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February 2002 Archives
February 28
"It's really like rape"
say lawyers for a college student who sued Arco Media (makers of "Wild Party Girls Video") and won 5 million dollars. From what I was able to find, alcohol was not forced down her throat (she used intoxication as part of her defense) so I am having a difficult time seeing where the "rape" part comes in.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 11:14 PM PST - 53 comments
Another decade, another network jump for Letterman?
Dave is very seriously considering an offer from ABC for its 11:35 slot, for reasons not unlike the ones he gave for jumping to CBS from NBC in the first place: little network support. More distressingly, the article strongly implies that
Nightline is doomed in its present form regardless of whether Dave decides to join ABC or stay at CBS.
posted by aaron at 7:55 PM PST - 37 comments
I dunno, if you're like me you're probably discontented with the state of lamp art nowadays. Too slick, too soulless, all that
perspective and
shading and whatnot. Am I right? So you'd probably
like to see some poorly drawn lamps. Well...
here.
Part of Shoebox World; via Librarian Avengers. The web is a weird place.
posted by rodii at 7:09 PM PST - 11 comments
The US may have killed 15,000 of it's own with nuclear tests.
Somewhere around 100,000 people died as a result of the bombs dropped by the US over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A new study shows that back home in the heart of the U.S., fallout from Cold-War nuclear tests may have killed as many as 15,000 people. This would be front page news everywhere if it had happened all at once - but since it took years for these people to die - it will barely be a blip in the history books.
posted by stevengarrity at 6:04 PM PST - 8 comments
The Hendrix of The Accordion,
the Stevie Ray of the banjo,and even
Tubas are producing some rockin' stuff. I see something of a small trend here an I think it's a good one. These artists take the insturments you hated to be stuck with in the high school band and turn them into something astounding. If anyone knows of other examples, I'd love to hear about 'em.
(some sites require Flash)
posted by jonmc at 5:41 PM PST - 17 comments
F1 2002
is go! The Formula 1 circus hit the track a couple of minutes back and officially kicked off the 2002 season.
posted by riffola at 4:46 PM PST - 14 comments
Remember Schwa?
You know, the enigmatic graphic design project featuring that smiley-face of the nineties: the almond-eyed alien head? Bill Barker's sinister alien art project used to reside at www.theschwacorporation.com, but I'm not making that URL into a link for a very good reason: it's now a porn site devoted to wife-swapping. What happened?
posted by Zettai at 4:12 PM PST - 13 comments
Public shaming is in order.
It's bad enough to rip off a design. But this person ripped off BABY PICTURES from
Hoopla without credit, along with layouts, bits of text, and who-knows-what-else. Also compare:
Leslie's status,
Enurv's status. The "personal" part of personal publishing means you do it yourself. Argh.
posted by lucius at 3:19 PM PST - 41 comments
IBM gives Moore's Law a punch in the face
by developing a 110GHz silicon germanium microchip. Only for use in ultra hi-tech environments right now (network infrastructure, military, etc.), of course. What other things could these processors be useful for? Finding vaccines? Genome mapping? SETI? And how many years before they're mass-producible and inexpensive enough for consumer use?
posted by andnbsp at 1:55 PM PST - 11 comments
Morpheus is broken.
The Netherlands-based provider of the technology used by Kazaa and Grokster upgrades their system, but leaves out Streamcast Networks' (formerly Music City) Morpheus network, and suddenly, everyone is locked out. Kinda punches a giant hole in their EFF-backed battle with the RIAA, which hinges on the assertion that their network is 'decentralized' and impossible to stop.
posted by pzarquon at 1:44 PM PST - 12 comments
MNF: Miller out, Madden in?
After two years of sinking ratings, is ABC and Monday Night Football ready to concede that Dennis Miller was not really good pick for a football commentator? Fox has released John Madden from his contract, making an Al Michaels-Madden booth a likelihood next fall.
posted by mattpusateri at 9:35 AM PST - 40 comments
It's easy to think of lawyers as greedy, overpaid blood-sucking pigs. But do we have any clue
what lawyers earn? Yes we do, thanks to American Lawyer Media's (via law.com) annual roundup of lawyer compensation. Not all of which is surprising. For example, partners at the top corporate firms like Wachtell Lipton, or Cravath, Swaine & Moore or Davis Polk each averaged millions in 2001 ($3,285,000, $2,245,000 and $1,740,000, respectively). Even piddly little first year associates at those firms got $125,000 to start. (We're talking 24-year-old law school grads with precisely zero professional experience and know-how. Zero.) But most newbie lawyers don't win those jobs. Also difficult to land are entry-level positions at district attorneys' offices, but they're not nearly as lucrative. A junior Manhattan D.A. earned $45,000 last year (up from $42,000 in 2000). But locking up criminals beats toiling for civil rights at a not-for-profit like the New York Civil Liberties Union, which paid entry-level lawyers only $35,000 last year. Over all, best off are lawyers who work for big companies. Top counsel at IBM last year earned a measly $506,000 in cash (salary & bonus), but throw in stocks & options and his compensation totaled $7,795,613. Compared to that, you have to worry about the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court whose family in 2001 had to struggle along on $192,600.
posted by jellybuzz at 9:25 AM PST - 36 comments
Sigh.
In case all this talk of foreign crazies was stealing the spotlight from our homegrown malcontents.
posted by donkeyschlong at 7:10 AM PST - 9 comments
Shoplifters Of The World, Unite And Take Over!
An interesting NYT article(
reg.req.)says stealing from restaurants is increasing. But it's still only 3% of tableware costs and allegedly doesn't contribute to higher prices. I confess I often lift the odd item from hotel rooms. Not just as "souvenirs" - that would be hypocritical. As
booty. So, what ethical constraints and liberties do MetaFilterians think should be taken into consideration when stealing? Does it matter whom you're stealing from and how much money you've previously spent on them? And, for the more immoral fellow members, what are the best strategies for liberating certain objects?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 7:06 AM PST - 259 comments
February 27
Did you hear Michael Greene's speech at the Grammys?
At first it seemed like it was going to be just yet another recording industry weasel with an obligatory goatee congratulating himself on stage. But it quickly turned into a lesson on the harms of the illegal Internet downloads. "This illegal file-sharing and ripping of music files is pervasive, out of control and oh so criminal. Many of the nominees here tonight, especially the new, less-established artists, are in immediate danger of being marginalized out of our business. Ripping is stealing their livelihood one digital file at a time, leaving their musical dreams haplessly snared in this World Wide Web of theft and indifference," says Greene. Was this appeal-cum-address effective or appropriate? Were you more sympathetic to the RIAA or artists afterwards?
posted by emptyage at 11:49 PM PST - 78 comments
Not Just a Birthmark.
"I was chemically altered at embryonic stages of my life by conglomerate CEOs to display their logo on my forehead. This I am sure of. My parents remain unaware. My life remains affected each and every day. Those viewing my face think only of Nike shoes, even if they fail to recognize it. Who knows when this madness will end, or how far its fingers have reached." (found at
Sound the Sirens)
posted by lostbyanecho at 10:58 PM PST - 4 comments
Creative storytelling at
Flight404.com. Visited this link a long time ago from the forever-in-hiatus
K10K when it was a white splace page with a vector drawing of a plane, now it's a great online story.
posted by hobbes at 10:45 PM PST - 12 comments
"A federal judge on Wednesday
ordered the Energy Department to release thousands of records on Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force, criticizing the government for moving at 'a glacial pace.' "
Is anyone else interested in this? This is honestly the first time since Bush took office that I've felt optomistic about much.
Anyone old enough to remember the look on Nixon's face as he stepped on to Marine One for the last time, when he turned to give the victory sign? The Vice President surely remembers, I wonder if he's thought of it lately?
posted by jack-o at 8:15 PM PST - 32 comments
Coleman Confidential.
No joke. Gary Coleman was just in my office a little bit ago and while he was here, he talked about this section of a site he promotes where he answers email. But some of the answers (let alone the questions) are ridiculous! I don't know what's funnier, him in person or the answers to these questions. Good reading when you've got little to do.
posted by whoshotwho at 4:49 PM PST - 10 comments
I'ma write a little letter, gonna mail it to my local DJ...
Don't bother they're writing their own. Books, rather, but writing just the same. If, like me, you can remember when the radio was a magic box full of surprises rather than boredom, you'll want to read IndyWeek's reveiws of these two books by disc jockey's:college and pirate radio stalwart Jesse Walker and Richard Neer of the legendary WNEW-FM in NYC, the station that ignited my love affair with rock and roll(I still harbor pipedreams of hosting a show with Scott Muni.) These tomes may be partially exercises in nostalgia, but they may also hold clues on how to recapture what radio once was.
posted by jonmc at 3:57 PM PST - 10 comments
Fetapets:
for busy city dwellers who can't deal with the hassle of living pets. No it isn't a joke.
posted by akmonday at 3:37 PM PST - 21 comments
Amy Fisher vs. Tonya Harding
The good people at FOX have put together another award winning special. 3 boxing matches featuring Danny Bonaduce vs. Greg Williams (Brady), Tonya vs. Amy and a third bout to be named later. Isn't this a sign of the apocolypse??
posted by Lanternjmk at 12:17 PM PST - 41 comments
Seven minutes to midnight.
