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February 2001 Archives
February 28
The Election Story Never Told On it’s face, this article is about corruption in Florida before the election. It is still basically an known story in the US, but it is very popular in Britain. Also of note is the continued record of a lazy corporate media refusing to do any sort of journalistic legwork.
posted by capt.crackpipe at 5:23 PM PST - 8 comments
MSNBC hacked. That faith-based missle defense thing again. Check it out, good-looking hack. I might put up a mirror if it gets changed.
posted by lbergstr at 2:21 PM PST - 13 comments
Do you have too much Freedom?
Might be interesting to all except for the ideology sales pitch at the end. Here is where the warning that it is a Harry Browne/Libertarian penned article goes. George Bush is a Communitarian?
posted by thirteen at 12:50 PM PST - 20 comments
Latest on Christopher Lydon's lockout from The Connection Not being a Bostonian, I was late to the news that the host of
the only call-in show I think is listenable has been locked out by WBUR in a dispute over money. I don't know who's got the best case: but I know that his is one of the few radio talk shows -- and the only call-in show -- I care to listen to anymore. Sensibility and intelligence very uncharacteristic of a major media outlet. And there'll be one less reason to listen to my NPR station any more if he's gone.
posted by BT at 11:39 AM PST - 15 comments
The state of Florida has charged a teenage student with a felony violation of a
wiretapping law for taping her chemistry class lecture.
posted by jfuller at 11:15 AM PST - 32 comments
Big earthquake hits downtown Seattle I'm sitting at work in the Real Networks building. We have just experienced close to a minute of jostling and shaking. There is now a six foot crack on the wall of my office. Looking around, nothing appears to have fallen over, but there are crowds of people on the sidewalks. [I'll post a link in a comment when king5 gets around to reporting it.]
posted by Mars Saxman at 10:59 AM PST - 97 comments
Mmmmm. Hu-ming. A British archaeologist finds evidence that cannibalism still existed amongst the Celts as recently as two thousand years ago, during Roman Times.
One grisly find includes a femur which had been split lengthways in order to scrape the marrow out. Tastemungus mates :)
posted by zeoslap at 9:59 AM PST - 6 comments
Kathicam.com is fake! [NYTimes, free reg. req.] A new twist in advertising online? ESPN.com has created a fake website called kathicam.com, put up a blinding pink background and created a character who writes poetry, has a webcam, is sorta attractive, and
hates ESPN.com. Each page of "kathi's" site has a prominent link to ESPN.com, and they've gotten a ton of click-through traffic. Inspired? Insipid?
posted by acridrabbit at 8:56 AM PST - 38 comments
Blogging On
I'm in the first paragraph of this San Fransisco Chronicle article on weblogs and Blogger. I interviewed with Mr. Yim last month as "someone who reads a lot of weblogs" and he complimented me on my own work. However, it seems he pulled a Newsweek on me and although he included me in the first paragraph of the piece he didn't include the url for my site, Retrospection, in the final article! Huh.
posted by hanseugene at 8:11 AM PST - 54 comments
are behind a wave of burglaries in the port city of Durban"
"The adaptable vervets have become ingenious and efficient raiders who break into houses..." / "The monkeys, about 75 centimetres tall, like to squeeze through security bars and small windows." / "Police have rejected the idea of shooting or poisoning the monkeys, but that does not stop residents from taking potshots at monkeys that feed in their suburban gardens. The gunshot victims - those that survive..."posted by tiaka at 4:55 AM PST - 13 comments
Yet another rail crash in the UK, and trains are still not back to normal in the wake of the last one. It will be interesting to see how this increases road travel, something the country clearly isn't prepared for.
posted by methylsalicylate at 4:32 AM PST - 18 comments
Mardi Gras riots are a disturbing trend as almost every celebration these days turns bad. What's different that these things happen? My personal experience in Seattle inside (because it's a self-link)
posted by john at 4:13 AM PST - 17 comments
Top Brazilian performers refuse to sing it. A big-city mayor begged radio stations not to play it. Women say it is degrading and dangerous. It's the
Face Slap, an uptempo ditty about a woman who asks her lover to hit her.
posted by crushed at 3:47 AM PST - 22 comments
February 27
"This stuff is still great." Paul Ford reminds us, as ever, why we're here, and thinks smart about the downturn: "We thought that Metcalfe's law on networks and Moore's law on processor power would change everything. But people don't change every 18 months; cultures don't start moving faster than processors. People don't increase their value with the increase in value."
posted by holgate at 7:00 PM PST - 18 comments
eBay takes a leaf out of eToys' book. Everybody's favourite auction site is threatening legal action against EBay Pty Limited, an Australian company that’s been around for twenty years but only got online recently. eBay has the
ebay.com.au domain name, so EBay bought
ebayaust.com in late 1999 for their small business selling self-published books.
Now eBay wants EBay to stop using the name both online and
offline, the latter of which seems highly dubious given the relative ages of the companies.
In what is becoming an increasingly global marketplace, where do we draw the line between disparate companies with similar names?
posted by Georgina at 6:26 PM PST - 6 comments
Unholy war in the Holy Land Though the Israeli and Arab conflict seems nearly always on the front pages of the papers, here is a minor religious struggle going on in area, an area where claim, counter claim, strife, bitterness and emotional toil seem the order of the day. This just odd enough to stand as symbolic of the area and its uniqueness.
posted by Postroad at 3:21 PM PST - 3 comments
Thrown off the scent. A fascinating story about The Pill and its effect on women's mate choice, and the effect of these choices on evolution. T-shirts belonging to unknown men were given to women to smell. All they had to do was say which smelt best. Women on the pill chose exactly the opposite t-shirts to those that didn't - find me free will, personal taste and the nature / culture divide in that if you can... [found via
Plastic - and if you want to talk about
that, then
click here]
posted by barbelith at 2:51 PM PST - 27 comments
Grrrlz R the future of computerz! A suprisingly warm-hearted and atypically unguyish analysis of the “ridiculous” new iMac colours and what they represent for future computer use. If Apple blew it by not letting teenage boys play games, are they smart to make iMacs attractive to sensitive, design-focused people (including grrrlz) as so-called digital hubs? Or will the boyz shoot ’em up on Wintel while the grrrlz rip boy-band MP3s on groovy iMacs? (My claim: Bondi blue remains the bestest iMac shade ever. Discuss.)
posted by joeclark at 1:59 PM PST - 17 comments
hoursong: A streaming index of songs based on ideas and associations to a
different theme. Whether it's the song, the artist, the album, the lyrics, the video, whatever; the theme can be tied to anything, and everyone can submit their own song that relates. You can also create discussion and song threads on every submission.
posted by magnetbox at 1:01 PM PST - 16 comments
The Marine Corps is preparing to unveil perhaps the
biggest breakthrough in weapons since the atomic bomb — a nonlethal weapon that fires directed energy at human targets. The
Vehicle-Mounted Active Denial System is designed to stop an individual in his tracks and make him turn and flee.
posted by tremendo at 12:03 PM PST - 38 comments
London's Millennium Dome for sale, or at least
its contents, which are being auctioned today at bargain-basement prices (
view live online here.) Meanwhile former Dome boss PY Gerbeau, hoping to buy the attraction itself, wins an injunction to remove hundreds of items from the auction.
This photostory shows the carnage as the Dome's insides are ripped out in preparation for this year's biggest yard sale: a sad and humiliating end.
posted by tobyslater at 8:56 AM PST - 7 comments
OpenCola Soft Drink™ "source code" has been released under General Public License and is freely available for download from their website. It marks the first time that open-source licensing has been applied to a consumer product. Or so they say.
posted by Firda at 5:24 AM PST - 12 comments
February 26
Have you been getting those annoying ICQ ad banners like me? Well, it appears that AOL/TimeWarner has been
testing out ads in the ICQ IM interface. The backlash has begun.
