it did then -- you can even see a bit of Siegel influence) KidPub is a place for children to post their stories, poems, etc. Most of the authors seem to be in the 9- to 12-year-old age range, and the stories have titles like "The Mystery of the Circus Clown" and "Crazy School". A cute site to remind you of the importance of reading and writing for children.
posted by oissubke at 9:19 PM PST - 9 comments

we come in peace det! det! ...you'll be glad you did. flash
posted by madamjujujive at 7:27 PM PST - 27 comments

Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit. Yeah, seems pretty faultless to me.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 5:15 PM PST - 24 comments

Karyn has been saved. Her $20k debit has been paid off thanks to her website. 18 months of buying crap at department stores with credit cards were paid off even though her web site wasn't fancy, her story wasn't all that tragic, and many found it hard to sympathize with her . so what have we learned? is this a success story? is this another fine example of the web wielding it's magic? or will this open a can of worms for the next jackass who overspends and hopes the society will pay for their ills?
posted by tsarfan at 4:26 PM PST - 77 comments

Someone set us up the bomb. The Bomb Project is a comprehensive on-line compendium of nuclear-related links, imagery and documentation. It makes accessible the declassified files and graphic documentation produced by the nuclear industry itself, providing a context for comparative study, analysis and creativity. (courtesy of Bruce Sterling's Infinite Matrix)
posted by crunchland at 4:06 PM PST - 6 comments

Diego Doval has just announced the first public alpha release of the decidedly non-vaporous PIM-like app: Spaces.

Coming quickly after the announcement of Mitch Kapor and the OSAF's plans for an MS Outlook competitor, Spaces seems to already do a lot of what Chandler has plans to do, but is ready for download and testing right now.

A very cool feature of Spaces is the integration of an RSS new aggregator right alongside the email client. News items and email messages are fundamentally the same and the app takes advantage of that. Spaces is blurring the differences between how we read news and email and it's about time!
posted by antidigerati at 3:52 PM PST - 9 comments

Here's a story that's been circulating the sports talk circuit but transcends to normal walks of life, and might brighten up your day.
posted by dig_duggler at 3:46 PM PST - 20 comments

Alien Tiles Game. Play the game, then see the scientific papers from the UK and from Rutgers University on the subject. Enjoy.
posted by Morphic at 2:42 PM PST - 11 comments

Eight hundred years ago, the Empire of Mali was the West African equivalent of Byzantium (succeeding Ghana's Rome), and its legendary founder was Sundiata. [more]
posted by languagehat at 1:54 PM PST - 9 comments

Nobody follows through on their hoaxes anymore. I'm kind of disappointed. I didn't think that this would turn out to be anything big, but I was really hoping that it would be something ridiculous. Sigh.
posted by LittleMissCranky at 1:42 PM PST - 19 comments

Abigail and Brittany Hensel are in the 6th grade and continue to defy the odds. After the initial struggle with the personal pronoun (her? their?), one is left with both curiosity and sympathy. The greater issue is how to assimilate the truly miraculous.
posted by kablam at 1:22 PM PST - 22 comments

Archaeological Collage. Neat old cityscene photographs dissolve part by part into modern shots of the same location. Slide the slider and trollies morph into cars, stoop tragedy is supplanted by stoop dalliance. This site has been my white whale: I spent many months tracking it down after losing the link, asking here, asking there, and finally getting an Answer. SPOILER: In the saddest one, going left to right, you're delighted that the grand hotel survives, until in the last 10% it yields to a parking lot. *sob* (Shockwave required)
posted by luser at 1:17 PM PST - 9 comments

Detailed collection of resources about the movement to reform the UN Security Council, including news, data and commentary.
posted by mediareport at 12:51 PM PST - 5 comments

US Soldiers' dogtags are sold on the streets of Vietnam. An American backpacker bought as many as she could find and is now trying to find their owners. Interesting story.
posted by tomplus2 at 12:21 PM PST - 6 comments

"if you like God in government, get ready for the Rapture" a word from bill moyers via drudge on the party now in control of the US government - and a word from garrison kiellor on one of its newest members complete text here. anyone else uneasy with the direction the county seems to be headed?
posted by specialk420 at 12:19 PM PST - 66 comments

Comiclopedia.

Not just your father's Comicyclopdedia .
posted by y2karl at 11:55 AM PST - 17 comments

Our Bastard(s) Somoza Speaking of brutal Nicaraguan dicatator Somoza, Harry Truman is supposed to have said "He's a bastard, but he's our bastard." Looking for a source for this quote, I discovered it's attributed to Truman, FDR, and Nixon. This is such a broad chronological range that I figured I could narrow it down by finding out when Somza lived. No such luck: according to two biography^*/histories, there were actuall three Somozas: Anastasio Somoza Garcia, who fathered Luis Somoza Debayle and Anastasio Somoza Debayle, and the Somoza dynasty that ruled Nicaragua from the mid 1930s through the late 1970s. All three of those presidents could well have made the comment. But I'm still stuck for a source...

* This link (the first history/bio) requires anyone clicking from an outside page to go through an extra "Welcome Mat" page on the first time through. Annoying, but no registration required.
posted by namespan at 10:58 AM PST - 18 comments

Did The Good Old Days Really Exist or was it just the iconography that was cute? Not to mention the cars. Or the clothes. Or the refrigerators. And the music. Or the supermarkets.... But were any of these commodities and comforts actually any good? Could we live with them today? Accomplished websites like Ephemera Now and Fifties Boulevard give the impression of an increasingly unrealistic American Dream that's still fighting against waking up. Is there - can there be - any equivalent nowadays? [First two links from today's Bifurcated Rivets.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 10:28 AM PST - 20 comments

An on-the-job feel good story. Anonymous customer gives waitresses a hefty tip. Have you ever been unexpectedly rewarded on the job, either from a customer, boss or co-worker? (link via Obscure Store)
posted by Oriole Adams at 10:23 AM PST - 17 comments

Why has Microsoft granted Saddam Hussein's son a .NET passport? A Microsoft representative would not comment on the issuance of a passport to the murderer, rapist, torturer and smuggler, but said Microsoft complies with all trade laws. Looks like it's time for Iraq to switch to Linux. Also, Yahoo is likely in violation of U.S. trade sanctions against Iraq by providing him with a free email account. You can show your support for 38-year-old Uday by emailing him at udaysaddamhussein@yahoo.com. What next? Cancel the accounts of all criminals?
posted by tapeguy at 10:09 AM PST - 11 comments

An L.A. restaurateur just won a rare 2-pound mushroom in an annual "charity truffle auction" in Santa Monica. The winner paid $35,000 for the truffle after a fierce bidding war between a New York-based restaurant owner and Gunther IV, who placed his bids through a subsidiary due to the fact that he is, in fact, a dog. The canine heir to a vast German fortune lost the auction, and the honor of placing the highest recorded bid ever for a mushroom. Go ahead, read it again. This is all, mind you, before anyone actually got their hands on the giant 'shroom.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 10:06 AM PST - 42 comments

Learning from the RIAA's mistakes?
"Seeking to protect movies from the rampant online piracy that afflicts the music industry, five major film studios plan to begin offering today rental feature films that consumers can download from a Web site for a fee." Sounds like at least a step in the right direction, but I still wonder: who watches movies on their computer anyway? Would you rather wait for your 90 minute feature film to download, or just get off your butt and go rent one? (first link is to the NYT)
posted by Gilbert at 9:42 AM PST - 25 comments

A college professor has been rebuked for sending an abusive email to an Air Force cadet. Was the professor out of line for his rant, or is "academic freedom" under attack?
posted by Durwood at 6:49 AM PST - 60 comments

Playing with Lists and Playlists: Hi, my name is Carlos and I'm a playlist junkie. They're just as much fun to read as to compile or even, if you're really desperate and have the time (or are too young, busy or sensible to have a less than encyclopedic knowledge of popular music) actually listen to. Thanks to Wood's Lot, which featured the "excellent pinko" anti-war set, I came across this intriguing, humorous and idiosyncratic collection of playlists by Scott Williams of WFMU. (Here is how to listen online.) My favourites are An Italian Lesson and Pleasant Here At The Lake. I wonder what he has planned for tonight (or tomorrow night?), as Monday is the day of his weekly show...
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 10:43 PM PST - 14 comments

Cheer up, things could be worse. War hysteria and Republican triumphalism got you down? Contemplate the array of potential extinction-level events that Nature has seen fit to confront us with, no matter what we monkeys choose to do. What do you think? Are we approaching another evolutionary bottleneck?
posted by adamgreenfield at 8:17 PM PST - 36 comments

Ghostzilla "is a browser for surfing the Web when you don't want anyone to physically see what you are doing." Bang goes productivity! [Also on /.]
posted by dash_slot- at 8:07 PM PST - 21 comments

Let the people decide. There's lot's of initiatives trying to push Direct Democracy, like Philadelphia II, as a solution to all of the problems inherent in the political process. A few places like Switzerland, ancient Athens, and some New England towns already have it that way. A lot of them want electronic and phone voting to pave the way. Is it possible, or was Machiavelli right to believe that politics is best left to the politicians. That's what the electoral college is for.
posted by destro at 5:09 PM PST - 39 comments

The Conceptual Metaphor Home Page at Berkeley offers a fascinating compilation of the metaphors underlying our everyday speech, such as Fear is Cold, Facts Are Points, Money is a Liquid, and Sexuality is an Offensive Weapon.
posted by oissubke at 4:32 PM PST - 14 comments

While the UK, US and UN prepare for various forms of battle, the Commonwealth remembers it's dead from two world wars, the Falklands war, the Gulf war, the Korean war, the Yugoslavian wars or any other conflict where servicemen died. Despite having my own to remember I can't help feeling maybe it's time to let the dead rest...
posted by twine42 at 3:46 PM PST - 12 comments

Yoga as Self-Transformation is an interesting article on the mental and physical effects practicing yoga can have on a person. Anyone who practices yoga will probably recognize some points in this article, and may enjoy some of the author's other articles as well.
posted by homunculus at 1:29 PM PST - 7 comments

The Color of Cool, a Business 2.0 article about why so many new products use blue LEDs. Pantone even declared Cerulean Blue (Pantone 15-4020 TC), the colour of the sky on a serene, crystal clear day, as the official colour of the millennium.
posted by riffola at 10:04 AM PST - 42 comments

Late for Halloween, but could come in handy the next time you want to give someone the finger.
posted by rushmc at 9:53 AM PST - 7 comments

What do moedy, cruxtaposition, daugahyde and posolutely have in common? Don't bother looking up at dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster OnLine or britannica.com. All these words are newly made up words and only the pseudodictionary knows them. Don't know what NSFW means? Want to submit a new word creation of yours? You have no clue and want to brush up your vocabulary? Try the randomerizor and get smart!
posted by ugly_n_sticky at 9:14 AM PST - 21 comments