"Today, the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moves the minute hand of the 'Doomsday Clock,' the symbol of nuclear danger, from nine to seven minutes to midnight, the same setting at which the clock debuted 55 years ago. Since the end of the Cold War in 1991, this is the third time the hand has moved forward."
posted by dnash at 11:11 AM PST - 29 comments
Capitalism, punk as fuck
"Imagine this: you're 23, working in a grocery store for minimum wage and saving to start your own indie record shop. You finally get enough to open it and, though sales are slow, you have a dedicated customer base and loyal friends to work the store when you can't."
posted by Mick at 7:44 AM PST - 85 comments
Was John Wayne A ... Welshman?
In that case, I nominate
Johnny Cash as the No.1 American icon. Unless it turns out he's English or something.
[
Inspired by jpoulos's, Kafkaesque's, Optamystic's and others' recent celebrations - elsewhere on MetaFilter - of the great man.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:09 AM PST - 15 comments
3dHTML. No Flash, no nothing. Wow.
posted by Su at 5:03 AM PST - 8 comments
New owners purchase the San Jose Sharks
George Gund III sold a majority share of the team to a group including Stratton Sclavos [Verisign], Tom McEnery [former mayor], Kevin Compton [Kleiner Perkins], Greg Reyes [Brocade], Gary Valenzuela [past Yahoo CFO], and Harvey Armstrong [MyCFO].
My only question... where is Scott McNealy?
posted by swenson at 2:47 AM PST - 2 comments
February 26
School Fascism at all-time high?
Okay, forget the various and sundry
suspensions for alcohol, fighting, or bringing anything even vaguely pointy to school. This guy took innocent pictures of girls in his school
with their knowledge using his own camera, and posted them to his own web site. Are we a little overboard here?
posted by umberto at 8:45 PM PST - 24 comments
Design For Chunks
"puking in dull bags can no longer be accepted, imagine your delight when you discover the receptacle you are about to puke into is of the highest pedigree."
A gallery of sick bags, for designers, by designers.
posted by zeoslap at 5:05 PM PST - 9 comments
"The fraud, the huckster, the salesman are not new phenomena in America; what is new is that they now so strongly control every estate of our society."
For the last few days, I've been reading the
Progressive Review's
Undernews, a sort of progressive news blog-by-e-mail -- and frankly, it's amazing.
One of today's articles blew my mind: it's a spot-on encapsulation of What's Wrong with America Today. (Scroll down to "Derivative America and the Enron Generation." This link is to the "Latest Issue" page. Tomorrow I think it will be archived
here.) Seriously, read it now. It's worth it.
posted by tweebiscuit at 3:00 PM PST - 36 comments
Genome liberation.
"Life science researchers -- even those who work in academic settings -- are finding that corporations are just as eager to patent the tools as they are the data, and in many cases, universities are bending over backward to let the private sector have its way. As a result, a growing number of bioinformatics researchers are beginning to look to the free-software and open-source software movements for inspiration in their quest for bio freedom."
posted by homunculus at 1:40 PM PST - 2 comments
How Americans view us...
You don't really ... do you? "They responded very readily to Britain and the British: 'Tea... proper... trousers... Monty Python... Jane Eyre... Austin Powers... soccer hooligans... Prince William... dry and witty... educated... not huggy...' "
posted by feelinglistless at 12:58 PM PST - 61 comments
The Tech Museums Awards
have announced
a call for entries for their 2002 event. $50,000 will be awarded to five winners in a competition "designed to recognize people, companies or organizations which develop or use technology in creative ways to solve global challenges and have a high potential of yielding lasting, beneficial impact. The awards honor innovators from around the world in the categories of health, education, environment, economic development and equality." Just imagine: technology benefitting humanity, and getting financial support for it.
2001 winners here.
posted by mathowie at 12:26 PM PST - 6 comments
Wayward Cow Caught!
The fugitive cow, earning clemency after escaping from Ohio slaughterhouse, was captured not far from the scene of the escape. The cow will now spend his days on the farm of former Cincinatti Reds owner, Marge Schott.
posted by Lanternjmk at 12:00 PM PST - 26 comments
Muslim states hate us because their culture is backwards and corrupt,
according to a Wall Street Journal editorial. The writer, tired of America-bashing, explores the inferiority complex of the Arab world: "Like Third World Marxists of the 1960s, who put blame for their own self-inflicted misery upon corporations, colonialism and racism--anything other than the absence of real markets and a free society--the Islamic intelligentsia recognizes the Muslim world's inferiority vis-à-vis the West, but it then seeks to fault others for its own self-created fiasco. Government spokesmen in the Middle East should ignore the nonsense of the cultural relativists and discredited Marxists and have the courage to say that they are poor because their populations are nearly half illiterate, that their governments are not free, that their economies are not open, and that their fundamentalists impede scientific inquiry, unpopular expression and cultural exchange."
via kuro5hin
posted by swift at 9:44 AM PST - 36 comments
The best solution I've heard so far
to end the mess in Israel. A Saudi Prince suggests plan that trades occupied land in return for the Arab world recognizing the Israeli state. Is it a viable plan? Will Barak have the courage to give it a shot? Could the Arab nations ever recognize a Jewish state? Could Palestine and Israel coexist peacefully next to each other?
posted by aacheson at 9:30 AM PST - 28 comments
Rotating Ski Slope.
This seems a little far fetched, if not dangerous. Skiers travel down the side of the revolving slope at the same time as it moves upwards. The result is that the ski run is effectively much further than the actual 300-metre length of the incline. It is in Wales though - which will be nice.
posted by Spoon at 8:57 AM PST - 12 comments
NY Times on female cruelty (subscription req'd)
This is an insightful examination of cruelty by girls struggling for power in complex Middle School social hierarchies. Many points made about "girls" here also apply to young adult women -- at least the ones I know. In our tabloidized, materialistic culture, might adult women abandon such behavior someday?
Link posted by Voyageman on a discussion page yesterday. Thank you Voyageman.
posted by mcgraw at 8:55 AM PST - 10 comments
102 Beats.
For its third anniversary,
Freaky Trigger is trying out a neat project: You write exactly 102 words about a bit of music. Then someone else will do the same. More inside.
posted by Skot at 8:49 AM PST - 7 comments
Can't remember your phone number?
At the phonespell.org website you can get a list of all the possible word combinations made by your phone number. If you have 1's and 0's in your number, the possibilities are fewer.
posted by altojen at 6:46 AM PST - 34 comments
The Elephant's Memory
is a beautiful logographic language oriented towards children. In late 1999, the creator wrote an
article for Apple's Learning Technology Review[the
PDF version is better illustrated] that goes into much more detail than the original site, which appears not to have been updated since 1996. A CD-ROM was in production, with a pre-release
reviewed by Intellect Books, but I can't find any info on whether it was finished or is still available.
posted by Su at 2:50 AM PST - 5 comments
February 25
Personal Testimony of an Israeli Refusenik
"Asaf Oron, a Sergeant Major in the Giv'ati Brigade, is one of the original 53 Israeli soldiers who signed the 'Fighters' Letter' declaring that from now on they will refuse to serve in the Occupied territories. He is signer #8 and one of the first in the list to include a statement explaining his action."
Our parents' generation lets out a sigh: we've embarrassed them yet again. But isn't it all your fault? What did you raise us on? Universal ethics and universal justice, on the one hand, peace, liberty and equality to all. And on the other hand: "the Arabs want to throw us into the sea," "They are all crafty and primitive. You can't trust them."...I was raised on two value systems: one was the ethical code and the other the tribal code, and I naively believed that the two could coexist.
posted by mapalm at 10:05 PM PST - 11 comments
Enron Fraud dot Com.
The law firm of Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach cordially invites Enron stockholders to partake in their class action lawsuit against the fallen energy baron. Great domain, great layout, great case. How could they lose?
posted by tankboy at 9:50 PM PST - 6 comments
The
NIH is
abandoning phase III trials of a possible hiv vaccine due to "technical reasons" the trial will continue in thailand. On a happier note there are currently more than 90 other hiv vaccines in other stages of trials. What do people think are the chances the pharmaceuticals will decide chronic disease management is more profitable, and actually do something to make this a more likely outcome?
posted by rhyax at 6:51 PM PST - 21 comments
We're exporting toxic technologies
to third world countries. We all know computer components contain lots of chemical badness, and it seems that as much as 80 percent of US electronics trash is sent to developing countries, where it is becoming a major health hazard.
posted by brookish at 6:21 PM PST - 22 comments
Film noir, Monica Lewinsky style.
As of January 22, 2001, Lewinsky was free to talk about the events that led to her immunity agreement with Ken Starr.