Here's a site that'll tell you how to get rid of some of the banners. My
friend's also gone ahead and taken the liberty to hack the ICQ dll that causes the ads to appear and has full instructions on how to remove the ads permanently from your ICQ. Hurry and grab those dll's before he gets
slashdotted!
posted by PWA_BadBoy at 11:37 PM PST - 14 comments
“Although I firmly believe that my
panties abduction was real, I have tried to be as broad-minded as possible and show as much integrity as I can in questioning myself and the whole terrible experience.”
posted by gleemax at 6:20 PM PST - 6 comments
It's official. There was life on Mars!!! "I am convinced that this is supporting evidence for the presence of ancient life on Mars,'' said Kathie Thomas-Keprta, an astrobiologist at the space center and the first author of a study appearing Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
posted by zeoslap at 5:46 PM PST - 12 comments
If Napster does die, what then? Industry Standard relays a report that investor Bertelsmann isn't just sitting there waiting for the axe to fall. They may be behind the development of their own Napster clone—Snoopster—to move in on the wide-open territory Napster leaves behind. The catch? Snoopster only searched online services, not your own files. Services like... Napster.
posted by honkzilla at 3:06 PM PST - 1 comments
Powazek on Metafilter Not sure if this has been posted before, but I just found it on a new sub-site of Communication Arts that appears to be more focussed on web design. Derek is writing a book on online communities, but I still got the impression that the interviewer didn't know who he was.
posted by jmcnally at 2:14 PM PST - 13 comments
Ow my head hurts Doctors operate on the wrong part of a mans brain because the CT scan is placed backwards on the viewing screen. Doh!
posted by zeoslap at 2:07 PM PST - 3 comments
Dan Rhodes is a talented British author whose books have been recommended to me by many web-people, and now he's got a website. It's an opportunity to sample his
Anthropology collection (hit refresh a few times), and boasts a
reviews page which should please fans of the Eggers Po-Mo style. What I think is interesting about Rhodes is how much his little stories remind me of the tiny vignettes you find in, uh, 'daily web publishing'.
posted by freakytrigger at 1:46 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
This article is rather interesting. I moved to Arizona last year and have noticed and commented on the high amount of female construction workers both here and in New Mexico compared to the amount you see in other states. If Arizona is 1% ahead of the national average, and still needs to hire more to meet requirements, I wonder how many states are far below requirements and just what they're doing about it, if anything. How often do you see a women workers in your state?
posted by crushed at 5:22 AM PST - 10 comments
February 25
"That's one slurpee and five mp3s. . . " Music Tellers will happen one way or another, I'll bet. And there will be places--legal or not--where fast downloading of whatever will be available for a price. (It's been a long time--7-11s still have surpees don't they?)
posted by aflakete at 10:11 PM PST - 2 comments
At first I found
Junkyard Wars (imported) and thought it was the funniest show on TV. Then I found
Iron Chef (also imported) and it was even better. I got hooked. Now I've found
BattleBots (homegrown! Buy American!), and I have to wonder if TV has any more pleasant surprises for me. As long as I stay away from the big networks I seem to do fine.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 7:25 PM PST - 21 comments
'Is media bias real?', part two: Left-leaning media criticism folks
FAIR have produced a report detailing some examples of of publishers, advertisers, and government officials killing stories they don't like and placing stories they do. What about the Chinese Wall between the business of news and the actual newsgathering? To quote a CBS news producer on the distinction between entertainment and news, "That line was over a long, long time ago....That line is long gone."
posted by snarkout at 3:51 PM PST - 18 comments
Blogger collapses once more - this time with the message: "Error 103:java.sql.SQLException: java.sql.SQLException: The log file for database 'pyra' is full. Back up the transaction log for the database to free up some log space. [more info]" It's an old theme, but a pertinent one to a large number of people on this site so don't kill me. It's being talked about
here. Look - we all know that this is not the fault of
Pyra, but it's getting absurd.
Prol has already migrated over to
Grey Matter - and from the look of the mailing lists, she may be the beginning of a flood. I have so much invested in Blogger working, that I'm prepared to be slapped for saying something must be done.
What can we do?!posted by barbelith at 10:16 AM PST - 37 comments
February 24
phoons No, don't hate me for the uninformative title--it would take longer to explain than it does to look.
posted by rodii at 5:12 PM PST - 10 comments
Khallid Muhammad, RIP Did this man do anything for African Americans? There is the argument that you need extremists so the moderates can get something done, but this guy was just a kook!
posted by Dr. Boom at 1:48 PM PST - 12 comments
We Live In... Hell? Tanya Corrin on Josh Harris as profoundly fucked company: "By day 60, I had to get out. By day 78, still unable to find an apartment, I chose couch surfing instead of remaining in a very public nightmare."
On the one hand, deeply satisfying; on the other, deeply sad.
posted by holgate at 7:47 AM PST - 13 comments
Don't look behind that wall , Mr. Olympic inspector. In advance of the ongoing assesment by 17 Olympic inspectors, thousands of unwanted people have been tossed into a detention center in China, without trial. For a month, 500 to 600 people a day have been tossed in. Human Rights in China interviewed former inmates of the detention centre, and they reported
"There were no bathing facilities, food was poured from buckets and fought over by mice, and beatings with leather belts were common."
Is this what China does to "put on its game face"?
posted by will at 3:56 AM PST - 3 comments
This ad , by the PETA had me LOL and still makes me laugh each time I see it. Actually it's pretty terrible, but that's probably why it's so funny.... See for yourself (Quicktime required)
posted by PWA_BadBoy at 1:21 AM PST - 9 comments
All Good No Bad Singapore is a country where markets are perfect and it is known globally as the economic miracle. A country where politics, intellectual life and criticism is sacrificed on the altar of the market. A nightmare, should I say?
(Link courtesy of
Arts & Letters Daily)
posted by asamee at 12:13 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
February 23
geek girl beats out just sex - Ev analyses click through rates on ads at weblogs.com
- "I did a little sifting through the banner ads and stats at weblogs.com. The average click-through rate for all 689 ads is 0.60%."
posted by rmw at 9:56 PM PST - 9 comments
Bozo Matic. No, it's not a toy, or appliance, or a poorly thought out website, it's a real given name - and yes, he's a real person. It just so happens he's Croatian, and is now the new chairman of Bosnia's government.
posted by kokogiak at 9:48 PM PST - 3 comments
Crapping Tiger, Hidden Death -- gotta be worse than watching porn on Wal-Mart equipment. Is this guy a front runner for the 2001 Darwin Award?
and, secondarily, is
ananova a legitimate news source? they always seem to have the kooky stories....
posted by donkeysuck at 4:49 PM PST - 7 comments
Do you have an abnormally large male genital? Have you been injured by one in the recent past? My favorite part:
"While it is true that 1.5% of home accidents are caused by large penis related incidents, only a small number have ever been known to be fatal. A large penis is a friend as well as a foe. Treat it as such."posted by Jeremy at 4:03 PM PST - 8 comments
Feeling like the odd man out in your favorite geek chatroom? Looking for new ways to alienate your parents, or maybe add a little spice to that threatening email? What if I told you that with
one mouse-click you could transform yourself from l4M3R to l33t haX0R? The dream is real with
L33t-5p34K G3n3r@t0r .
posted by gimli at 12:43 PM PST - 6 comments
Plastic is dangling carrots in front of users, but my first thought is "ewww." Many successful communities have feedback mechanisms, but is a monetary one the best choice? Is this a good way to encourage high quality posts at Plastic, or does it seem like they're trying to create an instant community for $150?
posted by mathowie at 11:57 AM PST - 18 comments
Wrongwaycomeback? Is Wetlog really going away? Neale has been a prankster in the past, but with his recent re-styling as a memory bank and the tone of the message, I worry about one of my favorite blogs. Someone say it ain't so.
posted by Skot at 10:44 AM PST - 24 comments
the web becomes theatre about face youth theatre is a group for gay/lesbian/transgender kids. every year, they create a stage show - from scratch - based on their own experiences. this year, they're writing the script from stories gathered on this website. rock on!
posted by patricking at 9:21 AM PST - 2 comments
Chicken or egg?
Life (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) imitates
art (Satirewire.)
posted by jfuller at 9:18 AM PST - 1 comments
Noah proposes a new term-
"Bioblog - weblog-type sites in which the primary (but not necessarily exclusive) focus is on its author instead of the web or other external media, but which, of course, is still more aligned in spirit and form to weblogs rather than traditional online journals."
posted by TuxHeDoh at 7:38 AM PST - 58 comments
15 of the 18 sentences beginning with the word "Well" in this transcript mark a speaker responding to a question or taking his/her turn. I'm sick of it.
posted by Mo Nickels at 1:48 AM PST - 27 comments
February 22
Have you ever been at the center of a media storm? It's not pleasant. The link is to just one of many local and city newspaper articles about the tiny rural high school where I work, plus we've had t.v. camera crews trying to sneak into the building and students being pulled out of class to be interviewed for local radio stations. I welcome your comments.
posted by Lynsey at 6:58 PM PST - 35 comments
The End of Money Interesting article about what money really means in the digital age. "If you want currency backed by something tangible, sign up for 5,000 frequent flier miles on a new Visa card. "
posted by zeoslap at 5:01 PM PST - 9 comments
Synthetic virus nearing reality Scientists will have the technology to create a wholly artificial virus within the next five years, a major conference in the US has been told. This is the quote I like best... Prof Hutchinson added: "Am I worried about a synthesised virus? No, you only worry about it if someone does it out of malicious motives."
posted by zeoslap at 4:36 PM PST - 18 comments
Is electronic puppy love real? Many
Aibo owners are as attached to the robotic dogs as they would be to live animals.