Naked man festivals - if you're a fan of unique and colorful folk festivals, you may want to plan a trip to Japan. Naked man festivals are a fairly common occurrence. There's Hadaka Matsuri in January, Houne Matsuri in March and Minato Matsuri in August. Probably lots of others. Guys will need to dress in the fundoshi, traditional garb for the occasion. There are a few styles, one of which can be a little tricky. Women are generally on the sidelines, and their attire is colorful yet somewhat less revealing. Probably not safe for work, despite being steeped in tradition!
posted by madamjujujive at 8:23 AM PST - 11 comments

Steal This Link. It looks like the guys at Tenant Net are the latest to take Abbie Hoffman's classic piece of advice. Will the recession (not to mention, teehee, the US dollar being at a three-year low against the euro and the British pound) make it relevant and, er, practical, again? Or subversive even? [Via LinkFilter]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 4:34 AM PST - 11 comments

Home improvement Twenty years saying nothing but "Hello" and "Goodbye" to the neighbours, all the while fixing to kill people after you're dead ... this man deserves to become the sixth famous Belgian.
posted by alloneword at 2:55 AM PST - 15 comments

Reading the 9th Prophecy of the American Hopi Indians has sent a chill in my spine! Some interpretations I have read say that this prophecy is an interpretation of Nasa's Skylab falling back to Earth circa 1979. However when I read this prophecy a few months ago the crash of the World Trade Center immediately popped into my mind! The Hopi's 9th prophecy states "You will hear of a dwelling-place in the heavens, above the earth, that shall fall with a great crash! It will appear as a blue star." "These are the Signs that great destruction is here: The world shall rock to and fro. The white man will battle people in other lands - those who possessed the first light of wisdom. " Is this not our time?
posted by thedailygrowl at 2:30 AM PST - 42 comments

Geekroom contest 2002. [this is a mirror, the site was recently slashdotted] They say these are the best geekrooms; to me they seem to fall somewhere between somewhere between quintessential, and epitome-of. Does your computing take over a significant chunk of your space? A room? A nook? What do Mefites' geek lairs look like?
posted by condour75 at 2:16 AM PST - 35 comments

Musical Intifadah is an alternative approach by a Dutch-Palestinian physician who goes by the online handle DocJazz. Many of his songs are available for download and streamed at his website.
posted by tamim at 11:55 PM PST - 2 comments

Is this naturism, photography or soft-core child pornography? If you search for photographers like Sally Mann or Jock Sturges you'll come across this entirely legitimate purveyor of naturist books and videos. In the Fifties and Sixties nudist magazines, like Health and Efficiency, were an excuse for looking at naked bodies. Now that porn is legal, have nudist publications made a comeback as an excuse for looking at photographs of naked children? Their website is itself well concealed - the front page looks innocent enough but, the further you click into it, the more unsettling it becomes. Or are we all becoming to paranoid for our own good? (I'd say NSFW)
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 6:50 PM PST - 110 comments

One small step for technology, one giant leap towards a world with no secrets.
posted by Fupped Duck at 6:39 PM PST - 9 comments

Farm Sluts is a side-splitting parable illustrating the seriousness of using the NSFW designation. This 49 megabyte Quicktime short runs 17 minutes and is totally NSFDU (not safe for dial-up). It's probably itself NSFW, but only because you'll have to explain ROFL.
posted by quonsar at 5:36 PM PST - 27 comments

Ladies and Gentleman, I give you The Sexiest Sentence Alive.
posted by willnot at 2:32 PM PST - 29 comments

If this isn't a sign of the apocalypse, I don't know what is. What should be on the list of the all-time greatest pop tunes?
posted by LittleMissCranky at 12:37 PM PST - 49 comments

enjoy the collected fictions of Kilgore Trout. or alternately, write some yourself.
posted by gravelshoes at 11:23 AM PST - 17 comments

Pentagon Plans a Computer System That Would Peek at Personal Data of Americans And this is justified because of National Security. We will lose much that is personal, private, but in turn we will be protefted against the bad guys. Or will we? When NASA and CIA claim they need to spy domestically, and computers gather all data on Americans, what is left that is not what Orwell had suggested might our future be like?Or, as Morth Sahl once labelled a comic record: TheFuture Lies Ahead."
posted by Postroad at 8:30 AM PST - 97 comments

Save your local insane asylum. When I was young and my mother would get frustrated with her brood she would merely have to say, "You are all going to send me straight to Milledgeville!" to strike terror in our souls and cause us all to behave for at least the rest of the day.
posted by oh posey at 8:13 AM PST - 18 comments

Hidden Mickeys: In designing, constructing or adding the final touches to a Disney park attraction, Imagineers subtly "hide" Mickey Mouse silhouettes in plain sight.
posted by ahughey at 2:55 AM PST - 15 comments

A thrush in the syringa sings.

`Hunger ruffles my wings, fear,
lust, familiar things.

Death thrusts hard. My sons
by hawk's beak, by stones, by cat and weasel, die.
From a shaken bush I
list familiar things,
fear, hunger, lust.'

O gay thrush!

Basil Bunting,
Basil Bunting,
Basil Bunting.

The Return of PoemFilter
posted by y2karl at 2:22 AM PST - 27 comments

Who Counts your Votes? This book published back in 1992 is a good launching pad to begin the quest regarding elections and election fraud in America. Joseph Stalin had a saying: ``Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.'' When I voted on November 5, I was handed a little card stuck it in to a Diebold voting machine and presto all the votes I submitted were counted correctly right? Well I'm not sure after I read the article Diebold: The face of modern balloting at http://www.bartcop.com/110702otter.htm and some of the articles at http://www.votefraud.org/. Perhaps we Americans have handed a bit to much over to computers and the people who own the companies that make the computers and that write the code. Perhaps to restore faith in our Democracy its time to to go back a simple hand counted system, with observers from multiple parties stationed in the local precincts counting the paper ballots.
posted by thedailygrowl at 12:16 AM PST - 3 comments

The Computer Photography of Arthur Lavine. Got a reel-to-reel fetish? Does the phrase "hand assembled ferrite core memory" make you swoon? Take a look at some old-school nerds at work for Chase Manhattan, back in the days when computers were big and expensive, and a Macintosh was a raincoat. It's an exhibit at San Diego's Computer Museum of America, which is chock full of goodies. Check out the slide show exhibit too.
posted by condour75 at 11:57 PM PST - 6 comments

No Child Unrecruited Under the "No Child Left Behind Act" passed earlier this year, secondary schools must provide military recruiters with the names, addresses and phone numbers of their students or risk losing federal aid. [More Inside]
posted by EmergencyPenguin at 11:16 PM PST - 47 comments

As part of March's National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month 2003, the Cancer Research Foundation of America will lead a nationwide, 20-city Colossal Colon Tour from March 2003 to October 2003.
posted by LinusMines at 10:03 PM PST - 6 comments

R.I.P. Squirrel 2002-2002 He lived a short, productive life. Some guy finally shot and killed him to end his reign of terror over Chesire. I'm sure that with a good taxidermist, he will be stuffed and live on in the hearts of all of England. He also spawned an unintentionally funny caption to a picture: "A squirrel, similar to the one shown in this file photo, is spreading terror in a Cheshire town where it keeps attacking people"

I dub thee "Chester the Crazy Squirrel". May he live his afterlife like he lived his life, by attacking people at random.
posted by RobbieFal at 9:48 PM PST - 10 comments

Tell a joke at some musician's expense. ...or tell a few. Here's something for your favorite bodhran player, or the banjo player in your life. But somehow, the string section gets the worst of it.
posted by datawrangler at 7:10 PM PST - 12 comments

The world's largest store turns 100 today.
posted by Silune at 6:12 PM PST - 2 comments

Verily, it is Fun on Friday. Shooting Stars 3D Minigolf - from the BBC. [Shockwave]
posted by Pretty_Generic at 4:37 PM PST - 11 comments

What happened to intent to commit a crime? Jalbert, a resident of Pohenegamook, Que., was arrested on Oct. 11 after failing to stop at the local border crossing. He had crossed into a neighbouring Maine town to fill up his truck with gasoline before a weekend hunting trip. U.S. officials noticed a hunting rifle on his front seat. A subsequent computer search by American authorities revealed that he had a criminal record in Canada, related to a 12-year-old breaking and entering conviction. Now he's facing four months in jail. An editorial in the Maine newspaper The Portland Herald called the decision to keep Jalbert locked up "odd" and said he "is no threat to anyone (unless you're a duck)."
posted by Coop at 3:08 PM PST - 22 comments

Standing in the Shadows of Motown, a documentary about Motown Records' legendary house band, the Funk Brothers.
posted by Ty Webb at 3:03 PM PST - 5 comments

"President Bush is a liar. There, I said it, but most of the mainstream media won't."
From an article in The Nation...prompted by all the talk of lies in this thread.
posted by mapalm at 2:42 PM PST - 57 comments

Ever dream your teeth fell out?? I did. I used to think it was because some of mine really did once (through violence, not poor dental hygiene). Turns out everybody dreams this.
posted by luser at 1:25 PM PST - 59 comments

'Dear Mr. President' letter is a hoax. You may remember the story of President Bush writing an author and telling him that his book was "unpatriotic and ridiculous and just plain bad writing"... [more inside]
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 1:25 PM PST - 64 comments

"I am the first to say that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a forgery, but what is strange is that they [the Israelis] perhaps read it and decided to implement it." Mohammed Sobhi, screenwriter of The Horse without Horseman, reacts to charges that his Egyptian mini-series is anti-semitic. The program tells the story of an Egyptian who leads the struggle against the British colonizers until he finds a book that provides proof that the true enemy is not the British, but the "Elders of Zion".
posted by tranquileye at 1:16 PM PST - 9 comments

Lovely Pointy Photos - A visual diary of produce from the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket in Brooklyn. Autumn, Summer, Spring, Winter.
posted by ursus_comiter at 1:03 PM PST - 4 comments

Breast Cast Art. (NSFW? I don't know, your call.) Modart's Keep a Breast 2002 is currently auctioning off these artistic busts to benefit The Breast Cancer Fund.
posted by Stan Chin at 12:34 PM PST - 15 comments

AMERICA'S DARK SECRET- The Port Chicago Disaster Did America's first atomic weapons test take place on US Soil? Although, cited as an accident at first, on the night of July in 1944 a mushroom cloud exploded killing hundreds. Twenty years of investigation have found links between Port Chicago and the Manhattan project as well as Los Alamos. Mutiny? Cover up of Nuclear disaster? Read it and see what you think.
posted by Jessy at 12:01 PM PST - 22 comments

DOH! the Rollingstone Simpsons quiz!: doh!
posted by DailyBread at 10:56 AM PST - 14 comments

pointless but surprisingly beautiful photos taken using a kite on the northern California coast
posted by marvin at 10:40 AM PST - 21 comments