HBO signed her up for some audience Q & A, and has taken this opportunity to push the envelope by filming it in black and white. It's set to premiere on March 3. Slightly more
here. Really though, what's the point? Let's just put her in a zoo and let the patrons throw her peanuts.
posted by mikhail at 5:26 PM PST - 46 comments
Gee, this a good idea
(NYT reg req) - The New York Times discusses the growing popularity of .zip whole album downloads on Audiogalaxy. The article is also kind enough to include a step-by-step how-to for idiots like me who want free music but haven't thought of this before. Thanks!
posted by dydecker at 5:23 PM PST - 37 comments
Drug War roundup. The US will end
drug-related sanctions against Afghanistan and Haiti. Neither country stopped producing drugs, they need loans sanctions stop them from receiving. A British journalist compares the
drug policies of Holland to Britain. Noteworthy: despite heroin being half the price, there are 25% fewer Dutch addicts. The FARC and Columbia are openly warring again. So far, only
civilians have been killed. The California Medical Association voted to lobby the state government to
raise the smoking age from 18 to 21.
posted by raaka at 2:30 PM PST - 22 comments
John Dewey and the Alexander Technique.
Anyone with an interest in either the philosophy of John Dewey or the Alexander Technique will find this interesting. Dewey was a devoted student of the Alexander Technique and acknowledged its influence on some of his ideas. This site includes Dewey's writings on the Alexander Technique and other articles about their relationship.
posted by homunculus at 1:07 PM PST - 8 comments
When Skyscrapers and Cities Become One.
Tsui has designed the
Ultima Tower (a two-mile high, one-mile wide building), and Takenaka the
Sky City 1000, in the name of conservation and ecology. William Pedersen, designer of the
World Financial Center in Shanghai, believes that "cities within a single building . . . are definitely going to come to pass within the next 25 or 30 years." These sky cities will have "vast open-air wooded parks, giant waterfalls, and automoble-free neighborhoods."
posted by jacknose at 12:37 PM PST - 58 comments
Pay for CNN.com?
CNN International President sees subscription fees for online news services likely in the near future.
If CNN, MSNBC or any of the major sites start this trend, the Drudge Report may be everyones destination!
posted by Lanternjmk at 11:33 AM PST - 19 comments
The US reserves the right to turn your weak country to glass.
The Bush administration is no longer standing by a 24-year-old U.S. pledge not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, a senior administration official said yesterday.
I fear this news will go unnoticed amidst the terrorism furor.
Why
doesn't our nuclear policy get much press these days?
posted by norm at 11:12 AM PST - 63 comments
make sure she really means "yes"...
consent condoms are an interesting twist on using condoms in a causal sex environment. the man hands a package to his partner containing a condom and a card which takes her fingerprints and lets her tear off the date for which the condom is to be used. one's to wonder if all casual sex will be conducted like this in the future.
posted by boogah at 10:11 AM PST - 33 comments
Hey, it's beautiful here in San Dieg . . . I mean, Boise
Also, "this morning," which is actually several weeks from now. You prolly know that many DJs aren't local now. But it's this bad? Clear Channel radio chief to the WSJ: "I don’t think it’s at all wrong or deceptive to put together terrific programs that reflect local communities and sometimes use talent who may physically be somewhere else."
posted by raysmj at 8:56 AM PST - 11 comments
Barclay employees lose job after 44000 pound dinner
Mind you: they paid for the meal out of their own pockets.
They were fired because of their decadence (while the City was suffering a slow period) and their behaviour when the details of the meal became public. (The story started in July last year, but I couldn't find anything about it in the archive).
Next time you order a bottle of '47 Petrus, make sure your boss is not looking.
posted by swordfishtrombones at 7:53 AM PST - 16 comments
Need a great prank?
Whether it is for your
office, your
sig O or if you just want to be
evil in general, this website is for you. The
site has everything from bad pickup lines to strange laws to personality quizzes... My personal favorite to date, in the article section is the
Free Baby ad. Just a little something to give you a giggle on a Monday. Enjoy!
posted by gloege at 6:34 AM PST - 22 comments
Erotigo's
got the goods for your sexy mobile lifestyle. Now: Which of you's got a subscription? We want
details!
posted by Su at 2:29 AM PST - 10 comments
February 24
Welcome to the 2002 FIFA Worldcup, er, make that WorldCup, um...
"The efforts being made by organizations of all kinds to ensure that a positive image of [Korea] is projected this summer deserve the highest praise. It is a crying shame, however, that so many of these efforts will be undermined by the comedic quality of much of the English being used."
Not intended as a poke at Korea, but an interesting example of how hard it is for people (or a people) to change their mindset (more inside).
posted by Bixby23 at 11:49 PM PST - 13 comments
Sporting News Predicts the Future.
It's 9:30 pm EST and the closing ceremonies have been on for 1 hour, but the Sporting News has provided us with a complete recap of the night, including Rogges final words to Salt Lake City. They must have hired Ms. Cleo recently.
posted by smcniven at 6:30 PM PST - 6 comments
During my day's aimless surfing I was feeling a mite wistful, and it did my heart a load of good to stumble on the internet home of
Funny Face mugs. I also found the
Mr. Men and Little Miss Club. Both of these bits of pop culture were objects of devotion to me as a tyke. Looking at the sweet simplicity of the products today, it amazes me how easy it was to invest plastic mugs and simple line drawings with meaning and personality. I wish there was a place for them in today's
Kiddie Kulture which seems to be about filling in all the blanks before the kids get to use there imaginations.
posted by jonmc at 4:25 PM PST - 7 comments
ULTRa set for take off in Cardiff!
Urban Light Transport is finally here, and trials are under way in Cardiff, Wales for these four passenger driverless cars. It is estimated that the cost of implementation ($60m) will be 1/3 to 1/2 of that of a comparable light rail system.
posted by Why at 3:51 PM PST - 10 comments
Joe Queenan apologizes
for being "an irredeemably horrible human being." Unfortunately, he doesn't apologize for the annoying pop-ups and banners on his Geocities website, but I do.
posted by MrBaliHai at 2:40 PM PST - 14 comments
Will this spoil the party in Canada ?
(NYT reg req) Great victories by the
men and the
women. Sure. But then one is reminded again in the NYT today about last week's controversy - "The judge, Marie Reine Le Gougne, said the pressure she felt was unlike any in her 14 years of judging, that it intensified as the Olympics drew near and that it came from one country,
Canada" You cant help but wonder.
posted by Voyageman at 2:35 PM PST - 26 comments
Democracy is expensive.
A New York
Times article examines the high costs of building the government infrastructure of a democracy, and suggests that they may be too high for a poor or war-torn country. I hope there's an alternative to "Live free or die".
posted by mattpfeff at 9:31 AM PST - 7 comments
easyJet
has introduced a £0 price as the standard lead-in fare for the majority of flights between Belfast International, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Any chance of a trans-atlantic service too...?
posted by scotty at 8:00 AM PST - 8 comments
The Sunday Funday Blues:
This is supposed to be on of the worst Nintendo games ever. Heh. No wonder. Yet it seems appropriate. As does Storman' Norman's
Sunday Blues radio programme. What
is it about Sundays anyway? And what's the best way to survive them? What are the local traditions? Here in Portugal, it's the Sunday papers; not going to Church; feeling guilty; drinking too many Bloody Marys; late, enormous lunches; lazy love-making, listening to football on the radio and naps...
posted by MiguelCardoso at 6:22 AM PST - 27 comments
slurdb
an interesting look into an often overlooked and ignored lexicon - even if it is an ugly one. jtx from
hatesville is building a reference to the language of hate, but he needs your help.
posted by boogah at 12:36 AM PST - 6 comments
February 23
Washington States insatiable appetite for money
has led to the highest state tax on cigarettes, $1.425 per pack; this is in addition to the federal tax of $.39 per pack and the State sales tax of 6.5%. At least 17 states are considering following suit. Proponets claim it's a win-win situation: tax revenue + 'helping' people quit. Is that believable? Do they want the money or do they want people to quit, or both? And is it fair for 25% of the population to be the sole source of needed revenue?
posted by Mack Twain at 11:18 PM PST - 52 comments
The United States Olympic Committee
invites you to help them decide the recipients of the
U.S. Olympic Spirit Award. I don't think you have to be an american to participate. Nominations close tomorrow evening, as do the 2002 Winter Olympics themselves. The award is supposed to represent
commitment, courage, perseverence and vision. The nominations may be more of a popularity contest, but the U.S. Olympic Committee itself makes the final determination. Previous recipients include Carl Lewis and Scott Hamilton.
posted by ZachsMind at 9:27 PM PST - 15 comments
How to hack grey matter
A big security loophole with grey matter powered sites is out there. It lets anyone have the username and password to these sites. Luckly there is a fix for it which can be found
here.
posted by thebwit at 6:17 PM PST - 20 comments
"The PRAVDA Forum" in English.