"I always thought I was pretty rational but I don't think of her as a toy any more.... She's like a part of the family."
posted by phichens at 12:43 PM PST - 27 comments
A Clarification -- Dave Eggers wants to expose the process, "By reprinting your correspondence to me I hope to illuminate the journalist's mind: how a writer starts by telling me he is a fan of my work, supports my company's endeavors, etc, then writes a snippety little thing full of sneering and suspicion." so he's posted ALL of the email correspondance he had with david kirkpatrick before
this unflattering piece was printed... and after.
"I think it's important that our exchange be published. It's the only remedy commensurate with the impact you enjoyed with your original piece. I want your friends and family to see it, and to say 'David, ew.'"
Meanspirited all around, but can you blame him?
posted by palegirl at 12:22 PM PST - 43 comments
(You)^2: Wired Feature on Human Cloning
There's a very long, very fascinating article on the current work being done on human cloning research; or possibly the work that has
already been done. Many of those interviewed for the article are convinced that somewhere in the world human cloning has already taken place. Lots of cool/frightening material here.
posted by hanseugene at 11:37 AM PST - 2 comments
Orange Cones the Virtual Reality tour!
I haven't laughed this hard for a long time! Make sure you read all of the cone pages.
posted by bytecode at 10:48 AM PST - 5 comments
GeForce 3 to be available on Macs first. Check out the 3rd video down. Bonus: A look at the new ID 3D engine for Doom. High drool factor.
posted by john at 10:22 AM PST - 5 comments
Hey, Baby -- did you feel that? The sun, someday, will envelope the Earth and all life as we know it will die. Can we prevent this? Some wacky scientists think that the best thing to do would be to up and move the whole damn planet.
posted by amanda at 9:33 AM PST - 16 comments
Love to argue about Genetically Modified Foods? Hate to be under-informed? The Science Controversies On-line: Partnerships in Education (SCOPE) project has a huge database of resources and links to commentaries on various issues, one of which is genetically modified foods and covers both (all?) side of the issue. The site is still in the works, it looks like it is (and will be) a useful resource.
posted by iceberg273 at 8:09 AM PST - 2 comments
This is how I always pictured internet love. The corpse in the fridge is the kicker. I thought you brits knew we were all nuts in the states.
posted by john at 7:30 AM PST - 5 comments
17 International Olympic Committee inspectors are in China reviewing its bid for the 2008 Olympic Games. Should human rights concerns be a factor in their decision? Does a sporting body have a duty to use compliance with the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights as a gauge to measure hosting worthiness for any country (not just China)?
posted by will at 7:08 AM PST - 7 comments
It's easy to get complacent and not learn foreign languages when you speak native English. In the UK, knowledge of foreign languages
verges on the comical.
posted by ecvgi at 2:07 AM PST - 23 comments
February 21
http://microsoft.sucks.my.metafilter.com I know it's self-referential, but I thought it was funny - I stumbled on this URL while doing a google search. Go on Matt, tell us how you really feel ;) - Also listed was "http://kottke-is-my-hero.metafilter.com" - sentiment as URL.
posted by kokogiak at 10:29 PM PST - 17 comments
EBay has had another software glitch and it's made all sorts of people accidentally opt out of receiving EBay's email advertising by mistake. So, just to help all you nice people out, they've decided to change your preferences so that you permit EBay to send you spam and to sell your phone number to telemarketers, like you really wanted. Time to visit the configuration page.
Again.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 9:25 PM PST - 7 comments
Woah. Apple dropped the price of the Cube to $1300, released iTunes 1.1, and just started selling the strangest looking iMac you've ever seen.
Now I want a Cube, a G4 Powerbook, a G4 tower, *and* an iMac.
posted by jragon at 7:29 PM PST - 43 comments
Napster takes first steps in trying to appease the RIAA, and specifically BMG. To me this approach is the stupidest thing Napster could have done. Who would want to pay a membership fee to use Napster if one can't even burn the files onto a cd?
posted by JFunk2800 at 6:27 PM PST - 1 comments
Ever seen a sonic boom? A NASA website has daily pictures from a variety of astronomical sources. Today's is a little more down-to-earth; the visual representation of a sonic boom, captured when an F/A-18 Hornet crossed the sound barrier.
posted by dragonmage at 1:45 PM PST - 8 comments
Go Princeton! Student loans will become grants for any who can't afford $134K for 4 years. How relevant attending college is--except for networking and the social milieu I guess--for the post-Internet teen I'm not sure. But anything which makes information and education more available and less tied to income is a fine thing.
posted by aflakete at 11:02 AM PST - 23 comments
Race-based Science Project Banned Forgetting for a moment how flimsy the premise of science projects at the 5th grade age can be, I think this is a great project. Does anyone find this offensive? Should children be allowed to discuss race and racism in broad daylight and among their peers?
posted by amanda at 9:18 AM PST - 49 comments
Yes, I'll admit it, I'm a Nascar fan, and although I never rooted for Dale Earnhardt (just yelled at him), I respected him and will miss him. But it's just plain sick that the racer that bumped him, Sterling Marlin, is getting
death threats against him and his family.
posted by Sal Amander at 8:07 AM PST - 27 comments
Bad Subjects Interviews Howard Zinn. I'm not sure I buy globalization as "a more sophisticated kind of imperialism," but given recent efforts to expand corporate welfare and manufacture enemies for a reinvigorated military-industrial complex I think parallels with 19th century robber-barons and the Great BBQ are apt. Lefties and libertarians unite!
posted by kliuless at 7:48 AM PST - 3 comments
Barak Just Says No. Former PM passes on Defense Minister post. Is it just me, or does Sharon's push for a unity government smack of Dubya's call for bipartisanship? I just don't
trust either one of them.
posted by jpoulos at 6:17 AM PST - 3 comments
February 20
Dog Mauling Victim's Partner to Test Wrongful Death Law California law is clear: Only legal heirs -- surviving spouses, children and parents -- are entitled to sue for wrongful death. Not long-term lesbian partners -- but Susan Smith is going to try. [link spotted on
web queeries] "The state can't have it both ways, you can't condition a right on marital status, then deny a whole class of people the right of access to be married."
"Any expansion of domestic partner rights is something conservatives in Sacramento, such as the Capitol Resource Institute, will vigorously oppose. 'I sympathize with her loss,' said Karen Holgate, policy director for the institute. 'My second reaction is why would she want to allow herself to be used in her grief for political gains?'"posted by palegirl at 9:44 PM PST - 10 comments
Racing Past the Truth. A new perspective on Earnhardt's death, the purpose of which is to question the supposed cause of death and general lack of research in the reporting thereof.