Heavens to mergatroid! Who, what, or where is mergatroid? (Or is it murgatroid?) In what way does it relate to Heaven? Maybe it's an angelic sound.
posted by mrmanley at 10:31 AM PST - 23 comments

I'm amazed. (And no, this isn't a Lone Star thread.) For all the politics fuss we've engaged in over the last 2 years, I'm a bit surprised that no one thought it a fit topic for discussion that Florida lost 100,000 votes this week. In Broward County. But of course, those are the *only* votes we lost track of, right...?
posted by baylink at 10:11 AM PST - 5 comments

A quick HIV test is about to hit the US market. An HIV test that is easy to administer and provides results in 20 minutes has just been approved by the FDA. This is a big deal partly because almost 250,000 Americans are infected and don't know it. The ease of this fast-response test will help identify some of them.
posted by o2b at 10:04 AM PST - 30 comments

Name That Fundamentalist!
Is everyone ready for some Friday fun? How about online quizzes today? Here's one where you try to guess which fundamentalist is responsible for a quote. Go ahead, give it a try and post your favorites too!
posted by nofundy at 9:51 AM PST - 14 comments

Job got you down? Why not switch careers to the exciting field of necro-janitorial service? Join Crime Scene Cleaners today and be like your favorite movie hero, The Wolf. (Test your personality here). With high murder and suicide rates, you'll have that job security you desperately seek. Grab a broom and get busy!
posted by thewittyname at 9:24 AM PST - 9 comments

Menstrual Art: Vanessa Tiegs uses her livejournal and her own, uh "natural" paint supply to make some pretty cool paintings. (via fullofnothing) My intention in making paintings using my menstrual blood is to create beauty from something that most people would rather avoid. I consider my paintings as personal and political images presenting a positive and celebratory attitude toward menstruation.

posted by Ufez Jones at 9:18 AM PST - 67 comments

U.N. passes Iraq resolution on weapons inspections "The resolution passed unanimously, after Secretary-General Kofi Annan joined the assembled delegates in the Security Council chamber." I really hope Iraq takes a new approach, and actually genuinely disarms. Next year will be so much more pleasant.
posted by MidasMulligan at 8:47 AM PST - 27 comments

Bet the Farm. Friday Flash Fun! Do you have what it takes to run a modern farm? This online game pits your decision making against the forces of nature and the market in a simple, clever, educational flash game. I made $9.33 an hour! Who will be MetaFilter's master farmer?
posted by putzface_dickman at 8:42 AM PST - 29 comments

Akiyoshi's illusion pages.
This japanese psychology professor has been collecting and developing geometric optical illusions, some of which are found on the streets [inc. Brighton, UK!], notably he is inspired by traditional japanese design and architecture. NB: Though not exactly Friday Flash, the emphasis on clour & motion illusion prompts Akiyoshi to warn: "Caution: This page contains some works of "anomalous motion illusion", which might make sensitive observers dizzy or sick. Should you feel dizzy, you had better leave this page immediately." How polite!
posted by dash_slot- at 7:01 AM PST - 12 comments

Song of the South has been withheld by Disney since 1986. Based on Joel Chandler Harris' Uncle Remus tales, it depicts Reconstruction-era Georgia through Disney-tinted glasses. It won an Oscar for its song "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah," but will we ever see this classic again?
posted by Frank Grimes at 6:50 AM PST - 45 comments

Axl Rose causes a riot? Give it up Axl, riots were so 10yrs. ago.
posted by pallid at 6:35 AM PST - 35 comments

Teaching physics with superheroes...
...and comics in general. Comics are used to teach math, in "The Mathematical Cartoons of Larry Gonick". While this flash animation addresses the physics of everyday life. Interesting ways to present basic and sometimes not so basic [~400k jpg] topics in science.
posted by talos at 6:30 AM PST - 8 comments

Jiang outlines plans to make China wealthier Ah, Adam Smith in and K. Marx out. Brting on the Krispy Kreeme franchises. Bet there won't be labor unions in the near future but an economically powerful China plus the EU will give America some strong competition.
posted by Postroad at 6:26 AM PST - 14 comments

Enfants Don't Come Any More Terrible Nor Is Any Poète More Maudit than "bad, mad and dangerous to know" Lord Byron, which is why biographers can't resist delving into his multitude of sins, transgressions and crimes. Increasingly, the life of a great writer overshadows his work and the consequences of this mania look bleak indeed... [More inside]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 6:13 AM PST - 17 comments

The First Eight Presidents
John Hanson (November 5, 1781 - November 3, 1782), Elias Boudinot (November 4, 1782 - November 2, 1783), Thomas Mifflin (November 3, 1783 - June 3, 1784), Richard Henry Lee (November 30, 1784 - November 22, 1785), John Hancock (November 23, 1785 - June 5, 1786), Nathaniel Gorham (June 1786 until January 1787), Arthur St. Clair (February 2 , 1787 - January 21, 1788), and Cyrus Griffin (January 22, 1788 – April 29, 1789)--under The Articles of the Confederation.
Everything you know is wrong--George Washington was the 9th President
--or 8th, depending on how you call it on John Hancock's term. [More inside]
posted by y2karl at 11:02 PM PST - 28 comments

Why We Tuned Out "We don't allow our kids to watch TV. Period. Not at home, not at friends’ houses; and they don’t watch videos or movies, either. We want our daughters, Jazzy, now nearly 6, and Gigi, 3, to be as active as possible, physically and mentally." What's the best approach with kids and television?
posted by tippiedog at 8:58 PM PST - 89 comments

Ecstasy is being hailed as the key to better treatments for the Parkinson's disease, marking a complete turnaround from a few weeks ago when ecstasy was condemned for causing the disease.
posted by semmi at 8:30 PM PST - 26 comments

New Mexico's voters decided against an amendment that would remove language in the state constitution prohibiting Asian immigrants from owning land [scroll down]. Florida is the only other state now with such a clause. Surprising that they would keep such laws around...
Tangentially, do all Asians really look the same? And would a high score be a good or bad thing?
posted by casarkos at 8:11 PM PST - 17 comments

Zoological Bloopers and Practical Jokes. Strange Science is a great little page of missteps in the classification and illustration of exotic and extinct animals. It's hard to classify all the links; some are dinosaur screwups, some are just poor depictions of animals from the time before photographs. Most are fascinating. Although, they skip over one of my favorite examples, Michelangelo's Jonah and the Whale.
posted by condour75 at 7:56 PM PST - 8 comments

Kurt Cobain's Journals - Pete's unexpurgated review from The Observer newspaper The Who's Pete Townshend offer a balanced view of Cobain's 'Journals'. He describes it as 'sensationlist rock necrophilia' but recommends it be read to see what the human spirit can do to itself - if addiction is involved.
posted by skinsuit at 5:49 PM PST - 15 comments

"The oldest profession in the world" gains a whole new meaning with this 57-year-old woman's spirited account, in The Spectator (est. 1858) no less, of her successful new career as a prostitute. I must admit a part of me said "Hooray! There's hope for us thirtysomethings yet" but the rest remained highly suspicious or (to be honest) whispered "How pathetic!" Is this ageism or are (much) older women really more attractive nowadays?
posted by Schweppes Girl at 4:57 PM PST - 29 comments

The 100 Most Endangered Monuments in the World
posted by mediareport at 2:15 PM PST - 28 comments

Newsfilter: 2003 Inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame include Elvis Costello, The Police, AC/DC, The Righteous Brothers and the only band that matters, The Clash (sorry - no link that I declare decent). ABBA didn't make the the Hall's cut this year. MTV and CNN provide further reading. At last some bands that I can support. Coming next year: Black Flag?
posted by Joey Michaels at 1:42 PM PST - 58 comments

The Patriot Act. Ashcrft's TIPS program. FBI surveying your Public Library consumption history. Freedom in America isn't what it used to be, and in most cases, the changes have been foisted on the public, sans referendum.
Have you heard the name Lt. General Michael V. Hayden before? Probably not. Probably cuz he's king spook. aka Director fo the National Security Agency.
Here's a transcript of his testimony before congress about pre and post 9/11 national security issues.
Its a really scary read. Why? Because his assessment comes across as more level headed, even handed and realistic on this prime topic than the President and everyone in congress put together. (YMMV)
Who'd a thunkit?
Briefly, he tells Congress "that they can best help him by going back to their constituents and finding out where the public wants to draw the line between liberty and safety.” More importantly, he talks to the people about security, not at them. Where's the line gotta be? [found on /.]
posted by BentPenguin at 1:20 PM PST - 28 comments

It seems likely that we'll be hearing a lot more about tort reform, especially medical malpractice tort reform, over the next couple years. Sadly, many don't even know exactly what a tort is, let alone how the tort system works, although most have heard about individual lawsuits through the media. Conservatives tend to focus on capping damages, reigning in juries, and allowing businesses to contract out of tort liability. Liberals generally oppose these proposals, and some have a few ideas about reform as well. Of course, we could always follow the example of New Zealand and scrap the tort system altogether. Maybe the Supreme Court will give the GOP some suggestions about reform in their latest tort case.
posted by boltman at 12:54 PM PST - 32 comments

Canadian novelist Yann Martel, whose novel, Life of Pi (excerpt, review), won the 2002 Booker Prize, has been accused of plagiarizing Brazilian novelist Moacyr Scilar's 1981 novella, Max and the Cats, which shares a similar premise. Martel freely admits that the premise of Scilar's work, which he discovered via a half-remembered (and scathing) critique, inspired Life of Pi, but he has not read it. The issue is whether a premise is intellectual property or whether such ideas are recycled all the time. While this would ordinarily be a literary tempest, Canada and Brazil have had a shaky relationship over trade in recent years; this may not help the situation.
posted by mcwetboy at 12:20 PM PST - 29 comments

As Romanian factory workers prepare to sell sperm to a fertility clinic to try to reduce their company's debt one begins to wonder if capitalism is helping to fulfill Ceausescu's dream of increasing Romania's population from 23 million to 30 million by the year 2000, or if it's simply fueling the countries recent increase in the illegal sale of babies.
posted by hatutah at 12:19 PM PST - 5 comments

NASA Challenges Moon Hoax Conspiracy After decades of almost ignoring claims that the Apollo missions were hoaxed, NASA commissioned aerospace writer James Olberg to write an official rebuttle. Perhaps a bit more reasonable than the NASA Stooge, the book is aimed at the general public.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 10:25 AM PST - 33 comments

Michael McNevin creates the most incredibly detailed pictures using an Etch-A-Sketch. Call me a cynic if you like, but I can't help wondering if it's a fake ... (via b3ta)
posted by ralawrence at 10:10 AM PST - 21 comments