Vlad Putin's homeboys serve up
Colombian FARC manifestos, and grin- "Let's roll!" They invite you to mix it up with black blockers, American
hawks, meglomaniac spymaster wannabes, Osama fans, Nazis and ethnic cleansers, irate Israelis, Pakstanis, Indians, hardcore feminists, peaceniks, dolphinsavers, conspiracy theorists, and the
Chinese. Free speech in wartime, Russian Communist style. (Warning: Offensive content guaranteed.)
posted by sheauga at 4:09 PM PST - 8 comments
Steve McCurry
has spent his life looking for beauty in warzones. This flash site pulls together some of his most vivid images, including the iconic image of a young girl from Afganistan. But his work hasn't been without a few dangers: "I've had a couple of close calls in my career, but part of my brain that's concerned with self-preservation is very large. I was almost drowned in India and I was in an airplane crash in Yugoslavia, where I found myself about 10 feet underwater. Miraculously, I was able to swim out from underneath the seatbelt. But I came within a fraction of an inch of not making it. I'd rather take the risk and have the adventure, than to be timid and not take those risks ... It's the best life."
posted by feelinglistless at 3:44 PM PST - 6 comments
Tie yourself to a half-constructed house on a school campus and live there in solitary confinement while on semi-public display to the world, pissing into a jug and making conch-shell noises from a piece of cardboard and a bullhorn.
And do it all in a lobster suit. If that's not performance art, then what is? (Link from a blogger-friend who got it off
NextDraft.)
posted by brownpau at 8:20 AM PST - 12 comments
Reparations activists
are going after corporations who may have had ties to or profited from the slave trade to seek financial compensation. "So far, the reparations legal team has publicly identified five companies it says have slave ties: insurers Aetna, New York Life and AIG and financial giants J.P. Morgan Chase Manhattan Bank and FleetBoston Financial Group." Of course, the article (or
the sidebar) doesn't cite anyone who may be
against the whole notion - which is possibly bias of
some sort, and seeing Johnnie Cochran
on the list of people involved doesn't exactly warm one's heart either. (
here are several other related "background" articles)
posted by owillis at 1:01 AM PST - 42 comments
February 22
Survivor III Finale Flawed.
If there's any doubt still that this show is a complete waste of time, check out this "news" tidbit that CBS is doing a good job of squashing. Turns out the ending was flawed; the other finalists have now been paid handsomely to behave.
posted by Fofer at 11:14 PM PST - 13 comments
Enron's historical precidents.
This L.A. Times article discusses the historical precidents to the Enron debacle. My favorite (among lots of good stuff):
"Like Enron, ITT was a big campaign contributor. But Geneen's idea of how to use political influence made Lay and associates look like choir boys. In 1970, the company offered Republicans $1 million and consulted heavily with the Nixon White House and the CIA when Chile's new socialist president, Salvador Allende, threatened to seize the ITT-owned Chilean Telephone Co. Allende was overthrown with U.S. aid."
posted by electro at 10:58 PM PST - 9 comments
Daniel Pearl's widow speaks out.
"Revenge would be easy, but it is far more valuable in my opinion to address this problem of terrorism with enough honesty to question our own responsibility as nations and as individuals for the rise of terrorism." (via the indispensable
rc3.org)
posted by jjg at 10:12 PM PST - 12 comments
What's down, Doc?
Animation genius Chuck Jones has died of conjestive heart failure.
Has any other creative-type-person brought more joy and laughter to the last three-or-four generations?
At least
his website had already started paying tribute to him while he could still see it (click on "Letters from the Heart", optional Flash).
posted by wendell at 7:37 PM PST - 31 comments
"The concept of anarchism has always appealed to me"
says a senior ranking London Police Commissioner on
Urban 75 (posting as 'Brian the Commander'). "Say nothing on the web you wouldn't say on the office notice board" runs the popular wisdom, and Scotland Yard is set to
call him to heel.
But which serves us best - Dixon of Dock Green, slavishly following Police Federation convention, or Descartes of Dock Green, letting it all hang out?
posted by RichLyon at 1:07 PM PST - 4 comments
Afghanistan looks at itself:
Q: So if I brought you free films but they weren't about fighting, would you show them?
A: No.
A moving photo-essay on rebuilding Afghanistan's media sources.
posted by modge at 11:31 AM PST - 5 comments
What can The White Rose teach us today?
59 years ago..."February 22, 1943, 9am... three students from the University of Munich are brought to trial for treason. The trial lasts until 1 pm and by 5 o’clock all are dead...Why are their voices silenced? And how many more innocent people will have to die before they are heard?" Their executioners maintained "It was not a time for tackling theoretical problems,
but rather for grasping the sword , yet [they] sowed doubt among our youth. [They] nourished doubt instead of dispelling it..."
In memory of Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Willie Graf, Kurt Huber, and untold others whose terrible crime has been to speak truth to power.
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 11:11 AM PST - 21 comments
Detailed instructions on how to give birth to the reincarnation of Dr Hans Fink of Portland Oregon. Or Mother Teresa. Or Lady Diana. Or anybody else you feel like. Isn't modern technology something?
posted by signal at 11:06 AM PST - 2 comments
Russians Challenging Hughes Skating Gold
Russian Olympic officials lodged an official protest, demanding that Olympic Silver Medalist Irina Slutskaya be awarded a gold medal, accusing the ladies figure skating judges of being biased against the russian skater. This is the biggest batch of sour grapes I have ever seen in sports.
posted by Lanternjmk at 10:43 AM PST - 45 comments
Iran Online.
Can the opening of a countires 'cyber-borders' contribute to the liberalisation (small 'l') of the society?
Iran has a rapidly
increasing population, as well as a rapidly increasing online percentage, they have
sports sites (they seem to like soccer),
portals and the
'IranMania' search engine.
Can un-censored access to the internet help build
tolerance?
posted by asok at 10:20 AM PST - 5 comments
Figures show
shark attacks down in 2001. Before September 11, it was the "Season of the Shark." Perhaps we can forgive the
newscasters their excess in this matter. Or may be it's another reason to make sure you get your news from multiple sources and different media--now, more than ever.
posted by piskycritters at 6:35 AM PST - 10 comments
give war a chance
an influential Palestinian writer in a Palestine paper says that war makes more sense than negotiating for a peaceful resolution. Perhaps he ought to send his son into the struggle as a suicide bomber
posted by Postroad at 5:09 AM PST - 33 comments
Click here for martyrdom
(In Arabic though) The
Financial Times reports volunteers are invited by Ansar-e-Hizbollah, Iran's radical Islamic shock-troops, to register by internet for worldwide suicide attacks in the event of a US military strike.
posted by brettski at 2:11 AM PST - 4 comments
Today
is slacker day, at least in the UK. Rest up and do nothing all day. As
Spaced's Simon Pegg says on the site: "How can you possibly comprehend the value of your own hectic endeavour if you don't occasionally put your feet up and experience a state of complete calm. So, when Slacker Day comes around, stop Yanging around and Yin out for a bit. You'll feel better."
posted by viama at 1:16 AM PST - 13 comments
February 21
Russians going home?
Apparently, Russian Olympic Committee president Leonid Tyagachev said
there was a 24-hour window to address the situation, and that if Russia left Salt Lake City it probably would not compete in Athens in the next Summer Games.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 7:38 PM PST - 34 comments
Dr. Paul Linebarger
became a
spy for the U.S. Intelligence community because he was an expert in propaganda, psychological warfare, and the culture of China. In his
other secret life, however, he wrote some of the most
wildly inventive and
unusual science fiction ever, forming a history of mankind and its
Instrumentality that spanned fifteen thousand years. To protect his identity, he published under the name
Cordwainer Smith.
posted by Hildago at 7:25 PM PST - 15 comments
Um... not counting that whole WW2 thing.
February 18, 2002 -- President Bush, in a speech in Japan. "My trip to Asia begins here in Japan for an important reason. It begins here because for
a century and a half now, America and Japan have formed one of the great and enduring alliances of modern times. From that alliance has come an era of peace in the Pacific." Of course, the
Official White House transcript corrects the blunder.
posted by crunchland at 7:23 PM PST - 61 comments
Teddy Bears to watch you
While other countries are banning teddy bears from Children's hospital rooms, Japan is putting digital high tech teddy bears that will watch you and inform doctors when you need help.
posted by AsiaInsider at 6:25 PM PST - 5 comments
"You were not responsive,
lying on a bed of sheets covered with blood." A young woman crashes her car, is airlifted to the hospital, and goes on life support. Her parents continue her 10-year-old diary during her stay in intensive care. Years later it's all posted to the web.
posted by D at 6:18 PM PST - 3 comments
Ethnic Cleansing: Wired Chimes In
"We want people to recognize we're average people," Hale said. "If we can influence video games and entertainment, it will make people understand we are their friends and neighbors.... As long as it doesn't denigrate white people or have pornography in it, it's OK with us."
posted by tpoh.org at 5:19 PM PST - 21 comments
The world's leading manufacturer of realistic feminine breasts.
Chestal nudity on second page, link is safe for work. "High quality breast forms." Not only do they make foam breats, but they are also using the latest advances in breast technology using Siloxane. Is your breast needing repair? Simply get some
breast renovator or some rubber or silicon nipples. The question now is, where can I sign up to work in the factory as a QA tester?
posted by manero at 5:11 PM PST - 15 comments
Frat Boys Gone Wild!