The most interesting part, though, is pointing out how the makers of the Head and Neck Restraining System (HANS) are milking his death for all its worth, even though it probably would have done nothing to save him.
posted by thebigpoop at 9:25 PM PST - 10 comments
Are you a duclod? For at least a decade, mysterious letters have been sent from around the nation to students at a small midwestern college filled with facts about "duclods." From the best I can tell looking at the
college newspaper webpage this is not a prank. Has anyone ever heard this term?
posted by croutonsupafreak at 7:18 PM PST - 12 comments
Is it just me, or does it seem ridiculous that Napster will
have one billion dollars of expendable net income over the next five years that it will be
able to pay to the record labels? The labels would be crazy to accept this; in a year, when Napster files for Chapter 11, the settlement would vanish.
posted by delfuego at 5:27 PM PST - 26 comments
Sonic Death Monkey! Somebody obviously is a fan of Nick Hornby's "High Fidelity," and has either invented a one-man band or invented a website for a one-man band. This site is worth it for the pictures alone, although the half-mad text ain't bad either.
posted by Skot at 3:41 PM PST - 3 comments
another hairbrained scheme. verisign (owner of network solutions) has devised a proprietory system that will allow cell-phone web-surfing fools to type in a phone number instead of a URL. it seems that "www.news.com" is hard on a keypad.
you have until april to apply to the new service (called WebNum) for one of the easy-to-remember numbers...1000, say. at which point WebNum (how much do I like saying that?) will decide on the most "effective" assignment of the requested shortcuts.
posted by rebeccablood at 2:27 PM PST - 16 comments
Britain's best footballer, David Beckham, and his wife Posh Spice are almost as important as royalty. That they have agreed to be interviewed by spoofist Ali G is a tad surprising...
read the transcript here.
posted by ecvgi at 1:05 PM PST - 5 comments
Metababy is back and in full effect, I think I was the first to modify it!!!
posted by dancu at 12:34 PM PST - 18 comments
The Key Vanishes: Scientist Outlines Unbreakable Code [NEW YORK TIMES - free reg required] In essence, the researcher, Dr. Michael Rabin and his Ph.D. student Yan Zong Bing, have discovered a way to make a code based on a key that vanishes even as it is used. While they are not the first to have thought of such an idea, Dr. Rabin says that never before has anyone been able to make it both workable and to prove mathematically that the code cannot be broken. Once this gets out, the debate on exporting strong crypto would seem to be essentially over.
posted by mikewas at 9:17 AM PST - 10 comments
Untangling an online breakup. Seapetal vs. Gothimuscle: a bond between author and bodybuilder formed in bondage ends with matching restraining orders. With a "trail of cyber-breadcrumbs" in the form of scurrious emails, chat-room stalking and nude photos that leads all the way to the Fetish Fleamarket, this anti-love story bears all the trapings of a Boston.com headline on a slow news day. But the question remains: where and how do we process crimes of harassment that occur in virtual places under assumed screen names? What's a real-world restraining order good for when all the attacking is done on the net?
posted by sixfoot6 at 7:53 AM PST - 5 comments
Beyond the bar code: Tags on retail products will send radio signals to their manufacturers, collecting information about consumer habits -- and raising privacy concerns. Radio tag technology is already here, used in fields such in livestock, freight-train cargo and highway tolls. The only barrier to widespread use is consumer products is price. When they can be made for a penny, expect to see them everywhere. From the March issue of
MIT Technology Review.
posted by jhiggy at 7:51 AM PST - 13 comments
This article about the
stereotyped Black man offered up by nearly every reality TV show broadcast in the US ends just as it's getting to the essence: why is this the "reality" the networks -- and damningly the audiences -- are choosing?
posted by sudama at 6:17 AM PST - 80 comments
Trekkers Rejoice! Word is a new Star Trek television series is in development. Time to pull those rubber ears out of the dresser and head out on the SciFi convention circuit again.
posted by darren at 5:49 AM PST - 25 comments
The Oregon Vortex is a nice place to visit if you enjoy places where things roll uphill and things change size base on their position.
Many have tried to figure it out. Physicist John Lister spent forty years there only to burn all his notes.
When is someone going to let the vortex genie out?
posted by john at 12:22 AM PST - 40 comments
February 19
From the U.S. Mint, one year later: "Demand for the Golden Dollar continues to grow. Currently, the U. S. Mint has shipped over 1 billion Golden Dollars through all of its distribution channels." My question: where are these things? Are any of you in the U.S. actually seeing these in circulation?
posted by ChrisTN at 11:24 AM PST - 86 comments
Windows XP Dev Intro Article introduces some of the new issues associated with developing apps for the next generation Microsoft OS. An excerpt from the article reads
"Writing applications for Windows XP requires a few new tricks, but they're not difficult. More important is the message we've been repeating over and over, especially since the introduction of Windows 2000: the more your applications behave like good citizens, the more successfully they'll run on Windows XP. Windows XP applications should to follow the rules you learned in kindergarten: share your resources, play well with others, and follow the rules. It's all about cooperation."
Lovely.
posted by tatochip at 9:47 AM PST - 12 comments
Gould, earthworms and you: Stephen Jay Gould discusses the recent discovery that the human body has only about 1/4th of the DNA originally estimated. NYTimes op-ed piece.
One of the best results of this discovery is that it sounds death knell of reductionist biology; as usual, the human body turns out to be more complicated than anyone could have imagined. ("Gee, we haven't explained life, the universe and everything? Gosh darnit!")
I have always thought it was silly to ascribe artistic talent, criminal behaviour, musical aptitude or computer savvy to the foibles of some single gene. Now here's independent confirmation of that opinion...
So once again we find that
we ourselves, and not our parents or our grandparents, are responsible for who we are and what we become...
posted by hanseugene at 9:38 AM PST - 14 comments
Through rose-tinted spectacles? It's media waffle for a quiet news day, and comes on the back of a wave of nostalgia, but Reagan's "victory" in this latest poll feels like the triumph of selective memory, and of the desire to reassociate the presidency with jelly-bean eating. (FDR trails in fifth, and there's no mention of Woodrow Wilson, though Carter and Nixon get a look-in.) Which makes me wonder: does the US have a clear sense of its history, as far as Presidents are concerned?
posted by holgate at 9:26 AM PST - 15 comments
This picture of the Space Shuttle and the ray of "shadow" from the moon is pretty cool. I even think I buy the explanation.
posted by aflakete at 7:52 AM PST - 15 comments
Suspects in Dartmouth Profs' Deaths Held in Indiana -- Two teenagers (allegedly) brutally stabbed two professors. Am I the only one deeply disturbed by all these underaged murderers in recent years? And to resurrect an old debate from my college criminology classes: Are these "killer kids" a product of nature (as in, they're born with something loose) or nurture (as in, lousy parenting)?
posted by shauna at 7:09 AM PST - 28 comments
Women Urged to Run for U.S. Presidency -- A group called American Women Presidents is urging Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and more than 100 other women governors, lawmakers and business leaders to consider a run for the White House in 2004. Weirdly enough, this is the same group who offered Monica Lewinsky a job as its corporate VP last year.
posted by shauna at 6:42 AM PST - 20 comments
February 18
Earnhardt dead at Daytona. This came after a much more hideous looking wreck on lap 175 which took out almost 20 cars, but from which everyone more or less walked away. Earnhardt wrecked in the final lap. In a two-car crash. In the rear view mirror of his son. I don't think "ironic" even comes close.
posted by jammer at 4:22 PM PST - 30 comments
"You mean that the Clinton's are Hitler and Mussolini?" And who says so? God, that's who! Linda Newkirk has been receiving personalized messages from God, and what is God telling Linda, who's using the power of the Internet to keep us all informed? Among other things, God says, "the economic bubble, which grew to such tremendous proportions, in the last eight years, is bursting"; "before this month of February, 2001 is over a death nail shall be plunged into the stock market"; "I know that you want Me to speak of what many are calling the 'Early-out rapture' "; and, whoa to us all, "George W's days are numbered to a few; for I have warned him against Lucifer's works, but he does not believe that he will soon die." And then what? Well, it seems those naughty Russians and Chinese met in a tent and signed a deal in blood to start throwing nuclear missiles at the god-fearing and ever-righteous U.S. of A. starting on or before March 31st.
Hey, these are His words, not mine. Although I feel comforted that God uses terms like "economic bubble" and "Early-out rapture." Renews my faith in the power of marketing.
posted by honkzilla at 3:08 PM PST - 9 comments
Bill Clinton Op-Ed on the Marc Rich pardons: "I want every American to know that, while you may disagree with this decision, I made it on the merits as I saw them, and I take full responsibility for it".
posted by owillis at 1:06 AM PST - 43 comments
February 17
Well, if
SETI@HOME is too much of a long-shot for you, then how about something absolutely certain to result in important findings?
GENOME@HOME is trying to search the results of the human genome sequencing project to find the place in the genome where certain important proteins are encoded, and
FOLDING@HOME is trying to figure out how proteins are folded to become enzymes, where shape is more important than chemistry.
FOLDING@HOME is working on some of the critical proteins of HIV, among other things. HIV has been sequenced and from that they know the amino acid sequences of the enzymes it makes. But without understanding their shapes it's not possible to figure out how they work. This represents one of the best applications of volunteer distributed computing I can think of. With
40,000 participants, FOLDING@HOME has already had successes, including one of the HIV enzymes. (Courtesy of
Firing Squad)
posted by Steven Den Beste at 5:03 PM PST - 14 comments
Dr. Stupid sets things straight. Australian commentary site
Crikey is where Dr. Stupid exposes the sloth, stupidity, and duplicity of journalists who should really know better. I enjoyed his autopsy of the recent flurry of Tom and Nicole coverage, and the rest of the column has some nice tidbits as well. Are there columns like this about the American press that you would recommend?
posted by BGM at 10:32 AM PST - 8 comments
Manic Street Preachers play Havana tonight - "It'll be like Wham! in China."