Self-Sufficiency in Style is possible, desirable and fun, according to Pat Gardiner, the resident theorist of Hangman's Cottage (in Hangman's Lane, just to the south of Misery Corner, somewhere in Norfolk, England). His amusing monthly diary (Killing for Food and Pleasure is the title of October's entry) and unconventional advice (His advice on inheritance is: don't leave your children anything) are quite addictive. And his essential message doesn't even mention hippies : Self-sufficiency need not be all crankiness and mud, manure, muck and mystery. It may be a return to a frontier spirit for an American, or a yearning for a lost rural idyll for an Englishman.
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 10:04 AM PST - 4 comments

Implied Regurgitation : "An exploration of how our environment changes via the addition of "I threw up." stickers to various random images around us."
posted by monkeymike at 9:43 AM PST - 23 comments

The Cowbell Project Inspired by the SNL/Christopher Walken sketch, a database of recordings that feature the cowbell, and a list of other songs that maybe should have considered it...
posted by lilboo at 9:24 AM PST - 33 comments

Priming the Pump of War is what this is called. It may or may not be scary or true but it looks like it is worth keeping in mind.
posted by donfactor at 9:22 AM PST - 13 comments

Who would guess that art and insects and spiders can go hand in hand? We have art made using insect larvae, mygalomorph patterns, fractal insects, cool insects for sale, virtual insect art, and insect and spider stamps. What's you favorite insect art?
posted by Morphic at 8:46 AM PST - 12 comments

'The Father of the Boy Named Sue' Shel Silverstein's follow-up to his Cash hit-maker, 'A Boy Named Sue', ends in terrifying innuendo.
posted by dgaicun at 8:41 AM PST - 48 comments

Shakeitbabe got mentioned in my TV guide and led me to their site. Flash required. [more inside]
posted by ginz at 8:03 AM PST - 4 comments

Bubonic plague strikes again... It seems that bubonic plague has never actually gone away with reports of occurences in Madagascar, Bolivia and now it seems, from New Mexico. Given that the disease has been diagnosed and treated outside of the host cities in the cases of the Bolivian woman and the couple in New York, I think this highlights how diseases we tend to classify as third world health problems, are merely a plane ride away from causing an outbreak here.
posted by gloege at 6:52 AM PST - 26 comments

All the Saints of the City of Angels: This website is dedicated to the exploration - at once poetic and historical - of this "spiritual geography" of Los Angeles; a road trip into the city's cultural, spiritual, and ethnic heritage via its streets which bear the names of saints.
posted by ahughey at 5:46 AM PST - 5 comments

"I will feel lost,
Unhappy and at home."
A few of Seamus Heaney's poems.
posted by hama7 at 4:42 AM PST - 19 comments

Microsoft launch the windows xp Tablet. A cross between a laptop and a PDA, comes in two forms, a laptop with a rotatable screen or just as a tablet with no key board or mouse. you can write directly onto the screen with the magic pen and send e-mails or create documents in your own hand writing. not sure how much it costs. I wonder how long before the Linux posse get their hands on it! more cool pics here.
posted by JonnyX at 3:18 AM PST - 44 comments

What Would The Good Doctor Have Prescribed? A Samuel Johnson quotation for every possible occasion, assembled by Frank Lynch. To be taken daily, along with Jack Lynch's Guide, while we wait for David Lynch's upcoming Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. [Quicktime unrequired, as I made that last bit up]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:08 AM PST - 11 comments

Emergency War Surgery. It's been said that the only people eager for war are those who have never seen it. The Virtual Naval Hospital describes in some detail the toll of modern warfare on the human body.
posted by moonbiter at 12:44 AM PST - 25 comments

The Party's Over What happened on November 5, 2002 was the culmination of a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party that began more than a decade ago under the leadership of a group of conservatives, corporadoes, and con men .... It must find a soul, a passion, and a sense of itself. Most of all, it must get rid of those false prophets and phony friends who have not only done it so much damage but have left the country fully in the hands of the cruel, the selfish, the violent, the dumb, and the anti-democratic.
posted by thedailygrowl at 12:07 AM PST - 33 comments

How the world sees Americans. "They readily distinguish between the official face of the American government (who they tend to disagree with and fear) and American people, pop culture and values (which they tend to adore and emulate)." "It's the world's superpower ... that has a childlike understanding of everyone else."

Journalist Mark Hertsgaard travelled the globe gathering opinions about the U.S. He talks about the surprising results.
posted by gazingus at 10:13 PM PST - 108 comments

Alien Equipment
Turning immigrants into cyborgs. A small video monitor and loudspeakers are installed at the center of the instrument and in front of the user's mouth. The monitor and the loudspeakers replace the real act of speech with an audio-visual broadcast of pre-recorded statements.
posted by riley370 at 8:59 PM PST - 13 comments

If you live in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky or Pennsylvania (“the Euchre belt”) Euchre might be a familiar pastime or at least well, familiar. The game is not exclusive to those areas but is most concentrated in the Midwest. It used to be one of the most popular card games the U.S. but lost out to bridge. Today the game has somewhat of a cult following in Midwest towns and especially on college campuses. It is a fast paced thinking game that combines st rat egy and skill with luck that can eat away hours of a person’s life. If you have never played the game I encourage you to read an introduction and try yahoo games. (I hope this is not too common to bring up, but I rarely see anyone playing online not from the states listed above.) Warning popups.
posted by Recockulous at 7:50 PM PST - 43 comments

I don't know about any of you, but after weeks of politics, I am in dire need of a little light-heartedness. Party down with me to one-t, a cool music video with great artwork! Or if that's a little too edgy for you, maybe a good old-fashioned super orgy porno party is more your style. Not really in a party mood? Well, don't let politics get you down, stay loose, stay cool, and just be sure you don't ride the fence.. quicktime files, crank up the volume, and not really risque but probly not work safe.
posted by madamjujujive at 7:28 PM PST - 17 comments

Polo Cited For Forcing Employees To Buy Polo "Polo Ralph Lauren Corp., in a court filing, has denied allegations that it requires store employees to buy and wear the company's clothing at work..." Probably many Mefi readers have had retail jobs, and count me as one of them. At the department store where my mother and I worked, we probably spent about 30% of our wages on the store's merchandise in order to keep up with the dress code. After reading this I see that it might be a widespread practice. Has this happened to you? Is this a trend in how retailers treat their employees? Do you have any other examples?
posted by Tystnaden at 6:50 PM PST - 31 comments

Jacob Langvad. Crucial work from such a young talent.
posted by plexi at 4:56 PM PST - 34 comments

Third parties spoil elections for some guys trying to run for office. It seems that from reading CNN election results, some people were able to get votes while not running with a D or R. Some of the notables (not including Bernie Sanders (I-VT)) include Gary Richardson (I-OK) who might have cost Steve Largent the election, Tim Penny (I-MN) couldn't replace Jesse, Tom Golisano (I-NY) will need to try again in 2006, Jim Mahoney (I-AZ) fared well, Ed Thompson (Libertarian-WI) got over 10%, not bad for being Tommy Thompson's brother, the MT Senate results were (in order) Baucus/Teddy Roosevelt Look-a-like/Blue Guy/Green Guy and in the most dubious of all good news for Third Parties, Jim Traficant loses from behind bars but he got 15%, showing some people like their politicans imprisoned

Three cheers to the third parties!
posted by RobbieFal at 2:27 PM PST - 34 comments

When in doubt, blame the software. Who is the governor of Alabama? Both incumbent candidate Don Siegelmand and Republican opponent Bob Riley have claimed victories. The answer lies in the hands of Baldwin County officials, who claim a software glitch "miscounted" almost 7,000 votes. [more inside]
posted by somethingotherthan at 1:47 PM PST - 18 comments

Election results got you down? Feel like drowning your sorrows, but don't have much to spend? If you're in Athens, GA, you can use the beerometer, thoughtfully provided by the local mainstream newspaper, to get the most beer for your buck.
posted by ewagoner at 1:41 PM PST - 20 comments

Ossuary was genuine, inscription was faked Lots of excitement when this ossuary with inscription found and thought to be a direct link back to Jesus...alas, not what it seemed.
posted by Postroad at 1:24 PM PST - 30 comments

"To me, making a tape is like writing a letter..." Subject of books, movies and songs, mix tapes are a part of our culture. Some people lament the end of the tape and the rise of the CD. Some offer tips on making the perfect mix. Still not inspired? Pick a theme and have someone else do it for you. Really inspired? Join the Art of the Mix, a community dedicated to the mix tape (previously discussed here). A little fun for folks in the MefiSwap, or anyone who loves music.
posted by jewishbuddha at 1:04 PM PST - 12 comments

"We are conducting a two-front war on only one front," according to former senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman. Even before their U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century report in January 2001, Hart and Rudman had predicted that "Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers" at the hands of terrorists, but they were ignored. And today, according to them, "more than a year has passed since the 9/11 attacks, and basic security priorities have not been met." On another note, Hart is considering a bid for the White House in 2004. With his record on national security issues, and after yesterday's Democratic performance, I think he might have a chance.
posted by homunculus at 12:35 PM PST - 18 comments

Data Archives from the American Presidency Project Fascinating statistical data about a variety of subjects, and not just trivia either. Includes data, for example, about Congressional concurrence with the President, number of Presidential vetos, number of first-year requests, etc. Good information for acquiring an overall understanding of our current political situation.
posted by oissubke at 12:22 PM PST - 6 comments

Where can I get a shoe like this?
posted by quibx at 12:14 PM PST - 51 comments

Hooray for Putty! Springboarding on Japanese ingenuity, Crazy Aaron has added "faking out fingerprint scanners" to the long list of wacky uses for Thinking Putty. This new plug for putty was adapted from a much longer article from Dan's Data.

And to think I just used the stuff to lift images from comic strips...
posted by Watsonne at 11:52 AM PST - 2 comments

Poetry International Web opens today. "Hundreds of poems by acclaimed modern poets from all around the world, both in the original language and in English translation."
posted by igor.boog at 10:45 AM PST - 7 comments

Violence and Repression in Western Afghanistan. "A man who was severely beaten by Ismail Khan's forces described to Human Rights Watch the effect of the repression: 'At any time I feel that I am in danger. When I leave my house, I do not know if I will return. I do not know whether something will happen to me, if there will be some car crash, or that I will be hit in the back of the head.' Another witness talked about how his community's hopes after the hated Taliban regime was ended have been deflated: 'What has changed in Afghanistan? All our hopes are crushed. We are completely disappointed. Look-all the same warlords are in power as before. Fundamentalism has come into power, and every day they strengthen their power.'