"...the last straw came when the national office discovered the chapter's recreational boxing tournament in which members recruited local homeless persons, "liquored" them up, gave them large boxing gloves and "let them go to town,"" apparently as part a "...tradition of cock fighting and gambling in the house's basement."
posted by n9 at 3:25 PM PST - 59 comments
The
Hottentot Venus is
going home. An African woman named Saarjite Baartman, apparently EXTREMELY overendowed in the buttock/labia department (second floor, next to men's shoes, watch the doors), she did the freakshow thing in Europe for five years in the early 19th c., was edited down at death to her relevant bits and pickled for posterity. Ever been to an actual state-fair freakshow? I saw the alligator lady in the late 70s somewhere in Kentucky. A morally complicated experience.
posted by luser at 12:35 PM PST - 19 comments
Rental car firm ordered to stop GPS speeding fine
(CNN via Wired) Those Acme Rent-A-Car guys in New Haven who were using the GPS units in their vehicles to track and fine customers who were speeding (mental image of Coyote holding just-opened credit card bill with eyes bugging out, mouth wide open, and ears straight up) have been ordered to stop and pay back all the fines they have collected so far. Big Brother held back for another day....
posted by BGM at 12:29 PM PST - 7 comments
Greeting, Dementoids and Dementites!
Stumbling upon this site today was like running into an old pal. I remember when I was 9 years old listening to the Demento show in the dark on my headphones and cackling my head off. The Doctor was also a
serious music scholar and record collector, who would play stuff like Bullmoose Jackson and Riley Puckett along with the Weird Al and Tom Lehrer, which would whet my appetite for more. He probably did spawned more record geeks in my generation than any other person. Good to see he's still around, even if no station in my area plays him.
posted by jonmc at 11:03 AM PST - 33 comments
Jheronimus!
For real connoisseurs of heaven and hell, i.e. life on earth, old
Bosch is still unbeatable. This slightly klunky and perhaps over-ambitious site(
The Bosch Game, for instance, didn't work for me) is thorough, scholarly and absolutely fascinating. [Do not view just before going to bed.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:46 AM PST - 6 comments
Complete collapse
of North Atlantic fishing predicted. North Atlantic catches have fallen by half since 1950, despite a tripling of the effort put into catching them. "We'll all be eating jellyfish sandwiches."
posted by uftheory at 8:53 AM PST - 20 comments
Amazon Easter Egg
--Click on "Directory of All Stores" near the bottom, then scroll down to the copyright notice at the bottom. Under the "1996" is an invisible link which will take you to the farewell page for one of their employees.
posted by faceonmars at 7:34 AM PST - 29 comments
Black thugs terrorize white students!
So the hooligans specifically target people who they think are white. Soon however they are all caught and put in jail. But these hoodlums were not prosecuted under any hate crime laws. But it gets better: Somehow,
David Duke gets involved... and the story still hasn't broke nationally!
posted by Keen at 4:02 AM PST - 30 comments
Blogzilla
is a blog about, you guessed it,
Mozilla!
Why Mozilla? Because IE sucks. Agreed. I've been using Mozilla and IE interchangeably for the last month, and giving serious consideration to going Mozilla full-time.
Very serious.
posted by sillygwailo at 12:07 AM PST - 41 comments
February 20
Canada Wins Hockey
After watching Belarus pull off a miracle, Canada joins in to see them in the semi final. Question is, who's gonna win? Wooooooooo...
posted by Dav0xor at 9:21 PM PST - 16 comments
"...The Copyright Office followed almost to the letter the RIAA's wish list."
The final nail may be about to be driven into the coffin of online music streaming in the US, as the Copyright Office issued its notice of proposed rulemaking on the issue. The proposed rules are extremely favorable to the RIAA, to the point where many streamers are saying they'll simply have to shut down. Even worse, any ruling will be retroactive to 1998, and streamers will have to pay the announced rate on everything they've streamed since that year.
posted by aaron at 4:11 PM PST - 16 comments
Get your snail mail by e-mail.
This startup will scan in your postal mail, e-mail you the images, and snail mail back your e-mailed reply. All for a
monthly fee of $30 (or $40 for color scans). They offer CD-ROM archiving and optionally weed out the junk mail. Anyone want to try this out and post their experiences?
posted by waxpancake at 2:55 PM PST - 23 comments
Did I say devaluation?
Nothing important, just another presidential blunder that caused a bit of confussion among Japan traders. Here in Europe it's been all over the place in the news and I am surprised that that little detail has been absent of the main USA media. I'm sure I didn't do my (online) homework well, could you please help me?
Maybe is that the European media jumps at every oportunity to ridiculize Bush? Or is the american media protecting Bush image
inside the USA?
Could things like this
controversial Pentagon plan be the beguinning of a New Media War? We begin by hidding the little things and then we'll go for bigger and bigger
blackouts, and then even lies?
posted by samelborp at 11:52 AM PST - 17 comments
Utah Leads Nation in Rate of Anti-Depressant Use.
It is interesting (to me) in that the people doing the study credit a "Mother of Zion" syndrome of married Mormon women putting on the happy face regardless of how happy they truly are. My state is up at the top also. Could be all the rain I guess. . .*sigh*
posted by Danf at 11:08 AM PST - 45 comments
Ashcroft's Jihad.
"Attorney General John D. Ashcroft yesterday cast the government's war on terrorism in religious terms, arguing that the campaign is rooted in faith in God and urging Christians, Jews and Muslims to unite in the effort." So as an agnostic, am I excused from the war?
posted by homunculus at 10:58 AM PST - 66 comments
What now? Fashion profiling?
(NYT) For the third time in 48 hours, an alert Israeli foiled an attempted suicide bombing on Tuesday. Near the West Bank settlement of Mehola in the Jordan Valley, a bus driver, Shalom Drei, thought a man climbing onto the second step of the bus looked suspicious. "He wore an aviator's jacket, zipped all the way up," Mr. Drei told Israeli television. "It looked strange to me."
Mr. Drei pushed the stranger back off the bus, then, as the bus pulled away, the man exploded.
posted by semmi at 8:49 AM PST - 39 comments
waferbaby's new
teen log generator produces random paragraphs each time you reload, like:
"life is so unfair :/ i need a new host. rofl! haha i wish i got an anti-bloggie, and i'm bitter. i am so not a slut and i'm annoyed. so not going to happen! i wish i was britney." (Buy yourself a webcam, hire a youthful stripper to spend some time in front of it and you may be on your way to getting everything on your Amazon wishlist.)
posted by lia at 2:47 AM PST - 20 comments
February 19
Court of Appeals Rules That the Media Belongs to Those Who Can Buy It: Today, the CoA has just declared that the 35 percent ownership cap (applicable to broadcasters who reach more than 35% of the American public) was a prohibition "capricious and contrary to the law," meaning that Viacom and Fox, who were over the limit, are now in the clear to monopolize the airwaves. What does this mean for the future of media conglomerates? Discuss the implications.
posted by ed at 4:56 PM PST - 13 comments
Tariq Ramadan: The Muslim Martin Luther?
Tariq Ramadan is not a household name in the United States, but the Swiss professor could be one of the most important intellectuals in the world. Ramadan's thinking, his methods and his personal history are all connected to the same question: Islam's encounter with the modern world. Can the youngest of the world's three great monotheisms co-exist harmoniously with the Western world and its Enlightenment legacy? Or is it fated to be reactionary, closed off from the world, an excuse for terrorism and failure? (From
alt.muslim, Salon Premium required to read full text)
posted by laz-e-boy at 4:09 PM PST - 12 comments
Multiethnic Barbie.
(
picture) ""It would be really boring if there were all white people," says the fourth-grader, who also likes her dolls to portray people she knows - from her half-Asian cousins to classmates of all races." Of course, nobody she knows probably has Barbie's proportions...
posted by owillis at 1:45 PM PST - 31 comments
Chomsky says arrest me too.
A Turkish publisher accused of disseminating separatist propaganda was acquitted yesterday after one of his authors -the celebrated American linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky - appeared in an Istanbul court and asked to be tried alongside him.
posted by skallas at 12:54 PM PST - 68 comments
Finally, no more Miss Cleo commercials
as the Federal Trade Commission steps into to prosecute late-night TV's most popular psychic peddler. At first I thought if you dumb enough to call a psychic line, the gov't shouldn't be stepping in to block the charges, as the article notes the average call was $60, but they also note misleading "free reading" claims and crooked billing procedures. If you're making that kind of money, why resort to underhanded business practices? Even more obvious: why didn't she see this coming and change their ways?
posted by mathowie at 10:41 AM PST - 24 comments
Cow escapes slaughterhouse
by scaling 6' fence and remains "at large" here in Cincinnati - this is too silly to make up. The good news is the cow doens't go back when it's found, dozens of people have put thier names in to take the fugitive cow in.
posted by Dome-O-Rama at 10:19 AM PST - 53 comments
So, has Stephen King lost it?