Following in the footsteps of agit-prop songster Billy Joel, the Boys from Blackwood take Sony-branded anti-capitalism to the last place "that really fights against the Americanisation of the world."
posted by ceiriog at 6:32 AM PST - 9 comments
Quiet that computer! This site offers some great tips on reducing the noise produced by your computer. I just got a new Power Mac G4 and a couple of external FireWire drives to go with it, and was appalled at how loud the setup was -- particularly the fans in the FireWire drive cases. Mike Breeden at Xlr8yourMac.com has a
great tip on reducing the fan noise on the G4 itself, which I applied to the FireWire drives with good results (haven't tried it on the G4 yet). If your computer (Mac, PC, or otherwise) is loud enough to be heard over your MP3s, maybe these pages will help.
posted by kindall at 2:15 AM PST - 8 comments
"What is most disturbing about these people is their banality, their normalness... It's the fact that these people are chatting and they are horribly normal, everyday people, yet they are capable of
these acts of unimaginable savagery."
Tired of politics and Survivor 2? Let's talk about
real cannibalism!
posted by lia at 1:36 AM PST - 6 comments
February 16
Anyone have the inside poop on why
Dreamless went black tonight for repairs? Apparently there was some skirmishing and hacking activity earlier in the week. Details anyone?
posted by netbros at 10:55 PM PST - 10 comments
The funniest thing ever, period. Note: streaming video with sound, using RealPlayer. Though I'm not sure of the high-level discussion we can have about this, I don't think anyone in the world should be denied the oppurtunity to laugh this hard. Watch the whole thing - I particularly like around 3:25. Trust me.
posted by swank6 at 7:47 PM PST - 35 comments
Rowdy XFL fans toss paraplegic to Coliseum floor "His 13-year-old nephew, Eddie Cardenas, rushed
to his aid and wound up covered in beer and his
uncle's blood as fans lobbed brew in his direction...." Hmmm the word Coliseum just stands out to me for some reason. A toast to the Roman Empire!!
posted by metasak at 4:04 PM PST - 15 comments
Reuters confirms that our friend Dubya did in fact authorize the attack on Iraqi radar stations. We're killing people and giving a dictator fuel for the propaganda mill he needs to prop up his regime. But that's okay, because the people who are dying don't share our race and religion and so, in fact, they're not really "people" at all. They're ciphers and objects and statistics. Apparently it's only when white Protesetants die that death really matters. Incidentally, remember this bombing isn't a matter of protecting the Kuwaiti ethnic minority (read: our oil interests), this is over perceived violation of arbitrarily imposed NATO sanctions. Scum. Scum scum scum!
posted by hanseugene at 1:49 PM PST - 40 comments
Recently released FBI hate-crime statistics for 1999 show that - as many have feared - enforcement of hate-crime laws is skewed against blacks. Of racially-motivated where the offenders race is known, blacks make up 20% of the reported incidents despite representing only 13% of the population as a whole.
posted by mikewas at 11:01 AM PST - 16 comments
Time to toss the 3.0 and 4.0s in the trash - and I'm not talking about GPA. The biggest problem for Web developers right now is the prevalence of old browsers that don't fully support standards like HTML 4.0 and CSS 1 & 2. Now that we have at least 3 browsers that can handle most of these standards, why not encourage a move from the less standard browsers to ones that will allow us to more easily design sites. Write once view anywhere....Woo hoo!
posted by bkdelong at 6:53 AM PST - 50 comments
February 15
The Privacy Space In every MeFi thread about personal privacy in the digital age, the comment inevitably arises: "You already have zero privacy. Get over it." The article even quotes it. But someone else in the article says, "The idea that technology and privacy are intrinsically opposed is false." Great article (from a non-techie standpoint) on the coming promises of privacy tech.
posted by Skot at 9:55 AM PST - 4 comments
Tales of unmitigated stupidity. Some people
belong in jail because it's not safe for them to be left alone in public. (What's the law in the UK for dealing with a minor committing a crime like extortion? In the US, this guy would probably be tried as an adult.)
posted by Steven Den Beste at 8:46 AM PST - 7 comments
Network Solutions sells out. The once-monopoly has decided to pool all their domain name registration information and sell it to the spammers of the world. From their marketing website, "Taking advantage of our position as a market leader, we have organized our pool of over 15 million registered domain names into a customer database of over 5 million unique customers. Our data service offers access to the key decision-makers behind millions of leading Web businesses."
True, there is a
privacy policy, and you can try and protect yourself following their instructions, but it would seem that once the cat's out of the bag... And, what's to keep someone from purchasing the database of email addresses, fax numbers, telephone numbers, and addresses and selling them off to someone else?
posted by warhol at 8:12 AM PST - 35 comments
February 14
Every once in a while I like to throw a big fat monkey wrench into the MetaFilter "post a link and a comment" system and get people to sit down and actually answer questions, instead of lazily following links off into the great blue yonder. And lately I've been hankering for some new & interesting reading material. So tonight, boys and girls:
if you could only have one weblog to take with you to the desert island, which one would it be? [Hint: Besides your own log!] Personally, I'd probably go with either
Noah Grey's weblog or the
Chess Log. What about you?
posted by hanseugene at 9:27 PM PST - 114 comments
fun with faces. using applets,
ken perlin built an interactive facial-expression thingy.
i found this site because ken is responsible for the cute lil heart animation at google. there are quite a few interesting thingamabobs to check out at his site.
posted by acridrabbit at 9:15 PM PST - 4 comments
globalize the way we eat! save the trees The Chinese, it seems, are destroying their trees for thow away chopsticks and there is building concern that they should recycle their eating utensils.
Why not globalize and we can all simply use our hands?
posted by Postroad at 1:28 PM PST - 3 comments
Spineless Pinkos! - The VA Pledge of Allegiance bill (discussed at MeFi two weeks ago
here) is withdrawn, after one last old-school McCarthyesque comment by its sponsor.
posted by kevincmurphy at 1:24 PM PST - 17 comments
Valentine's Day may be a remant of the ancient Roman festival of
Lupercalia, in which "young men who were naked except for the skins of goats that had been sacrificed this day, ran from the Lupercal around the bounds of the Palatine . . . striking the women they met with strips of goat skin, to promote fertility."
This factoid resists my every attempt to add further comment.
posted by jbushnell at 1:14 PM PST - 3 comments
Kansas Evolves Yet some school board members still have doubts about the science behind Darwin's theory of evolution. Can't we do an emergency air drop of
Cosmos for these folks?
posted by ritualdevice at 10:02 AM PST - 32 comments
blog you*3 egos on display. could the flames be rising? the guys at the "blog you" site get reviewed.
posted by riley370 at 9:21 AM PST - 33 comments
how to buy the new republican party "The tax cuts will make the economy grow. As people do better, they start voting like Republicans--unless they have too much education and vote Democratic"
[this is the recently launched newyorker online]posted by palegirl at 8:29 AM PST - 25 comments
Blogger server down? Well, a least for me all night and all morning. I don't know if everyone is getting this error: HTTP Error 500-13 - Server too busy
ev says he will be at O'Reilly's P2P Conference for much of the rest of this week.
Anyone knows any other news about this?
posted by neo at 8:08 AM PST - 9 comments
February 13
Jorn tries pay for play. Seeking to sell links near the top of his extremely-widely-read weblog Robot Wisdom, Jorn Barger has set an (experimental) $20
submission fee: you don't get considered if you don't pay, but if he approves of your site you get a link. (Actually, it's even more complicated than that, which is characteristic of the man.) There's even a $100 fee for certain commercial links. Jorn can do what he likes, of course, but how well do you think this might work?
posted by dhartung at 10:35 PM PST - 42 comments
The LA Times on entertainment journalism. An obvious but refreshing analysis of what gets reported, what doesn't get reported, and why. Particularly refreshing is the discussion of the ridiculous self-fulfilling prophecy of reporting box office numbers, and how that drastically affects the marketability of more sophisticated films meant to appeal to adults (who don't often see films on opening night).
posted by dan_of_brainlog at 4:14 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
Republicans plan energy bill "Legislation to be introduced next week by the Senate energy committee chairman would pay billions of dollars in subsidies to the energy companies, which gave generously in last year's campaign."