The light of liberation and liberty descends upon Afghanistan.
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 10:19 AM PST - 31 comments

What's on your iPod? DNA? Never heard of them! I tend to keep my iPod in my jeans, this man is keeping his genes in his iPod. We already know that you can store (some of) the Internet Movie Database on it, but is there anything these things can't do? via Wired.
posted by armoured-ant at 8:56 AM PST - 32 comments

The Apple Switch Ads have been beamed to a galaxy far, far away. The fad has caught on. We now no longer need "Star Wars: Episode 3." I know why Anakin has... switched.
posted by mychai at 8:52 AM PST - 18 comments

Daschle, Gephardt: 'political strategy is working' "WASHINGTON (CNN) - As cable networks projected continued Republican dominance of the House and a Republican takeover of the Senate, two leading Democrats met with reporters to announce that 'everything is going according to plan' and the future of the Democratic Party looks bright. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle expressed optimism about Democratic prospects for the next elections, saying that "our strategy of leaving no daylight between ourselves and the president is clearly working. Although in today's election the voters were still able to distinguish Republicans from Democrats, resulting in some lost seats for us, I'm confident that by 2004 we will regain our lead by becoming utterly indistinguishable from Republicans."

Great humor!!
posted by nofundy at 8:50 AM PST - 10 comments

Pr0n Star Action Figures! Those Autobots and Decepticons were getting a little dull, anyway. Or maybe, some human/robot action?
posted by kablam at 8:45 AM PST - 10 comments

A Gallery of Bookplates. I always think it's a wonderful surprise when I'm antique bookshopping and I happen across some beautiful ex-libris. Many more links found via Joy Olivia on the Graphic Design blog Speak Up.
posted by Stan Chin at 7:32 AM PST - 18 comments

Welcome to the public library. Please check your rights at the door. The Patriot Act contains provisions that gag librarians when subpoenaed (from a secret court!) for circulation records. Seems like in at least one place, it's already being used. How about your own library?
posted by Cerebus at 6:34 AM PST - 29 comments

Tired of the same old Acapella? Wish that it dealt with the issues that you face as a wimpy high school student without a girlfriend? It's Emocapella!
posted by hughbot at 4:45 AM PST - 37 comments

Go cannabis! As discussed in an earlier Mefi thread, there are a handful of medical marijuana referendums in various states. Possibly the most interesting is Nevada's constitutional amendment to legalize marijuana for medicinal use. It looks like this will become the law of the land (scroll all the way down). Arizona seems to have a few more NARCs (Proposition 203) than it does free-thinkers. In South Dakota, it looks like an industrial hemp initiative (bottom) has failed (Initiated Measure 1). How are the pot-legalization crusaders doing in your own home state?
posted by Hammerikaner at 10:15 PM PST - 40 comments

... and the doctor says, I can clearly see you're nuts.
A PRODIGY IN MANY FIELDS. Perhaps I rank historically among the 50 or 100 most intelligent and talented people in the most fields ever.
And so begins the best resume ever.
posted by patrickje at 5:32 PM PST - 59 comments

Demorats (sic) are showing strongly in the Senate... Those damn Demorats are infesting the whole nation! They're now taking office around the country!!
posted by GernBlandston at 5:18 PM PST - 94 comments

It's A Bird! It's A Plane! It's Terrifica! This supergirl herorine patrols the New York City single's scene bedecked in her scarlet outfit and gold cat-eye mask to help single women out of potentially dangerous situations.
posted by thedailygrowl at 3:37 PM PST - 36 comments

Voter News Service has abandoned its state and national exit polls. VNS, a group formed by the major media (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox and Associated Press) to provide exit polls, rebuilt it's computer system after the 2000 media debacle, which VNS was blamed for. The computer system still did not work today. Rather than face embarrassment again, VNS has decided to not give any projections to the media.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 3:03 PM PST - 40 comments

Laogai. Welcome to China's labour camps.
posted by four panels at 2:22 PM PST - 4 comments

I have dreamed of Erebus. mcwetboy took you to the Arctic today. Now read one man's fascinating diary of his trip to Antarctica in 2001, as well as this year's coming journey to the bottom of the world. Lots of words here, and some cool pictures. Not to mention margaritas and guacamole.
posted by WolfDaddy at 2:20 PM PST - 9 comments

The CIA is back in the business of committing assasinations on foreign soil. Meanwhile, the administration still objects to Israel's policy of targeted killings because of its effect on the peace process.
posted by alms at 2:14 PM PST - 38 comments

Doodle of the Day - Every weekday a brand new doodle. If you think you have what it takes, you can submit one of your own. Ahh, I love the internet.
posted by atom128 at 1:56 PM PST - 6 comments

Maybe you're travelling to Nunavut, maybe you've just seen Atanarjuat, but for whatever reason, you're keen to learn some Inuktitut. Where to begin? Take a course if one is available in your area. Listen to some words and phrases. But unless you're heading to a region (PDF map) where the Inuinnaqtun dialect is spoken (it uses the Roman alphabet), you're going to need to use Inuktitut's syllabics. Download some fonts (another source, and another) -- you'll need them for many sites, including this Inuktitut language reader. Or try out this handy converter. Finally, the Living Dictionary is the definitive reference to this language.
posted by mcwetboy at 1:31 PM PST - 9 comments

Are we using the worst voting procedure? "Voting theorists argue that plurality voting is one of the worst of all possible choices." Plurality voting, in which each voter selects one canidate, is vulnerable to a third party spoiler (Nader) or with many canidates can lead to the (near) election of a candidate most voters despise (le Pen). Some alternative voting systems include instant runoff where canidates are ranked by voters, a Borda count where voters assigns points to each canidate, or approval system where voters vote for as many canidates as they like. (via argmax.com)
posted by Quinn at 11:27 AM PST - 63 comments

Rez, a Japanese title for the Playstation 2 that was supposedly inspired by Kandinski's ideas on synaesthesia, comes packaged with a piece of hardware called a "trance vibrator."

Here's an entirely NOT SAFE FOR WORK guide to how one couple came to refer to the game as "Tron on Ecstasy."
posted by Pinwheel at 10:58 AM PST - 33 comments

Roadside memorials. Every so often you'll catch one out of the corner of your eye--a makeshift cross on the side of a highway, or flowers tacked to a highway sign, marking a life that ended in that spot. Gives me chills--realistically, probably every single day we pass places where someone breathed their last, but we don't know it. Photographer Bill Sampson takes photographs of roadside memorials--called "descansos" from a Spanish word meaning rest--and collects them on his site. Loved ones are invited to submit memorials of their own. (Link via USA Today Web Guide.)
posted by GaelFC at 10:57 AM PST - 39 comments

Stop Wining Laddie - And Pass the Macallan! Why bother with sissy wines and beers when you can have whisky all through your meal? A new trend in dining is pairing spirits and cocktails with food. Russian aristocrats still refuse to drink vodka unaccompanied by comestibles while modern Italians and Americans cook with it. The Japanese love their straight Cognac and Chivas with everything bar sashimi and eccentric old Englishmen stick with Port from start to finish. I guess they're all on to something, no? In case they're not, here, by way of consolation, is a wonderful interactive food and wine matcher for the dullards and traditionalists among us. Cheers!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 10:57 AM PST - 15 comments

What DOESN'T this guy do? He writes novels, screenplays, and old school radio dramas. In his spare time he records sci-fi inspired avant-garde electronica, trippy ambient stuff, and produces albums for other bands. He meshes spoken word and noise-pop , and with his old band, the unapologetic New Romantics Oo Oo Wa, produced an absolute wanker masterpiece, and ended up getting signed by the same guy who gave the Smashing Pumpkins their first record deal. Of late, he just turned up on Electric Lash: A Tribute to The Church. Creative genius, or too damned much Starbucks?
posted by timsteil at 10:41 AM PST - 8 comments

Are you using AOL IM at work? Chatting with your buds or SO while you should probably be working? Well, in a desperate attempt to turn some kind of profit, AOL is willing to sell your boss the ability to be in on the conversation, too.
posted by crunchland at 9:29 AM PST - 21 comments

A New Constitutional Convention? Well, as we are all aware it's election days. Time to reshape our government as we see fit. And we have an remarkably robust blueprint for our government, one that has stood the test of time. But is it time to change? What would your suggestions be if you were present at a new creation? I know these links have a lefty feel, there what I could find. But I'm interested in reasoned perspectives from left and right. Is this process necessary or desirable? What Would You Do?
posted by pjgulliver at 8:35 AM PST - 39 comments

Florida Machine Records Votes for Wrong Candidate. OK, I know Matt Drudge isn't exactly a venerated news outlet, but he is in South Florida. And he's reporting that a West Palm Beach voter called in to a South Florida radio talk show to report that when he voted for McBride this morning the machine counted his vote for Bush. After he'd tried three times, the voter said, an observing poll worker finally acknowledged that the machine would have to be reprogrammed, since earlier voters had experienced the same problem. There is no official confirmation of this problem, but calls to the same radio show two years ago evidently foreshadowed the 2000 election debacle. I'll be keeping an eye on sites like Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo as the day wears on. In the end, what should the electorate do (in addition to initiating lawsuits) if outcome-determining irregularities surface in yet another Florida election?
posted by maud at 7:40 AM PST - 68 comments

Remember the Sokal Hoax? In the mid 1990s, NYU professor Alan Sokal got a deliberately ridiculous paper in the po-mo journal Social Text, which would have embarrassed the editors if the concept of shame weren't merely a social construct. Now it seems that turnabout is fair play. In this week's Chronicle of Higher Education, there's a fascinating article about two brothers -- they apparently got their physics PhDs by spouting nonsense, and even got their tripe published in peer-reviewed journals. (The article itself requires a subscription, but here is an account by one of the players in the drama. Even though every scientific field has bad journals and these papers are in French, which consigned them to less well-known journals, it's still a major embarrassment for physics.
posted by ptermit at 7:23 AM PST - 40 comments

Today, Georgia becomes the first state in the US to have standardized, state-wide electronic voting. Not wanting to be "the next Florida", Georgia spent nearly $60M to go from paper punch cards to touch screens. What's in store, fame or infamy? After using the computer myself and hearing raves from all the sweet old ladies, I'll bet on the former.
posted by ewagoner at 6:42 AM PST - 38 comments

Lots of news about war profits lately. Here's where much of it's coming from. Investigative journalism lives!
posted by jfc at 6:35 AM PST - 4 comments

Sea And Sky:
Sea news, sky news, great photos, NASA Mission Insignia Patches (including Skylab), info about deep sea creatures, exploration timelines, and tonnes more.
posted by Fabulon7 at 6:22 AM PST - 5 comments