This guy seems to think so. Some would say he never had it. I think that while this guy makes a few valid points, he goes overboard, and brings up many things that just seem petty and silly, like he's trying to over-prove his theory, and increase the word count of the article. What do you think? (Side note: I wouldn't be surprised if "Richard Blow" becomes the name of a victim in a future King novel...).
posted by sassone at 9:33 AM PST - 23 comments
Pentagon Readies Efforts to Sway Sentiment Abroad
The latest in our propaganda war. Why not simply hire such notables as Britney Spears and other worthies to entertain, free, in countries that do not seem to appreciate what democracy and capitalism are able to showcase as why our system is so good?
posted by Postroad at 8:47 AM PST - 14 comments
Has anyone noticed the lack of hip-hop stars from flyover-country? There seem to be thriving scenes in
Gary, Indiana,
Philly, and other cities. (Oddly, there's a dearth of info on Chicago.)
Aside from a couple of well-known white rappers from
the Motor City, the
Geography of Hip-Hop remains fixated on NYC and LA and to a lesser extent, Miami and Atlanta.
Now there's plenty of urban life going on between the coasts, and I can't believe it's because there's no talent in the breadbasket country. So is it record company stupidity, bad promotion, what?
posted by jonmc at 8:32 AM PST - 17 comments
This
might be taking the war on terrorism a little to far. Royal Marines get lost or should I say
vamos. (Parden my french).
posted by FidelDonson at 8:29 AM PST - 8 comments
A Picture is worth a thousand words
Jonathan Jones says America turns to Rockwell's idyllic images in times of trouble.
Remember
This Guy from Tiananmen Square, June 5, 1989? A powerful image that seems to be linked to bravery and freedom in most stories I remember.
Now what about
This Guy, A Palestinian boy throwing stones at an Israeli tank.
I'm not sure where the connection is here, but the tank images struck me as somewhat similiar to each other, yet, I imagine the two images will mean different things to different people.
I'm not sure what either tank image has to do with Rockwell, that's just the story that got me thinking.
posted by Blake at 8:24 AM PST - 4 comments
Be careful how you sing "My Way"
After being ridiculed for an off-key version of My Way, the irate singer kills one heckler and wounds another. Philippine karaoke bars have begun to remove the song from their playlists as this was the climax of several violent incidents when this song was played.
posted by Lanternjmk at 8:20 AM PST - 8 comments
What time was my flight?
This is a collection of flight timetables through the ages from a large variety of countries - it also serves as a rather nice library of graphic deisgn from around the world. There are some nice links on the
front page too.
posted by Spoon at 7:47 AM PST - 5 comments
February 18
WGirls
is quite simply one of the weirdest site featuring scantily-clad women I have ever seen. Basically, it's very attractive women with the face of an important world leader (by looking at the URL, can you guess who?) superimposed. Scary. [via
Slate's
Other Websites]
posted by sillygwailo at 10:12 PM PST - 15 comments
Corporate censorship in China
(via slashdot). I guess censorship and collusion in the repression of people is okay if you're making profits for your shareholders. An eye-opening look into the way that corporations are helping to facilitate censorship on the Internet in China. AOL and Yahoo's attitudes to what I thought were universal human rights is nothing short of sickening.
posted by pixelgeek at 9:07 PM PST - 8 comments
validation:
(nytimes) the guggenheim has purchased two pieces of online art for its collection for a reported $10-15K each. most interesting to me was that the "valuation of nonphysical art" hoo-ha is surprisingly brief. the art world may finally understand that art concepts, not art objects are valuable.
posted by patricking at 8:47 PM PST - 23 comments
The death of creationism?
William Saletan is claiming that creationism is dead, because Intelligent Design isn't as reactionary as the old creationism, even though scientists still treat it as a threat. I think creationism in any brand is still a threat, regardless of how reactionary it is. What do you think?
posted by stoneegg21 at 9:52 AM PST - 79 comments
PBS's Televangelist:
"Moyers's difficulty conversing with people on the right seems to have impaired his ability to report their opinions fairly, particularly on issues of race. "The right gets away with blaming liberals for their efforts to help the poor, but what the right is really objecting to is the fact that the poor are primarily black," he told Alterman. "The man who sits in the White House today [George H.W. Bush] opposed the Civil Rights Act. So did Ronald Reagan. This crowd is really fighting a retroactive civil rights war to prevent the people they dislike because of their color from achieving success in American life."" (via
medianews)
posted by owillis at 9:26 AM PST - 43 comments
Somebody is going to link to this Wired
article about blogging, so lets get it over and done with.
posted by jedro at 8:55 AM PST - 28 comments
Asbestos: The $200 Billion Miscarriage of Justice
The original "mass tort" is bringing down companies faster than you can say "Enron." Since January 2000, 16 asbestos defendant companies have filed for Chapter 11 protection, including Owens Corning, Federal Mogul, W.R. Grace, and USG Corp. Here’s a disaster that’s so screwed-up, and gathering such momentum, that "lawyers who represent the truly ill are teaming up with asbestos defendants to demand reform. They fear that the marginally impaired plaintiffs will drive so many defendants bankrupt that the genuinely sick and dying will have no one left to collect from." And if you’re tempted to dismiss this as just deserts for "evil corporations," bear in mind that, like Enron, asbestos defendants are made up of thousands of workers, many of whom staked their future on pensions and company stock: "At the time of Federal-Mogul's bankruptcy filing this past October, all-too-loyal employees held 16% of the company's stock, which had lost 99% of its value since January 1999. About 14% of Owens Corning's shares--which lost 97% of their value in the two years before its filing--were owned by employees. But those employees' losses have thus far gone unbemoaned by Congress." [more inside…]
posted by pardonyou? at 8:50 AM PST - 26 comments
This is fabulous. SHOCKWAVE / FLASH... Setpixel shows you great stuff, explains the mechanics AND lets you download the source files... Who could ask for more. (the start demo buttons are at the bottom of the text column.)
posted by Spoon at 4:08 AM PST - 5 comments
Record Labels' Answer to Napster Still Has Artists Feeling Bypassed (NY Times).
Well, it seems the shoe's on the other foot now. Some artists are learning that the industry alternative (Pressplay, MusicNet) to free music downloading services isn't paying quite the dividends they'd expected.
"Last December, the major record labels responded with two Internet services of their own where fans pay monthly fees to download songs. Under this arrangement, however, the performers still don't get a dime: for each song downloaded, they stand to get only a fraction of a cent, according to the calculations of disgruntled managers and lawyers.
And, artists and their managers say, the labels, like Napster, aren't putting the music online with proper permission either.
Can't say I have a lot of sympathy for
any of the principals involved. What is especially amusing (but not surprising) is the apparent duplicity of the labels: "in comments not for attribution, several executives at labels and their subscription services did not dispute the accusations regarding the payment plan. They said their first priority was to make the services attractive to consumers and that the details of compensation could be worked out afterward."
posted by topolino at 1:12 AM PST - 14 comments
February 17
I Nominate Richie Havens As The Most Criminally Unappreciated Recording Artist Ever:
In this recent
Guardian article, John Aizlewood asked "How on earth did this man miss the boat?" Indeed! His voice is deep and beautiful, his guitar-playing is exciting and innovative and, to my mind, he's the best and busiest no-nonsense live performer around. On his
website he generously shows us how to play guitar
in his own special way. He also
comes across as an inspiring, wonderful human being. And yet, for all his Woodstock kudos, he's more well known for his voice-overs on commercials(McDonalds and Pepsi, for example) than for his music. His new record,
Wishing Well, is just out. But
nobody seems to care. He's a hero in Europe but negligently seen as a hippy in his native land. There are a lot of other unnaccountably underrated and unknown veteran artists around. Grrrr!
Who's yours?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 6:06 PM PST - 105 comments
Why Your Digital Data Could One Day Disappear
HBS Working Knowledge has a Story (actually it's an Excerpt of
Dark Ages II: When the Digital Data Die, by Bryan Bergeron)
that says data stored on discs and other
forms of
computer storage are anything but permanent.
Not only are the disks themselves the trouble (they last 5-20 years), the computers that read/write them are an added problem, tried opening a Commodore 64 file lately, or a 5 ¼ inch disc?
posted by Blake at 5:54 PM PST - 39 comments
The great Australian lie?
THE Australian navy released only two pictures from more than 100 taken of sailors rescuing boatpeople last October, images the then defence minister seized on to suggest asylum-seekers had thrown children overboard..