More here.posted by kliuless at 3:06 PM PST - 3 comments
The truth is out there -- way,
way out there. Masons, Mormons, and William Shatner all play a role in this secret history of the millennia-old struggle between three alien factions for control of Earth. The battleground: a vast subterranean complex known as
Dreamland.
posted by jjg at 1:28 PM PST - 3 comments
In time for Valentine's Day, the fabulous Guardian weblog has a special collection of links to articles about love, sex, cybersex and permutations of those three, from Australia, US, Canada, maybe a few virtual realms, too.
posted by jhiggy at 11:57 AM PST - 2 comments
The obvious next step has been taken: An Oregon state senator
introduces a bill that will expand the definition of hate crimes to include ecoterrorism and illegal actions motivated by anticapitalism. Block a street, go to jail?
posted by aaron at 10:40 AM PST - 48 comments
The End of Fair Use? Pat Schroeder and Publishers Go After Libraries "Of all the dangerous and dot-complex problems that American publishers face in the near future — economic downturns, competition for leisure time, piracy — perhaps the most explosive one could be libraries. Publishers and librarians are squaring off for a battle royal over the way electronic books and journals are lent out from libraries and over what constitutes fair use of written material."
posted by timothompson at 10:04 AM PST - 7 comments
The Oscar Nominees Page is up... ...and it looks like both Gladiator and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon are the two big movies this time, with 10 Nominations each, including Best Picture. In addition, Julia Roberts finally has her oscar nod, as well as Tom Hanks, Ed Harris and Geoffrey Rush returning for another round in the Best Actor Category.
posted by Cavatica at 6:11 AM PST - 38 comments
February 12
The Oscar® nominations won't get announced until tomorrow, which means that the noms for
The Razzies were announced today. The biggest contender? John Travolta revolting pet film, "Battlefield Earth," with eight.
posted by honkzilla at 6:15 PM PST - 23 comments
IUMA has been "forced to scale operations to the bare minimum." Maybe they shouldn't have used all that funding money on
iuma babies.
posted by gluechunk at 5:04 PM PST - 11 comments
NEAR shoemaker lands and survives. The NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft touched down on a barren space rock called Eros on Monday, in history’s first attempt to land an object on an asteroid. Scientists said the probe still appeared to be sending signals back to Earth after making contact, hinting that the car-sized probe survived the descent. The speed at impact was between 1.5-1.8 m/s. This marks the first time that a US spacecraft was the first to land on another body of the solar system. And, if the server is back up, it's worth checking out
the project's website.
posted by warhol at 12:35 PM PST - 11 comments
Children, if you can't play nice, go to your rooms. Microsoft and
Sun are now throwing rotten eggs at each other. I haven't seen the atmosphere between two large corporations get this ugly since the MCI/AT&T long distance wars. As
Ars Technica puts it, "Man, their bad blood has gone from lengthy legal disputes to 'Oh Yeah? Well your mom is ugly!' type squabbling."
posted by Steven Den Beste at 12:05 PM PST - 6 comments
The official newspapers of staples.com gets huffy about integrity. Back in 1999 the L.A. Times produced a special section praising the Staples center and sort of forgot to mention that they were splitting the ad revenue with Staples. At the time their management was pretty upfront about tearing down the wall between news and advertistisement. Now they've decided to act like journalists again. However, I'm not so sure that what this guy did was all that unethical. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't.
posted by rdr at 10:01 AM PST - 5 comments
The Last Expression project is a forum to explore the roles, functions, meanings and making of art in the Nazi concentration camps of World War II, focusing on the notorious site of Auschwitz-Birkenau. ... It is neither widely recognized in the realm of Holocaust history, nor in the discipline of art history, that concentration camp prisoners -- victims of the Nazis -- produced works of art during their incarceration.
[from the Introduction.]posted by tranquileye at 7:26 AM PST - 2 comments
February 11
The Independent has a report that excavations at Herculaneum has brought forth some 850 papyri and "Among the works, which academics hope to read using the new equipment, are the lost works of Aristotle (his 30 dialogues, referred to by other authors, but lost in antiquity), scientific works by Archimedes, mathematical treatises by Euclid, philosophical work by Epicurus, masterpieces by the Greek poets Simonides and Alcaeus, erotic poems by Philodemus, lesbian erotic poetry by Sappho, the lost sections of Virgil's Juvenilia, comedies by Terence, tragedies by Seneca and works by the Roman poets Ennius, Accius, Catullus, Gallus, Macer and Varus."
posted by stbalbach at 8:58 AM PST - 20 comments
Anyone catch the fall of Three Rivers? The Steelers want some footage of the stadium falling. The
Kingdome falling made the headlines here before, but didn't have any contests to my knowldege. So I was wondering does anyone know of any other buildings coming down? Any suggestions on what buildings should come down? And does the destruction or closing of a favorite place in your city or recall any fond memories?
posted by brent at 7:15 AM PST - 4 comments
And you thought Microsoft was evil. There appears to be pretty significant evidence that
IBM was involved in automating the persecution of Jews by the Nazis. Read more about it
here,
here and
here.
And since we haven't even settled the question of when a nation has atoned for its sins, what exactly
is the statute of limitations for a company's sins?
posted by anildash at 3:34 AM PST - 20 comments
February 10
Artist Demolishes Belongings Inside a defunct department store in the heart of London's shopping district, dozens of yellow bins move slowly along conveyor belts toward the mouth a gigantic blue machine. Workers in jumpsuits systematically catalogue and weigh the contents of each one. This is British artist Michael Landy's newest work: The items in the bins - coats, photographs, paintings, furniture - are all of his belongings. Over the next two weeks, everything he owns - including a red Saab - will be destroyed.
posted by Mars Saxman at 2:23 PM PST - 37 comments
February 9
It's become second nature for many of us to head straight to
Google when trying to find something, and more people seem to be discovering the site all the time. These days, savvy New Yorkers are
Googling for love.
posted by Aaaugh! at 8:34 PM PST - 32 comments
Torture Still Widespread In Asia Says Amnesty . On Drudge. Do you think human rights violations of this sort mandate sanctions? I tend to not be a big fan of the U.S.'s ineffective Iraqi or Cuban sanctions but... This is very, very brutal. What do you think the proper U.S./European response should be?
posted by hanseugene at 7:19 PM PST - 3 comments
Burma: Grace Under Pressure Zeldman logged this a couple days ago, but I just got to it today. Geofrrey Hiller's documentary site based on his travel in Burma. I can't say enough good things about it. A moving presentation on a beleaguered country, beautifully photgraphed and sequenced. The world is forgetting what was done to Burma. This should be a reminder.
It's slow, in part deliberately; it uses Flash (well), and it's got big images and sound…but it's worth it.
posted by rodii at 6:55 PM PST - 3 comments
I have no idea what this is. monty python meets the near east. (warning: fairly loud audio; flash required)
I would think this was one of those "viral marketing" sites except that it's in... turkish?
any ideas what this is? babelfish doesn't translate turkish.
posted by rebeccablood at 3:48 PM PST - 8 comments
Kittens for Sale! This twisted, yet somewhat humorous site is a
PRANK by MIT students. Yet the
FBI doesn't think so. They are taking it serious. One would think that catching all the pedophiles online would be a bit more important then a hoax internet site.
posted by da5id at 10:43 AM PST - 32 comments
How things work. Yes I know there's a plethora of physics-related 'how things work' websites out there, but I got absorbed in this one for a long time (run by physics prof Louis Bloomfield). Started with my wondering: "Why do colors fade in sunlight?" The first page though has an interesting bit (with video) about
explosive superheated water. Don't try this at home.
posted by kokogiak at 10:40 AM PST - 4 comments
This has to be one of the coolest sites ever. Can't remember of the details of the 1973 saturday morning schedule, the one that turned you into a media junkie. It's here! And now TV Party seems to have partnered with
YesterdayLand, "a new entertainment company that produces retro-themed entertainment and merchandise based on classic television, movies, music, toys, snack food, and fashion." What's up with that?
posted by tranquileye at 10:13 AM PST - 7 comments
Cool, daddy-o.