As the remake of Ringu opens in Japan, a rash of remakes of Asian horror movies seems to be winding its way through Hollywood. Not only has Hideo Nakata's latest movie, Honogurai mizu no soko kara (Dark Water), been optioned, the inevitable remake of Ringu 2 will occur, and the Hong Kong The Sixth Sense-esque The Eye has also been picked up for the Hollywood process. While it's nothing new to remake classic Japanese movies, this latest wave brings a lot of new questions. Is it near-impossible for the US to create horror movies that aren't increasingly self-referential? How long is it before we get remakes of Audition, Battle Royale, and Suicide Club? And will we eventually end up with a horror movie in the style of Fa talai jone, a Thailand Western influenced by Hollywood Westerns which were influenced by Japanese Samurai movies?
posted by Katemonkey at 5:19 AM PST - 26 comments

Ever heard of this kid? Richard Sandrak is a 10 year old body builder! I cant help but wonder what health problems this kid will develop when he reaches puberty. freak or unique?
posted by JonnyX at 4:59 AM PST - 46 comments

African Ceremonies - Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher have been recording African tribal rituals and customs in stunning photography for the last three decades. Beckwith, a U.S. native, is an expert on the Massai and also spent three years living among the fascinating desert nomads, the Wodaabe. Fisher, an Australian native, spent nearly a decade and a half studying and recording jewelry and body adornment. For at least the last decade, they've been collaborating with spectacular results.
posted by madamjujujive at 4:20 AM PST - 9 comments

What do you do with an eyesore built by a madman? [Geocities site, caress lovingly before clicking] During WWII, Hitler built several Flakbunkers around the city of Hamburg, to act as self-contained civilian shelters and defensive posts. After the war, the British tried to blow them up. And failed, on two accounts. The buildings still stand today, squat and romanesque remnants of a horrible period in the city's history. So, in a show of Hanseatic League moxie, the citizens of Hamburg have converted one of them into a disco. [warning: Flash, and starts with music]. There are better pictures of the truly hideous exterior here and here. A timely reminder, this Tuesday morning, that poor decisions can have long-reaching and unintended consequences. What will your grandchildren have to turn into a disco?
posted by condour75 at 12:01 AM PST - 40 comments

Jonathan Harris (1914-2002) No one wreaked interplanetary havoc -- and devoured Irwin Allen's scenery -- quite like Harris as Dr. Zachary Smith, the distinctively diabolical space stow-away in the 60's TV series Lost In Space. A fifty-year veteran of movies and TV, Harris was 87 when he passed away Sunday.
posted by LinusMines at 9:52 PM PST - 10 comments

Zeldman likes it. Jakob isn't saying, though he'll probably weigh in. mathowie'll probably like it since he seems to dig those Adaptive Path guys. It's elegant, it's like a pleased-with-itself polar bear, it's the AIfIA and there are probably more than 25 reasons it's a Good Thing.
posted by jburka at 7:24 PM PST - 35 comments

Should majorities also have a say? Why doesn't Russia get to vote on Chechen independence? Why can't Britain vote on expelling Northern Ireland ... or the English on Scottish devolution? Should minorities be allowed to hold a gun to the heads of the majority?
posted by bonaldi at 6:29 PM PST - 35 comments

Cyberpunk is here today. Finnish telecom company Sonera's security unit is being investigated for using telephone records to find out who had given reporters confidential information. Two employees have been arrested.
posted by lazy-ville at 6:18 PM PST - 2 comments

If being a student wasn't hard enough, now they want us to sit in a pub/bar, day and night, and all in the name of an education. Its a hard life, but someone has to do it!!!
posted by delboy_trotter at 6:14 PM PST - 17 comments

California Coastal Records Project. Rich guy with a helicopter and a digital camera posting high-resolution pictures on the internet of every mile of the California coastline, 500 feet at a time. (Related Washington Post article.)
posted by Wet Spot at 6:14 PM PST - 16 comments

Dear Penis... Won't you come out to play? [A flash animation performed by Rodney Carrington and cartooned by Chris Dill.]
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 5:35 PM PST - 18 comments

'Come Out To Vote On November 6th' In Baltimore, Republicans are accusing Democrats of paying people to canvass African-American neighborhoods on Tuesday. Democrats are accusing Republicans of intimidating minority voters by planning to use members of the Fraternal Order of Police to serve as GOP poll workers. Meanwhile, a flyer being circulated in African-American communities 'reminds' readers to vote on November 6th - but only if all outstanding tickets, warrants, and outstanding rent payments have been paid.
posted by tpoh.org at 5:33 PM PST - 34 comments

The 80's Movie Gateway. "Like an encyclopedia, we've got mini-sites for loads of your fave films from the 80's, packed with info, pictures, trivia, soundtrack details, trailers and much, much more... Like a web directory, on each page, we also give you links to the best sites dedicated to each movie."
posted by Joey Michaels at 4:44 PM PST - 7 comments

On this day, 23 years ago, thousands of radical Iranian students, demanding the return of the shah, overran the U.S. embassy and took about 90 people captive. Most Iranian officials and even ordinary people supported their action. However, today about %75 of Iranians want better relations with U.S.
posted by hoder at 3:28 PM PST - 21 comments

Paint By Numbers Proving that everything old school is new again. Choose from hundreds of masterworks from artistic greats such Georgia O'Keefe, Mark Rothko, Picasso and Monet or just paint up the perfect black velvet Elvis. Select your artwork, choose a color and click to fill. You'll never color outside the lines again. (This was just too fun to save for Friday.) [ Via Linky Dinky ]
posted by VelvetHellvis at 2:33 PM PST - 12 comments

"According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization will carry out secret missions designed to 'stimulate reactions' among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to 'counterattack' by U.S. forces. In other words - and let's say this plainly, clearly and soberly, so that no one can mistake the intention of Rumsfeld's plan - the United States government is planning to use 'cover and deception' and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. "
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 1:24 PM PST - 58 comments

We don't need more voters, we need better voters "Far from urging everyone to vote, perhaps the media might better urge those who are going to vote to first make sure that they have heard both sides of the issues at stake, instead of just voting by habit, whim, or according to the image or rhetoric of the candidates. A case could be made that those who have not informed themselves on the issues have a patriotic duty to stay away from the polls on Election Day, rather than mess with something that is too important to be decided by ignorance or prejudice. " Is Tom's suggestion an attack on a civic institution/central tenet of democracy, or a needed improvement? I share the opinion that uninformed voter turnout is a greater problem than low voter turnout, and I know I'm not alone, but I prefer the approach of those who promote use of emerging information resources, especially the incredible Project Vote Smart, rather than simply complaining. Why don't Sowell -- or for that matter, the rest of traditional media -- push these organizations? What can we do about it -- other than posting on Metafilter?
posted by namespan at 1:01 PM PST - 35 comments

Got a prime number? This formula can tell you . Dr. Manindra Agrawal, a professor of mathematics at the Indian Institute of Technology, and two doctoral students have solved a problem that has been puzzling mathematitians for literally centuries: testing with absolute certainty whether a number is prime. More inside.
posted by me3dia at 12:39 PM PST - 24 comments

Chechen Rebels to be buried in pigskin It seems that the Russian security forces have decided that burying the Chechens in pig's skin will keep future Islamic terrorists from following suit in the attacks in a theater a little over a week ago. Instead of immediately going to 'heaven', the terrorists would preventing from doing so forever. sorry for the short link, just thought the headline was niche-y enough...
posted by djspicerack at 11:48 AM PST - 70 comments

It's good to be a king ... of Swaziland. Sounds like we may be witness to decline of one of the oldest absolute monarchies in the world. It's amazing to me that there are still corners of our planet where kidnapping young women into "marriage" is deemed acceptable.
posted by blindcarboncopy at 11:43 AM PST - 5 comments

The art of being Canadian is often making do. Same-sex marriage is a national hot-button issue right now. What rights should homosexual partners have? What does it mean to the church? There comes a new option in the debate: civil union, not quite marriage, but more than just shacking-up. Will this be enough to satisfy as many as possible under the circumstances?
posted by bonehead at 11:37 AM PST - 24 comments

Freakshow In My Pocket is a collection of surreal animated matchbox dioramas (via The Excitement Machine)
posted by turaho at 10:22 AM PST - 10 comments

"Deep-fried chicken livers, crusty and delicious as any chicken liver ever, anywhere. Utterly wonderful, served with peppered cream gravy on the side."
Michael Stern - co-author (along with his wife) of numerous pop-culture classics - pontificates on the subtle joys of roadside diners, collaborative cuisine and comfort food. If all the talk of chicken-fried steak makes you want to hit the road, use his site to hunt down some choice noshing stops. Or just whip up some down-home grub yourself. Personally, I like a big ole pot of ravioli with a ketchup and butter sauce. Mmmm....
posted by Polo Mr. Polo at 8:45 AM PST - 9 comments

Anti-union Yahoo!? A former janitor at the Yahoo! offices wrote to The Mercury News about his experience: $16K/yr, no benefits, no union. Reads like a page from Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed." In the wake of the e-bubble and Enron economy, cleaning out the wastebaskets still gets no respect...or does it? Discuss. (Thanks to J. Romenesko)
posted by serafinapekkala at 8:13 AM PST - 82 comments

Am I the only one who doesn't think this is news? This story also showed up here a few days ago. (more inside)
posted by kate_fairfax at 7:51 AM PST - 54 comments

Sorry for the US-centric post, but Vote Vote Vote Vote Vote Vote Vote Vote Vote Vote Vote Vote Vote Vote Vote Vote Vote Vote Vote Vote Vote Vote Vote tomorrow!! This nation is run by a handful of individuals: Not the rich, nor the famous, nor the powerful, but those common Joes and Janes who take a few minutes a year to go and put a checkbox on a piece of paper (or whatever you do in your state). While it's all very fun to discuss politics on Metafilter, or post about it on your blog, or shake your fist at it while watching the evening news, election day is the time when your opinion is worth something more than the Special Olympics Award for Internet Debate. Your country is asking you a question, and how you respond determines the course we all take in the future. I apologize for the grand and idealistic rhetoric, but this is a grand and idealistic situation! VOTE ALREADY!!!
posted by oissubke at 7:37 AM PST - 125 comments

History of Medicine The (US) National Library of Medicine has a fine collection of online exhibits on subjects as diverse asDream Anatomy, 500 years of Paracelsus, America's first woman MD, a brief history of caesarian section, Islamic and Chinese medicine, and much more....
posted by plep at 5:26 AM PST - 5 comments

You probably remember him best for his famous green devil, tempting you with the esoteric delight of evil absinthe^*, or the familiar image of the jester pushing the pleasures of Bitter Campari. Called by some the "father of the modern poster", and even the "father of advertising", Italian-born Leonetto Cappiello created over 1,000 memorable posters during his 40-year career in belle-epoque and fin-de-siecle Paris, and a quick look at a collection of his work quickly reminds us how enduring both his images and his basic concepts have been. (more...)
posted by taz at 4:37 AM PST - 15 comments

Captionistas Wanted: This year's New Yorker cartoon competition, slightly more challenging than last year's is now online, awaiting witty captions until November 20.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:47 AM PST - 48 comments