It doesn't look good for the ruling government, but Australian public opinion is so heavily weighed against the 'illegal immigrants' that the bulk of voters will move on. They'll forget and probably forgive. After all, we expect our politicians to lie and/or manipulate. Don't we?
posted by skinsuit at 4:51 PM PST - 14 comments
Does
this ad for an SUV make you want to buy one? I think that it says a whole lot about our society, non-withstanding one's preference for soy-based foods. I see the humor here and I can laugh at myself as readily as the next person, but this seems to embody the "Bush/Cheney" ethos at its most cavalier. Comments?
posted by Danf at 4:40 PM PST - 84 comments
Reed proposed faith-based Enron support
Ralph Reed, former Christian Coalition leader and now corporate lobbyist and Georgia GOP chief, made a business offer to the Enron Corp. in October 2000. In a memo outlining the offer, he proposed mobilizing religious leaders and pro-family groups for a battle over electricity industry deregulation. The price? Reed suggested $380,000. Could any cynical comments made about this proposal possibly be harsh enough?
posted by raysmj at 11:13 AM PST - 29 comments
McG to direct first Superman movie in 15 years.
The now-discarded Tim Burton/Kevin Smith collaboration made more sense to me...seems that a less confident, more troubled Kal-el, living in a darker world, would take off the campy edge Superman stories often have, and draw modern audiences (especially today's teens). But surely McG (Charlie's Angels) and writer J.J. Abrams (Alias and Felicity) will bring us a smugly self-actualized Superman in a postmodern world full of kaleidoscopic action scenes. And that will never work as anything more than eye candy...will it?
posted by bingo at 11:01 AM PST - 45 comments
Those who vote for Democrats only aid the terrorists.
"In a series of TV and radio ads in each of five states hosting top Senate contests, President Bush utters the tag line to a narrated paragraph slamming the Democratic senator of that state for being partisan during a time of national duress." Has anyone seen any of these ads? What did you think of them?
posted by homunculus at 11:01 AM PST - 27 comments
Arab Experts Fault Saudi's Idea Based on Land-for-Peace Trade
Let's see if I have this right. Five arab nations attacked Israel a few times and Israel, winning, occupied land, waiting for a peace settlement. Now the very influential ruler of Saudi Arabia has a plan that will tgive back all occupied land to the Palestinians and give them a state and give them their place in Jerusalem. But other Arab "thinkers"--academics, so to speak, think this is unwsise because it would help Sharon. Instead, Israel, the victor in these wars, ought to give all back and them hope that the losers in the struggle will in turn recognize Israel's right to exist in peace.
Seems a rather odd way to win or lose in warfare and suggest to mea certain intransigence when this might be the beginning of a breakthrough that the world has waited for. What think?
posted by Postroad at 8:34 AM PST - 29 comments
Regional Coding of
DVDs is a common practice among the large movie studios. Mostly American
companies putting into place regional coding "to protect American interests" in
many cases. But then why does
content
vary
so
much between the US and the European counterparts of the home entertainment
industry. The industry claims it is to protect themselves from piracy, but is it
really the control of content that they want? And whether they've created that
content or not, is it collusion and unfair business practices to give one region
completely different availability than another, or just business as usual?
posted by benjh at 5:13 AM PST - 22 comments
The A to Z of Britney Spears
"
T is for Totally, Britney's favourite adverb. After taking delivery of freebies from Hilfiger, she reported: 'My mom and my sister are like totally walking around in Tommy stuff.' Asked whether she and Justin understood each other, she cooed: 'We totally do.' And, with a grateful glance at the sky, she once asserted: 'I am totally blessed.' She has every right to appropriate the word. She is, after all, a totalitarian phenomenon. "
[from The Observer, who really should know better]
posted by feelinglistless at 4:03 AM PST - 27 comments
February 16
Scriptographer
is an Adobe Illustrator plugin that allows usage of Javascript to extend the functionality of the program. Looks really interesting. Short on examples right now, but the documentation and whatnot is all there.
[Note: Major dHTML usage on the page. No stupid window resizing and such, though.]
posted by Su at 9:24 PM PST - 9 comments
Ethnic Cleansing - The Video Game?
I don't know what can be said about this. It pushes several hot buttons - violence in video games, "hate speech" and (in the US) the First Amendment, and race relations in a post 9-11 world. Yes, it's reprehensible - but can you play Voltaire and defend the author's right to create it?
(Warning: Pro-Aryan website; link contains explicit depictions of race-based violence.) Discuss.
posted by tpoh.org at 8:42 PM PST - 39 comments
Discarding evidence
because of a possible
Miranda violation. Sure, Miranda serves a (good) purpose but are the scales of justice tipped a little too much in favor of the accused when the entire chain of evidence can
be discarded because of a confession of a
possibly dubious nature?
posted by owillis at 8:07 PM PST - 16 comments
Understanding USA
is (almost) worthy of Tufte (presentation wise), but best of all you can download the whole book in PDF format. As a non-American I ask, does this help us understand the USA or is it all just statistics? (more inside).
posted by Zootoon at 3:29 PM PST - 33 comments
Wacky news is on the rise,
and not just here at MetaFilter: it's showing up more and more on mainstream news media sites desperate for your attention (and in traditional print and broadcast media, too). For better or for worse, it's not just for
FARK anymore. We've discussed many a weird news item here (much to mathowie's annoyance); what about weird news as a trend?
posted by mcwetboy at 11:46 AM PST - 13 comments
Operation No Living Thing
Part of the larger website-Postcards from Hell- a website of A. Raffaele Ciriello's photojournalism. I still can not believe what happened in Sierra Leone actually happened, much less remains obscure to most people. These are photos of some people who survived. Their quiet dignity is beyond words.
posted by quercus at 10:57 AM PST - 3 comments
How sad!
DALLAS--From the Bart Simpson "I didn't do it" school of how to avoid taking personal responsibility, we have what could be the start of a trend.
Real men, enveloped in scandal and accused of wrongdoing, don't admit mistakes. They don't apologize. They simply express sadness.
Ken Lay
In Dallas, it was the DA's office that pursued convictions--and did so for four months after learning that the drugs were fake.
posted by onegoodmove at 9:44 AM PST - 10 comments
The Care and Feeding of the Happy Drinking Bird.
"You will learn how to identify several different subspecies of Drinking Bird, and marvel at a detailed examination of the creature's anatomy. Another section provides lucky Happy Drinking Bird keepers with information on proper care and feeding, to ensure that theirs indeed remains a Happy Drinking Bird." So
that's how it works…
posted by darukaru at 8:15 AM PST - 10 comments
February 15
Ladies and Gentlemen, Behold the Lummox!
For years, I believed myself to be a demographic of one, however novelist Mike Magnuson has shown me that I am one among many. However, heretofore we've lacked a snappy name like " yuppie" or "slacker." Magnuson's site and the book it promotes are for those of us "smarter-than-he-looks" guys who had to "find [ourselves] in the Reagan Years." For those of us beer-drinkin', donut-munchin' regular joes who were forged in those baffling times, our patron saint has arrived.FWIW, his previous books are terrific, too.
posted by jonmc at 9:12 PM PST - 5 comments
The serious business of selling all-American fun
"There could hardly be a better summation of the opportunity that American pop culture companies like Disney are enjoying overseas. With the end of the Cold War, the opening of China, and the worldwide triumph of American-style capitalism, the brand-name purveyors of American food, fashion, and entertainment have never had it so good."
posted by owillis at 7:05 PM PST - 10 comments
Is the New York Times rewriting history?
This link claims (and an archives search backs up) that the Paper of Record deleted a bin Laden-related story published two days before 9/11, and now redirects searchers to a story written on 9/12. The story isn't damning, but it does point out how much we knew about him before the event. Is it bad journalism? Bad politics? Extra points awarded for Orwell quotes.
posted by chino at 1:50 PM PST - 31 comments
Did Max Bickford get a v-chip implant?
"...the FCC ruined television throughout the 1990s by allowing mega corporations and multinationals to gobble up TV networks and distribution outlets, including cable and satellite companies..."
Now that the big corporations own the content, they obviously have the right to change it. It's capitalism, pure and simple, but it may also mean bad TV. Does the goverment have the right, responsiblity, or obligation to to re-regulate the industry, just so the quality of programming improves?
posted by bingo at 1:38 PM PST - 14 comments
There is a form of support for just about everything under the sun, but when it comes to something like having a large penis wouldn't one think a good pair of underpants would be enough?
Apparently not, welcome to
The Large Penis Support Group--and their message board. There are no pictures (which is why I felt this is not innapropriate), and there
are some hillarious threads, and ego/hymen-shattering stats.
posted by Eric Lloyd NYC at 12:28 PM PST - 49 comments
Chariots of Ire
Olympics may never be held again in the U.S. because of--well, what many perceive as too much security and flag waving. As though terror had never before struck the Olypics (Germany) when it was not very well guarded. Or am I perhaps a part of the jingoism that is here deplored?
posted by Postroad at 11:08 AM PST - 31 comments
There goes Colin Powell, pissing off the far right again. This time the Family Research Council and folks like Gary Bauer demand to know how dare he go on MTV and, in response to a teen's question about AIDS,
tell kids to USE CONDOMS! (And for that matter, what
is the secretary of state doing appearing on that smut-filled network in the first place, and what kinds of parents allow their children to listen to satanic rock music and hip-hop, and how
dare insolent children raise filthy questions with government officials about
SEX?!)
posted by jellybuzz at 9:54 AM PST - 56 comments
Get Chipped!