S. Britt lays down some hep cat artwork, ranging from album covers to tattoos to magazine spreads. Plus the interface is smashing, baby. I'm feelin'
groooovy.
posted by hijinx at 7:25 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
February 8
What happened to 16 Dominicans lost a sea when their compass broke while trying to sail to Puerto Rico? They were saved by the gift of Faustina Mercedes breasts. Eight men and seven women took turns suckling for just a few seconds each day. Now know as a the "Little Angel of the Sea", Mercedes and the 17 others were safely returned to the Dominican Republic after 12 days.
posted by Zebulun at 1:14 PM PST - 21 comments
Slate experiments with form in its new series "Seed" aka "Genius Babies", a long-form investigative report by David Plotz that will unfold on the web as he interviews and collates sources. The
editorial concept is a deliberate attempt to bring 5000+ word pieces to web journalism, while opening it up to the possibilities of the medium.
posted by dhartung at 12:57 PM PST - 10 comments
Space U-Haul Atlantis on its way. Atlantis is climbing orbit to reach Alpha carrying with it the Destiny module for Space Station Freedom. The module only has 2 inches of clearance from the shuttle itself and will take one hell of a can opener to get it out.
posted by Brilliantcrank at 8:06 AM PST - 9 comments
February 7
Technology Weblog in French The Other Solitude finally has a
10.am-style technology Weblog,
Pssst. Vaguely hard to navigate. The hot news appears to be in
/actu/. ¶ Fun fact: French for
Weblog is either
webabillard or
webillard. (
Cf. Spanish
bitácora and Italian, Dutch, and German
weblog.)
posted by joeclark at 5:41 PM PST - 5 comments
The Anti-Defamation League has categorized
the circle-A anarchy sign as "General Racist Symbol" (although in the Background info, they state: "The majority of people who identify with this movement consider themselves non-racist or anti-racist"). Kinda wacky.
posted by gluechunk at 5:16 PM PST - 14 comments
I'll never understand people. Some guy integrated a PowerBook with his Nissan Pathfinder in order to play mp3s and he calls it the "Pathintosh." This bad boy's got it all: touchscreen LCD panel for the console, steering wheel audio controls, IR remote for remote playing, wireless AirPort access to download songs from his home computer, and a convenient dock for the PowerBook. The only question is "why." Cool, but definitely overkill.
posted by bbrown at 5:08 PM PST - 23 comments
Got (human) milk? Mother's milk saves 16 lost at sea on a 12-day journey, during an attempted crossing from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico. Human breasts can do a hell of a lot more than just sitting there and looking pretty...
posted by beth at 2:53 PM PST - 3 comments
religious action figures! yes! no more stealing my friends' action figures! seriously, this could be good for families with a new testament preference; they have "african heritage" and "caucasian heritage" lines. one odd thing -- the "african" eve is
much lighter than the "african" adam... what's up with that?
link from k10k.posted by o2b at 2:51 PM PST - 7 comments
Americans suck at math. Mathematician trade deficit ensues... I only find this article interesting because of a talk with my math teacher recently about how most math teachers these days are foriegners, although she isn't, and not that foriegners are bad. But I'm curious if this a bad problem in today's economy or not? Or if this is a problem? What country is good at math? India and China? That's where most of the Silicon Valley CEO's workers are from these days. Or is that political, financial? I don't know. Do you know?
posted by redleaf at 2:42 PM PST - 22 comments
Did anyone catch
60 Minutes II last night, and their piece on inventor
Dean Kamin? After watching this show I felt that the hype surrounding "IT" may not be unfounded. His company's inventions are truly revolutionary. Plus, the guy has some really cool homes that make Bill Gates' mansion look boring.
posted by Sal Amander at 12:39 PM PST - 17 comments
The Business Software Alliance is trying to spook everyone here in Chicago (and other cities) with a major radio ad campaign and mailing. I don't have a problem with their goal, but I do with their scare tactics. Additionally their radio ads, as well as their web site, encourage disgruntled employees to anonymously blow the whistle on their current or former employers. Do we need to encourage unhappy employment at a time in this society when disgruntled employees can easily become violent? Do we need to emphasize disgruntled employees? Or is this a good way to let off the steam before your kettle blows?
posted by Sal Amander at 12:22 PM PST - 7 comments
Police raid Verder dorm room, confiscate computer. Now this normally doesn't sound like anything out of the ordinary... we always hear about this stuff, right? But check out the
web page in
question. I think this is being taken just a little too far. I used to be an avid StarCraft player too, and I've seen my fair share of clan pages that have a page like the one that got these guys in trouble. Guess we're still in post-Columbine overcarefulness mode...
posted by PWA_BadBoy at 11:47 AM PST - 14 comments
Gore: It was your fault, sleazeball! Clinton: No, it was YOUR fault, automaton! Reports today indicate that Al Gore and Bill Clinton engaged in a heated hour-long blame fest over who caused Gore to lose the election. (Or, to assuage the bitter, caused him to fail to acheive enough of a majority nationwide that the Florida outcome would not have mattered.) Was it Clinton's fault? Was it Gore's? More importantly, does it matter, or does anyone even care anymore?
posted by Dreama at 11:00 AM PST - 33 comments
In Defense of Copyleft. "...during a legal seminar Tuesday in Dublin on 'Copyleft and Open Source Software: History, Applications and Legal Issues,' Free Software Foundation founder and principle GNU developer Richard Stallman argued that the concept of copyright is inappropriate to the digital age and restricts freedom and innovation."
I'm interested to see what people think about the issue of Copyleft, especially as it applies to web technologies and software.
posted by Hackworth at 10:40 AM PST - 13 comments
Matt has redesigned his home and it's certainly not the same as before. It seems to be the
season for
redesigning your weblog. Lots of change is in the air, and the results are a breath of fresh air, if these sites are anything to go by. (
Note too, that he's using custom coldfusion/SQL code on
this box to serve his personal site.)
posted by grestall at 3:50 AM PST - 43 comments
February 6
Old Baby Skeleton Found In D.C. Attic I don't usually crosspost stuff here and on my weblog but this one was just too weird to miss:
Contractors installing duct work in an attic found a suitcase containing the skeleton of a baby who apparently died more than 20 years ago, police said. The home was built in 1928 and occupied by members of the same family until the mid-1990s. The last of three elderly sisters who lived there died in 1995 at the age of 102, and the house was sold five years ago.
posted by hanseugene at 9:26 PM PST - 10 comments
One way to get Internet access... just join the Alaska Army National Guard. From the Nome Nugget newspaper article, "Army National Guard leaders have said they want all 350,000 Guardsmen in the U.S. wired to the Internet by 2005 as part of a plan to improve communication and to create a force of 'Cyber Warriors'".
posted by JParker at 5:54 PM PST - 4 comments
Woman gets drunk, crashes, sues boss successfully A Toronto woman has been awarded CAN$300,000 in a landmark suit. She sued her boss for throwing an office party from which the woman drove home drunk.
I am ashamed to be Canadian and I hope that fucking lady gets run down in the street like a dog.
posted by tweek at 3:16 PM PST - 43 comments
Adam Gopnik on NPR (NB: Requires Real Player) Gopnik wrote about Paris for the
New Yorker for some years. Susan Stamberg interviewed him for
Morning Edition today, and he says many things I agree with about what makes for a good city (just to tie into the discussion we've been having about cities).
posted by aurelian at 11:12 AM PST - 1 comments
Israel: How did it get this bad? ...they are outraged by the Palestinians, not only for rejecting Mr Barak’s offer but for turning on Israelis with violence. “We gave them everything, and they shoot us,” is, crudely, the Israeli-in-the-street reaction. Disillusioned and bitter, Israelis are blinkered from any point of view but their own; they are blind to a Palestinian perspective.
posted by cell divide at 11:06 AM PST - 28 comments
Stacy sues Survivor. She claims that producer Mark Burnett urged Dirk and Sean to vote against her rather than against Rudy, in hopes that the last older contestant would not be booted.
posted by rafeco at 6:30 AM PST - 17 comments
February 5
Amazon.Pay? Amazon has a system to allow site owners and sellers of digital content to get paid....
posted by owillis at 9:33 PM PST - 76 comments
Proposed IRS rule could limit the freedom to link. The US Internal Revenue Service is proposing a rule that might make it inadvisable for not-for-profit organizations to provide links on their Web sites to
any political site. The IRS is proposing to interpret any link to a political site from the pages of a nonprofit as evidence that the nonprofit is "engaging in political activity" and thus in danger of losing its 503(c) status.
posted by lagado at 6:30 PM PST - 8 comments
Lost but not forgotten? My days of not consuming animals based on the assumption that they are
thinking, feeling beings may be swayed by this article on a chicken that lived four and a half years…without a head.
posted by poodle at 6:25 PM PST - 7 comments
Hey! What's this thing suddenly coming toward me very fast? Very, very fast. So big and flat and round... Are you one of those people in search of a new extreme sport? Have you considered
spacediving?
posted by Aaaugh! at 2:13 PM PST - 6 comments
Is media bias real? MRC has an interesting collection of quotes by the big 3 news anchors comparing how they treated Clinton & GW Bush on the same issue - abortion. It sure looks like bias to me, but then again, I'm biased.
posted by schlyer at 2:08 PM PST - 36 comments
Way to go, Mr. President. Hmm, odd. If you visit the White House's website and click on the president, the text is right, but the picture seems to be a little off...