Ever wonder if your great grandmother kept her pin money in an account no one knew about? Your state treasurer has those unclaimed funds just waiting for you to find them. [more inside]
posted by xyzzy at 1:47 AM PST - 9 comments

The Death of the Internet. Do discuss.
posted by crasspastor at 12:52 AM PST - 43 comments

Carve-up of oil riches begins US plans to ditch industry rivals and force end of Opec, write Peter Beaumont and Faisal Islam
posted by Postroad at 11:39 PM PST - 14 comments

The Hand of Karl Rove has moved before, and it may be moving as we speak. With the sudden revelation of an illegal working for Senate candidate David Pryor (who is leading Sen. Hutchinson), suspicion of the timing and credibility of these attacks is warranted, along with asking 'who benefits the most from this being revealed'. Don't be so sure other dirty tricks aren't being played. Don't worry about voting, this guy says it won't matter. Bleh.
posted by RobbieFal at 10:08 PM PST - 11 comments

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

The Collected Poems Of William Butler Yeats
posted by y2karl at 9:50 PM PST - 87 comments

Loopland - fun and stylish site of Allan Sanders, freelance London-based illustrator. Visit his portfolio of client work, personal sketches and quirky little flash films (I like 06.01). Among his notable work, he was recently commissioned by Studio AKA to design & build the fun, interactive Campus FIFA for the official FIFA World Cup website. (but you know those damn designers - sites may contain flash and launch new windows)
posted by madamjujujive at 9:45 PM PST - 10 comments

Moving women, not going anywhere.
1."I keep a hard body as a treat and not an obsession."
2. "I am in very touch with my sexuality."
3.Heartbreaking.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 9:34 PM PST - 35 comments

Not just a nostalgic trip. The fascinating story of Erno Rubik, inventor of, well take a guess.
posted by meech at 7:18 PM PST - 3 comments

A proposed mega wind farm miles into the ocean off Cape Cod is being fought by Democrats like Robert Kennedy Jr because it would "obstruct" the view from his oceanside house on clear days. Other concerns like bird kills (perhaps a few hundred birds a year), fish disruption from poles in the sand and danger to low flying planes are cited and could hold the project up for 5 years or perhaps forever. Would you care about a windfarm out in the ocean if Kennedy and few other had a view that was not "like when the Pilgrams arrived" or is this powerfull community leaders pulling a Not in my Backyard when it comes to fighting for the Environment. Horseshoe Shoals is one of the best wind spots on the East Coast.
posted by stbalbach at 6:53 PM PST - 30 comments

Who knows the evil that lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows. Radio serials and dramas take me back to driving along with my grandfather, listening to tapes he made of his favorite programs growing up. It's still a nice way to wile away some time.
posted by FunkyHelix at 4:27 PM PST - 11 comments

Full body scans. Is this the cat's revenge?
posted by feelinglistless at 4:25 PM PST - 17 comments

Happy Diwali (or Deepavali) to all Hindu, Indian, Bengali, Punjabi & Sikh metafilter members & readers. Diwali, a 5-day festival, is as important to Hindus and Indians as Christmas is to Christians. The festival is also known as Festival of Lights and its rich history and traditions are rooted in the Hindu epic Ramayana (written in the Sanskrit language) (picture gallery of Ramayana). But there are several legends of how Diwali originated. Although this important festival is celebrated differently in different parts of India and other countries, the significance of Diwali is the unifying belief and celebration of the victory of good / righteousness / light / knowledge over evil / vice/ darkness / ignorance, which is symbolized by the lighting of oil lamps, candles and scented incense during this festival. Enjoy!
posted by taratan at 3:06 PM PST - 11 comments

This arrest is brought to you by... This company has come up with the idea of covering police cruisers with advertising as a way for local law-enforcement to deal with budget cuts. Apparently, twelve towns have already gone for it. This group is trying to stop it. Institutions like schools and hospitals are already being taken over by advertising and product placement. Is this any different? "Freeze! You want fries with that?"
posted by notclosed at 2:16 PM PST - 11 comments

Exploding Varmints, Vol. 1 with "hundreds of confirmed kills" is a video "so disgusting, he viewed the whole thing - twice", and a perfect target for PETA's wrath.
posted by mischief at 10:48 AM PST - 17 comments

What is MetaFilter?
metafilter is important
metafilter is cool
metafilter is different from most weblogs
metafilter is gone for good
metafilter is boring
metafilter is bad for me
More fun usage of everyone's favourite search engine at www.googlism.com. I myself, am said said to have the highest dispersive mixing capability of any compounder yet. Who knew!?
posted by PenDevil at 7:44 AM PST - 50 comments

Swan song for a great explorer. Tomorow, the Galileo explorer will make a flyby of Jovian moon Amalthea ending pehaps the geatest unmanned mission in NASA history. Galileo telemetry may not survive the flyby having already receieved much more radiation than it was designed for. Even if it does survive, this will be its final orbit scheduled to crash into Jupiter in September of next year. In spite of antenna difficulties, the spacecraft returned many beautiful images of Jupiter's moons, along with coverage of the Shoemaker-Levy collision and the first atmospheric probe to decend into Jupiter's weather.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 6:54 AM PST - 9 comments

The Paradox of God, the Bible, and Religion have fascinated humans since the dawn of civilization. What are your favorite web pages and books on the intersection of science and religion? Do you feel that the human concept of God evolves through time? Is science displacing God? And what about miracles? Are miracles possible?
posted by Morphic at 6:51 AM PST - 69 comments

"The first flight we took my wife and I, we were greeted by a ticket agent who cheerfully told us that we had been selected randomly for a special security check. Then it began to happen at every single stop, at every single airport. The random process took on a 100 per cent certitude." Canadian award winning writer Rohinton Mistry cancels his US book tour after being subjected to racial profiling.
posted by tranquileye at 5:38 AM PST - 78 comments

Hotter and Hotter: The search for an ever more potent chile burn just got serious with The Source from Original Juan (fun flash here) at over 7 million Scoville Units. Not far to go now before pure capsaicin, at 16 million, becomes the condiment of choice. So is food becoming so unpalatable we need to set our tongues on fire first? Are our taste buds doing a Jonestown or what? (First link via Instapundit)
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 4:08 AM PST - 20 comments

B-Boys in blue: the thought that there is a team of hip-hop detectives in the NYPD whose day to day job is to listen to hip-hop lyrics, go out to clubs, and "monitor whose compact disc sales are climbing," among other things, is just nuts. so, to get this straight, they get paid to do at work what a lot of the rest of us do when they should be doing work. I can't imagine they're any more productive than we are. Yeah, this is funny, but c'mon guys - do some real police work already.
posted by moth at 3:27 AM PST - 11 comments

Tales from the Land of Dragons. 100 years of Chinese paintings. From the overview :- 'In China, painting is one of the "Three Perfections," linked with calligraphy and poetry as the most refined of artistic endeavors. This exhibition ... focuses on the years in which the great traditions of Chinese painting were established, during the Tang, Song, and Yuan dynasties ... '
posted by plep at 2:59 AM PST - 10 comments

In 1628, the Swedish man-o-war Vasa sank to the bottom of the Baltic Sea moments into her maiden voyage. 333 years later this remarkably well-preserved ship was resurrected from her ocean grave and brought to drydock.
posted by bunnytricks at 1:06 AM PST - 17 comments

"Our goal is to become bigger than Yahoo" "...We don't serve banners or pop-ups...We will not rent, sell or trade your personal information... Out of the gate, we make money through Google's advertisements - Google sells the ads, Dell pays Google and Google pays us....Does it work? Yes. In fact, we will be profitable in our first month of operation." Could this be a Google back-door attempt to begin to move into Yahoo territory, or are they just starry-eyed dreamers? Their mission, and some answers from the founder, apparently the same people behind iWon.com. PS Site really does look like a Yahoo carbon copy. There must be some copyright issues.
posted by Voyageman at 8:51 PM PST - 28 comments

Duh! Went The Strings Of My Heart. Of course you're a genius, but how emotionally intelligent are you? Go ahead and take the test with Daniel Goleman, the psychologist who reinvented the concept.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:19 PM PST - 46 comments

I'm really excited about this. A 42" flat panel plasma TV for under $3000. From Gateway, of all companies. This undercuts the Philips 40" price by at least $3000. How many of you would buy one of these instead of a 70" projection model for half the price?
posted by schlaager at 8:17 PM PST - 39 comments

Butterfly farming, whether it's to provide live, captive-bred butterflies or framed insects, is a way for people to generate income by nurturing rainforest habitat rather than cutting it down. It's happening in places like Costa Rica, the Philippines and Papua New Guinea. But you can also raise butterflies yourself.
posted by mcwetboy at 4:01 PM PST - 6 comments

Strange creature found in Chile Article points to Babelfish translation. Original article here (in Spanish). Anyone have any idea what this is?
posted by oissubke at 1:36 PM PST - 43 comments

Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593), best known for thematic portraits made of composites of fruit, fish, etc (higher-res gallery here), but also an engineer, inventor, artistic director for imperial courts, and even (as creator of a "harpsichord of colour") a possible anticipator of multimedia. Commemorations include the AGROart Festival; HP France's Prix Arcimboldo for digital imaging; and his influence on the works of artist and animator Jan Svankmajer.
posted by raygirvan at 12:04 PM PST - 9 comments

Soccer team loses 149-0 on intentional own goals. I've heard of taking dives but this sounds a bit much!
posted by xmutex at 11:51 AM PST - 13 comments

"We're very sorry, but the DEA has asked us to arrest you." A Canadian citizen, on a connecting flight between Canada and Ireland, is pinched in the Netherlands at the request of the US government. To prevent him from testifying in a Canadian drug trial?
posted by kablam at 7:50 AM PST - 14 comments

"A man can't just sit around." This summer marked the 20th anniversary of the guy tying balloons to a lawn chair and floating along two miles high, shivering and brandishing his pistol at bewildered passing airline pilots. Also this year, the historic lawn chair was finally found.
posted by luser at 7:08 AM PST - 17 comments

Have promotional remix competions done more damage to copyright protection than good? As an avid collector of bootleg/illegal remixes & mashups, its interesting that the proliferation of such remixes through low-key releases and the internet has not, in recent times, resulted in any legal action.
posted by mary8nne at 1:13 AM PST - 8 comments

Find yourself using IM shortcuts in your everyday writing? According to the article, many teachers are seeing IM shortcuts such as u, r, 2, @, etc. turning up in students' papers. Some think the IM influence contributes to literacy and others worry about the death of handwriting as well as normal written English. Wonder how many students have ended papers with the odious kthxbye?
posted by Lynsey at 12:28 AM PST - 65 comments