If it's been corrected, I grabbed a screenshot and put it on
my server.
I'm sure it's just a sign of the attention to detail to come over the next four years...
posted by warhol at 12:21 PM PST - 10 comments
Remember DotComGuy? He lived in his E-cave for a whole year as a promotional stunt to prove anyone could survive without leaving home as long as they had a laptop and a internet connection. Well he did survive and left the cave on January 1 stating he was taking a break from the net. But now he's back with a new
website and a new fiancee he met in a chatroom during his virtual imprisonment.
Do we call still call it addiction or a way of life now?
posted by oh posey at 11:34 AM PST - 5 comments
free music? Stumbled on this, it seems like a good idea the artists actually approve the download of their mp3s...
posted by jonpanky at 11:11 AM PST - 3 comments
Is Dubya running his own show? GWB came to talk to Congressional Democrats at their retreat and got a key portion of an executive order he just signed wrong, according to some Representatives. Was it a simple misunderstanding or did he just sign something that a handler put in front of him?
posted by norm at 11:07 AM PST - 41 comments
February 4
Ending racism? This site contains several "exhibits" about race and racism. It makes a pretty non-controversial argument, that racism is evil. But what is racism? Ageism, sexism, ableism, "geneism" and classism all fit the bill put forth here. Can't putting all of these causes under one umbrella be counter productive? [more inside]
posted by croutonsupafreak at 10:02 PM PST - 19 comments
Chack is an artist doing stuff you've never imagined. It's sugar-coated, sappy, happy, cartoony imagery you often find in japanese logos, but
the subjects are violent and sexual. Brilliantly funny and shocking. If anyone can translate or knows the story behind this person, please enlighten me. (via
andrew and
mrpants)
posted by mathowie at 9:59 PM PST - 17 comments
So
Shey tried to order a pair of Nike's from their custom shop with the word "
sweatshop" on them. They refused three times, listing a new excuse every time. I smell a great culture jamming project. My suggestion? Let's all
go do the same.
posted by fraying at 8:04 PM PST - 30 comments
Another unified theory! And this time it's not just about physics, but the eternity domain, diallel lines, sunspots, egg resonance, planetary alignment, plant dehydration and the Book of Mormon too.
posted by rodii at 6:04 PM PST - 4 comments
Cringeley, from the Pulpit, on Starband satellite internet, and it's use with home LANs and non-Wintel machines. Yes, you *can* get an Ethernet connection to the external box instead of that silly-ass IP over USB thing...
posted by baylink at 11:42 AM PST - 32 comments
February 3
Safari is a new service from O'Reilly which allows you online access to a number of their books for a monthly fee. While the concept isn't entirely new, (
books24x7 comes to mind), the use of
O'Reilly books and the
monthly rate has promising potential.
[Via Cam]posted by alan at 6:43 PM PST - 5 comments
Kill a patent, make a bundle. This is one of the more creative uses of the web to date. A new kind of matchmaker, actually. Patents are a common source of litigation and often a company accused of violating a patent wants to prove that the patent is invalid. The easiest way to do that is to find "prior art", to prove that the invention described by the patent actually existed elsewhere before the owner of the patent filed for it. So this web site offers prizes ($10,000!) for leads to prior art in specific cases. Those offering the prizes are anonymous, though it's often possible to figure out who they are just by the questions they ask if you have a knowledge of disputes in the industry.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 6:28 PM PST - 3 comments
An Ode to the Aeron --
Something good may come out of the dotcom collapse at last! As they all go belly up, having lavished lots of their venture capital on $2000 office chairs, will the rest of us finally be able to afford these marvels of office architecture, even if we do have to settle for them being used?
posted by crunchland at 7:30 AM PST - 27 comments
Yahoo launches a 'pay for position' program which takes the biggest (and one of the last) purely editorially-led directory sites slap bang into the commercial age of post-banner-ad dot-communism. All fairness to them - it's only in the Business categories, where you might otherwise go and look in the Yellow Pages (where of course you can pay for different sizes of advert already), but will it end there? I fear not...
posted by barbelith at 7:11 AM PST - 9 comments
"I think it's dead. I think it's over with; it's gone. There is no long-term prognosis. The patient has died. There is no future." That's the web as content medium he's talking about. [more inside]
posted by rodii at 6:50 AM PST - 27 comments
February 2
"Penguins wobble" - a MeFi update (earlier thread
here) For those who wondered, Penguins do
not topple over backwards over when helicopters pass overhead. A small team of British researchers spent $36,000 and five weeks
finding this out. Another study is planned soon with fixed-wing aircraft.
posted by kokogiak at 2:45 PM PST - 2 comments
There are insults, and then there's harrassment and apparently, a judge thinks that being referred to repeatedly as Monica Lewinsky crosses the line into sexual harassment. A woman's lawsuit against a (now retired) SUNY New Paltz professor may go forward after he called her by the infamous intern's name and made Lewinsky-related jokes towards her throughout a semester. What do you think -- was this just the prof being a mean old jerk, or was this really the creation of a "sexually hostile environment?"
posted by Dreama at 11:47 AM PST - 30 comments
It t'was foretold by the ancients! "Come the millennium, month twelve,
In the home of the greatest power,
The village idiot will come forth
To be acclaimed the leader."
- Nostradamus [1555]
I consider myself someone with mental fortitude. I consider myself not given to listen to foolish ramblings of portents. But in this case I must concede!
posted by thacker at 9:47 AM PST - 24 comments
Bug Chasers : According to this article at Alternatives Magazine, there are gay men who are looking for HIV+ partners who will infect them. In fact, it even claims that some people "fetishize" the virus.
I'm absolutely stunned. Can anyone confirm that this is really happening?
posted by ivey at 8:50 AM PST - 18 comments
The L-5 Society was created to support efforts to colonize space (in a very specific way, see article). The interesting part of this history lesson is the hopes people had in the late 60s of living in space in their lifetimes. Was it naivete or something else?
posted by Sean Meade at 5:39 AM PST - 20 comments
the SPLEEN , one of the first sites about art & design, is still up and running. I remember linking to Piotr's site six years ago; at the time I had seen nothing like it.
posted by muta at 1:37 AM PST - 2 comments
51,631 dot com layoffs as of Feb. 01, 2001. Is it that the web allows us to simultaneously view the usual failure of 99% of new businesses, a sign of the coming recession, or just a result of bad business plans and get rich quick schemes? Or was it simply too good to last?
Whatever the reason, it's depressing.posted by crushed at 12:37 AM PST - 19 comments
February 1
It isn't just Dubya that's making idiotic mistakes in the White House. The Office of the Press Secretary has posted
a transcript of a press briefing, in which
they themselves identify a source by name that is supposed to be identified only "on background" and as "a White House official." (Who the hell is John Bridgeland, anyway?)
posted by delfuego at 6:28 PM PST - 12 comments
Bugtraq sends a trojan to 27,000 mailing list subscribers. And they did so after having the program carrying the trojan checked by Network Associates, who said (incorrectly) that it was clean. But the height of beauty of this incident is that the function of the trojan was to mount a distributed denial of service attack against the name servers of... (wait for it) Network Associates; which it did, shutting down access to their web servers for a while. Yes, the guy who did it is a criminal. But you've got to admit that he's got style.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 4:04 PM PST - 24 comments
A CNN parody site gets bigfooted. "Defendant's actions constitute a textbook case of cyberpiracy under the Anti-cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. CNN and its marks are suffering irreparable harm as a result of Defendant's actions, and they will continue to unless and until Defendant is enjoined." Yeah, right.
posted by tranquileye at 2:15 PM PST - 4 comments
Rethinking Mad Cow Disease So ususually when I see a story about an "amateur scientist" who has an "alternative theory" to some issue, I get all gooshy inside waiting to see what insane theory it is this time, but this guy has what seems to be a very credible alternative explanation for BSE/CJD occurrences and some credible science to back him up.
posted by briank at 7:57 AM PST - 6 comments