Sup, G? The Five Percent Nation: A splinter group from the Nation of Islam, they have contributed quite a bit to the hip-hop scene -- and to the English language. Phrases like "Break it down", "word", and even "peace" (as a form of salutation) can be traced back to their teachings. The Wu-tang Clan and Digable Planets are among the artists greatly influenced by the unique, sometimes inspiring, and often unsettling, worldview of this religion. It ain't all smiles und sunshine, but whatever you think of it, one thing's for sure: This is one fit and fecund memeplex.
posted by condour75 at 12:02 AM PST - 28 comments

This handwritten digital clock is the best use of flash I've seen in a long time. Maybe ever.
posted by sklero at 10:19 PM PST - 31 comments

Journal of a new COBRA recruit. "I report to COBRA boot camp out in Utah in the middle of June. The recruiter guy said that everyone around there thinks it's where some crazy old Mormon lives with all his wives. I'm not supposed to say anything about it to anyone. I'm supposed to tell Mom and Dad that I'm going off to work for the phone company."
posted by owillis at 8:48 PM PST - 22 comments

Forget Robert Redford! Whispering is for babies, librarians and over-the-hill actors: these horses sing!
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 8:06 PM PST - 9 comments

Looking Back Suddenly it hits. You realize you are three, four, five decades old, and you become sentimental, nostalgic, remembering only what you want to remember. Care to share some of your memories of the 90s, 80s, 70s, 60s, (50s?) (40s?).
posted by Voyageman at 5:39 PM PST - 35 comments

Willie Horton returns
posted by Beholder at 5:27 PM PST - 9 comments

"You will not be able to save or create new documents", the MS Office XP (Re-)Activation Wizard said to me this afternoon. You can imagine my horror, when I sat down to print off my housemate's coursework, only to discover that the floppy drive I'd reattached so that I could get to her document had spurred Office XP into an unwelcome data embargo. Be warned, MeFites: Significant hardware changes piss Microsoft off! This is especially dangerous for those of us who... er... can't seem to find our original store-bought fully licensed Office CDs.
Even though it's been lurking a while, I'd never heard of it. Is this a justifiable (ha!) anti-piracy technique or another excellent reason not to hand in Uni assignments on time? ("I'm sorry sir; Microsoft ate my homework") Either way, I won't be able to check my email in Outlook for a while.
Until then, thank God for openoffice.org.
posted by armoured-ant at 4:04 PM PST - 62 comments

Howard Stern - movie producer He is is going to remake Porky's and Rock 'N' Roll High School. "If I say to an audience, particularly my audience, this is 'Howard Stern Presents,' it means something to them," Stern said. "It means that it's going to be crazy. It means that it's going to be different, and they know I'm not going to be giving them any schlock."
posted by BarneyFifesBullet at 3:11 PM PST - 17 comments

The Political Graveyard -- It all started innocently enough.....I was reading a piece by a professor of media and journalism studies who wondered: Was Paul Wellstone murdered?" and cited an unusual number of democrats who had died in plane crashes. Was it true, I wondered? -- My search led me to The Political Graveyard, with it's endless categorizations of the details in the deaths of US politicians. Deaths by religious affiliation, politicians killed by poison or gunfights, opium overdoses or car crashes. But was it true? Yes, the site seemed to confirm the deaths (for the last 3 decades or so) of a statistically anomalous number of national democratic politicians (sitting or running for office) in plane crashes....but the site just grabbed me and wouldn't let me leave: Charles Tillinghast James (1805-1862): died while making his own cannon, Richard Ellis (1781-1846): died when his clothes suddenly caught fire, Thomas Caute Reynolds (1821-1887): killed himself by leaping down an elevator shaft, Sidney Theodore Roebuck (1901-1982): died from RAT poison, and MY FAVORITE, Elmer Severson (1922-1999), who died from spinal cord injuries he lost a "tussle with a cow"
posted by troutfishing at 3:01 PM PST - 21 comments

The gamebutton arcade is the perfect (super small, javascript-on-a-button code fu) thing for wasting time on a friday afternoon.
posted by mathowie at 2:54 PM PST - 5 comments

I'm sure this isn't news to anybody, but Judge Colleen has decided that the Seattlement stands as originally crafted. Of course, the States can always appeal. Has Microsoft won? Has the consumer lost? Discuss.
posted by Maxor at 2:43 PM PST - 17 comments

This CNN article reminded me of something I've been wanting to share with my fellow MeFiers for a long time now: the Storm King Art Center. There really aren't enough places in the world where you can view dozens of monumental abstract sculptures on 500 acres of rolling hills and beautiful wooded groves. For those interested in a 3D look (albeit via an obscure plug-in) try these views of a few Storm King sculptures. So, has anyone else ever been there? Better yet, anyone care to share any other unusual "museums" you've discovered?
posted by Ptrin at 12:56 PM PST - 25 comments

To lessen the clutter on their dashboard, a German auto manufacturer has put in a data screen and command input device that allows the driver to control 700 different aspects of their driving experience (including Navigation, Communication, Car Data, and Settings). More interestingly, there's an undocumented feature in the high-tech control system -- Press the right buttons in the right order and the car will launch you from a stop after revving the engine to 5,000 rpm... at least it will if you're in Europe, where performing the trick more than 15 times voids the car's warranty. Cars sold here in the US will only rev to 1,500 rpm. Supposedly, this is the first example of an Automotive Easter Egg.
posted by crunchland at 12:47 PM PST - 17 comments

The Political Oddsmaker gives you the odds of a particular candidate winning their election. You can get odds for each of the major U.S. races (Senate, House, and Governors for this election). It claims a 98% success rate in picking the winner since 1996 (more inside.)
posted by pitchblende at 12:31 PM PST - 15 comments

Dammit, boys, what on earth is it going to take for you to stop barebacking, and to stop practicing unsafe sex in general?? Obviously not an HIV scare, so howzabout the report that syphilis is on the rise, thanks to the efforts of gay men? The problem's so bad that gAyOL has started staffing some of its chat rooms with safe-sex counselors. Look guys, I already lost the generation ahead of me--they're all dead because they loved the booty so much. I don't want to lose the one that follows me, too. So please, please, please don't be silly, put a rubber on that willy!
posted by WolfDaddy at 12:29 PM PST - 71 comments

Diego Garcia islanders battle to return 'Exiled islanders from the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia are launching a legal action in a London court, seeking to return to their "paradise" home and get compensation from Britain for being deported. '
30 years ago, 2000 islanders were moved from Diego Garcia (in the British Indian Ocean Territory, formerly part of Mauritius) to make room for a military base. Two years ago, the High Court ruled that the deportation had been illegal.
Related :- Chagos Islanders: 30 years of suffering; Exiled Chagos Islander recounts tale of woe.
posted by plep at 12:21 PM PST - 4 comments

Google Compute is a distributed computing project involving users of the google toolbar. It's a light application which uses idle processor cycles to analyse data for "carefully selected charitable projects, with the guiding principle being to help humanity and advance scientific knowledge".
posted by walrus at 11:48 AM PST - 5 comments

Friday Fun!! Got a question for the Axis of Chicken Hawks? "The Official Simulation Act of 2002 created the Dept. of Official Simulation (DoOS) and tasked it with minimizing time wasted on media availability by certain U.S. Government officials who have been designated as essential to national security. DoOS makes available for press conferences and interviews simulated officials virtually identical to the originals with regard to talking points, lucidity and veracity" Try it! The answers are hilarious!! (thanks to busybusybusy)
posted by nofundy at 11:36 AM PST - 8 comments

Recreational mathematics and fractal graphics continue to stimulate the mind and foster student interest in mathematics. Some favorite authors & books in this area include: Martin Gardner's books (like The Colossal Book of Mathematics and The Night is Large), Cliff Pickover's books (like The Mathematics of Oz and The Zen of Magic Squares), Calvin Clawson's Mathematical Mysteries, Ian Stewart's books and puzzles, and Ivars Peterson's writings (like Islands of Truth). What are your favorite books and web sites in this area for stretching the mind and eye?
posted by Morphic at 8:50 AM PST - 25 comments

"Racist" teacher reinstated A follow up to this earlier mefi discussion. A copy of the e-mail enclosed. I'm curious as to if after reading the actual e-mail in question, anyone changes their opinion from the previous thread.
posted by Ynoxas at 8:27 AM PST - 88 comments

Gallery of neat Flash experiments--soon to include source code. I like this one, and the portrait of his dad is creepy. Also on the site, a gallery of free images.
posted by Fabulon7 at 8:19 AM PST - 12 comments

Time was, American society had at least a loose pecking order, with the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts, et al, setting standards for snobbery and WASP-y elitism. Now, says David Brooks, “we’ve democratized elitism in this country,” with everyone finding their own niche in which to be a snob. [more inside…]
posted by arco at 7:59 AM PST - 19 comments

Queen's intervention leads to acquittal in Regina v. Burrell.
Princess diana's butler, Paul Burrell - her 'rock' - is acquitted of theft from Princess Diana after Queen Elizabeth admits her knowledge of his 'caretaking' of Diana's property. This case has always smacked of a class divide - surely we shouldn't let the hoi-polloi be so close to their uppers and betters? Surely Diana wouldn't really let a mere butler have her precious momentos? Is this farce one more nail in the British Monarchy's coffin? Or, as the popular weakness of the movement towards the abolition of the uk monarchy attests, will the Windsors ride this out, as they did the opposition they encountered after the death of 'The Queen of Hearts'? [More republican links here]
posted by dash_slot- at 6:42 AM PST - 33 comments

A Liberal Argument for Iraqi Regime Change from Salman Rushdie Such a pleasure to read a well-written op-ed piece for a change.
posted by tommyspoon at 4:40 AM PST - 47 comments

Scrollbar racing Only for the truely bored. Here's more to waste your time.
posted by ginz at 3:21 AM PST - 15 comments

The joke has become reality.
Albanian and Russian observers sent to monitor American elections... [via Cursor]
posted by talos at 3:13 AM PST - 49 comments

The Turner Prize nominations are out. Britain's culture minster Kim Howells calls it "cold, mechanical conceptual bullshit". indeed a couple of years ago, Chris Ofili's pictures using dried elephant dung won? (He's the guy who caused a fuss with Rudy Giuliani.) So the annual debate in the british media has begun - "yes, but is it art?"
posted by brettski at 2:20 AM PST - 17 comments

Donald Roller Wilson - explore the entertaining gallery of this artist called "...a Gothic storyteller with the phenomenal technique and precision of an old master." Some say he takes his silliness seriously. Meet his menagerie of lavishly costumed monkeys, dogs and cats. Collector and fan Robin Williams describes his art as "Hieronymus Bosch meets P.T Barnum, Faulkner meets Dr. Seuss, and Leakey meets Freud. " site requires flash. registration is optional.
posted by madamjujujive at 1:18 AM PST - 7 comments