A Brazilian legislator wants to become the first politician to be implanted with a controversial microchip that would contain his personal information. Hmmm, would the real
Kevin Warwick please stand up.
posted by nakedjon at 9:31 AM PST - 3 comments
Why Are So Many Americans Cancelling Their Subscriptions To "The London Review of Books"?
This letter from
Paul Genova rings true - and
touché - to this European at least. Ever since the very respectable
LRB published its
issue on the September 11 attacks, American readers(and some notable contributors) have been writing in droves to cancel their subscriptions and connections to the journal.
Mary Beard's article(
op.cit.) aroused most of the fury, though others are arguably just as outrageous. In the pages of this most lively of letter sections - graciously available online - this particular correspondence seems to demonstrate an ever-sharpening divide between American and European intellectuals. Are Paul Genova's and other readers' disgusted reactions justified? Are they specific to the WTC attacks or, more worryingly, representative of a wider separation?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:35 AM PST - 46 comments
Happy John Frum Day Everyone!
If there’s one date you circle on your calendar this February, forget Fat Tuesday and skip Valentine’s Day, too. The visive holiday to celebrate and remember is John Frum Day. Recognized annually on the island of Tanna, John Frum Day celebrates American culture and all its riches. Here's hoping that John Frum flies over your house today, delivering loads of good Tok-Tok.
posted by Neologian at 7:50 AM PST - 6 comments
download your crappy free aim client here
Yup, this morning got bounced from
trillian using AOL Instant Messenger again.
This time, got an interesting message from AOL. The AIM client opened itself with this message:
AOL Instant Messenger: You have been disconnected from the AOL Instant
Message Service (SM) for accessing the AOL network using unauthorized
software. You can download a FREE, fully featured, and authorized client,
here http://www.aol.com/aim/download2.html .
So, fellow Mefi readers, how long can AOL block Trillian? Shouldn't they be coming up with more innovative campaigns, or is this a sign that the IM market is about to become a lot more competitive? Tawk amongst yourselves.
posted by purplecow at 6:27 AM PST - 58 comments
www.computerhistory.org
is the virtual incarnation of computer historian and collector Michael Williams' phat-ass computer museum. My favourite, BTW, is
the timeline, searchable by year or topic. What technological milestones occured in the year of
your birth?
posted by stuporJIX at 4:43 AM PST - 8 comments
The People's Bureau for Consumer Information
has been a long time coming (The Designer's Republic have been trailing it to those in the know for over 2 years). Yesterday, it finally went live. tDR's work may or may not be your bag (I'm about 50/50) but the way they have set this site up is amazing - everything even the secure purchasing is done with a very uniquely styled Flash frontend.. It's worth going just to play with it.
posted by jackiemcghee at 1:07 AM PST - 34 comments
February 14
Coral Castle
is the amazing labor of love built solely by
Ed Leedskalnin, a man who claimed to have discovered the "secrets of the pyramids". Did he? We may never know, but this frail, tubercular, 100-pound man managed to quarry, transport, shape, and erect
chunks of coral weighing up to 28 tons by himself, using only the simplest of tools. The castle also includes
a nine-ton gate that is so perfectly balanced it can be opened by a child, and
the world's largest valentine, which weighs in at an incredible 5,000 pounds.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:06 PM PST - 13 comments
Washington State house members voted today to
end the TV blackouts imposed on local Seahawks games. The taxpayers are paying for the stadium. Should they continue to be forced to go to it in order to see the games?
posted by goto11 at 8:53 PM PST - 5 comments
50 Best Album Covers.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the covers chosen have less to do with artistic or photographic merit than the "statement" that Rolling Stone believes they show.
And it might be interesting to see how they measure up to the
100 Best Album Covers.
posted by jacobw at 8:15 PM PST - 42 comments
With the relentless march of the franchises on one hand, and the onslaught of health-conciousness and fad food on the other, that venerable culinary institution, the neighborhood greasy spoon, is becoming an endangered species. Well, fear not,
Roadfood.com is
the web resource for those of us who like our food drippin' with grease, smothered with chili and served in an unpretentious enviornment.
two of my local faves are there, along with
mouthwatering pictures of their specialties. I'm sure your local house of grease is featured as well.[
warning: will induce major muchies.]
posted by jonmc at 8:14 PM PST - 18 comments
List-O-Mania Craptacular
Rolling Stone's
Well Hung at Dawn looks at the stuff that happened last year.
September 11th did not change our relationship to pop culture, except for the fact that we couldn't see Collateral Damage and are still waiting for Showtime to air The Believer. Osama didn't make "Beautiful Day" sound any friggin' better (though it did put Ray Stevens back in the Top Ten, and that's not a bad thing!).
posted by Foaf at 6:05 PM PST - 4 comments
Hitler's secretary, Traudl Junge dead at 81.
She just published her book and a documentary of her life premiered hours before her death. She was in his bunker when he committed suicide in 1945 and she took his last will and testament. She died still maintaining that she knew nothing of the holocaust or the depths of the Nazi horror.
posted by Dean_Paxton at 6:05 PM PST - 7 comments
Osama Bin Laden - The Musical?
A new play, being performed in the Jordanian capital Amman, is inspiring a rare glimmer of humour about the world's most wanted man. In one joke, Osama bin Laden tells the audience that he is ready to travel to Washington to hand himself over to US President George Bush but on one condition - "You come with me and I fly the plane!" The musical satire, written by actor/director Hisham Yanes, provokes laughter in about 70% of the audience, he says. The rest want to see him lashed. (Via
alt.muslim)
posted by laz-e-boy at 4:53 PM PST - 2 comments
Miserable Melodies
has collected some the world's most excremental music for your masochistic listening pleasure. See if you can make it all the way through Linda McCartney singing backup on
Hey Jude or the Portsmouth Sinfonia's rendition of
Also Sprach Zarathustra without clutching your head like a stunned monkey. Requires RealPlayer, unfortunately.
posted by MrBaliHai at 3:49 PM PST - 15 comments
Enraged about Enron? Buy the T-shirt
The latest Enron related meme in Houston is a slew of anti-Enron shirts. Just today at lunch I picked up the coolest one to date, the Enrage shirt, for $10 with a $2 donation to the ex-Enron employees fund. Other Enron shirts can be found
here.
posted by DragonBoy at 3:15 PM PST - 8 comments
Woman sentenced to be stoned to death for adultery
The man with whom she had sex admitted it, then denied it, and was set free for lack of evidence. She was pregnant when she received the sentence (which provides for her to be buried up to the chest and stoned by male villagers until dead). The Nigerian court in question recently implemented a fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic Law (Sharia, in the case), and have returned to mandatory sentences like stoning to death for adultery and amputation of hands for theft. Modernity, how we luff ya.
posted by brookish at 2:59 PM PST - 23 comments
Death Comes To Time,
a new series of official on-line adventures for Doctor Who began tonight. Not as good as the
Big Finish adventures to be sure, but there may be some interest for
Buffy fans, as this one features the vocal talents of Mr. Giles ...
posted by feelinglistless at 2:01 PM PST - 6 comments
Where in the world is Neal Stephenson?
The Web page of Neal Stephenson, author of
Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, etc., explains how busy he is writing his new book. (
Quicksilver, according to this old interview.) The site's fabulously cranky, and a refreshing alternative to marketing sites for artists and authors, but no further explanation is forthcoming.
posted by krewson at 11:57 AM PST - 42 comments
A Time For Dissent
This piece suggests that the Bush team has been riding high and mighty because of or since 9/11 and that it is time to ask specifically what has been gained and what lost. Leftist rant or spot on?
posted by Postroad at 10:45 AM PST - 27 comments
MissingMatter.net
- this is how Slashdot started out. Relatively technical weblog that deals with everything from nano to CS and quantum, to design and the occasional "popular" news items (ex. praying achieves pregnancy). Been up for a year and a half I think but still doesn't have the user base. But the stories posted there are worth it. You can search the whole archive since day one, by category.
posted by Why at 10:32 AM PST - 12 comments
Looks like
the Olympics isn't the boon to business Salt Lake City expected it to be. It might be convenient to blame the terror scare, but the same thing happened to Atlanta a while back. Businesses hired extra workers and spent money to prepare for crowds that never showed. Is all the money to be made taken in through corporate sponsorship deals and television? How have other cities fared financially during and after past Olympics?
posted by troybob at 9:26 AM PST - 19 comments
·
Why do black folks seem to always order red or orange soft drinks?
·
Why do men have nipples?
·
Why do Indian woman have a red dot on their forehead?
·
In Jewish dietary laws...can fish and milk be mixed, i.e. cod in cheese sauce?
The
Y?Forum, the National Forum on People's Differences. The Y?Forum "gives you a way to ask people from other ethnic or cultural backgrounds the questions you've always been too embarrassed or uncomfortable to ask them." Some of the topics discussed: Differences between people of different age, class, gender, geography, occupation, race, religion, sexual orientation.
posted by jpoulos at 7:59 AM PST - 78 comments
Guttenberg, Babbage...Gates? [via Techdirt]
Reading this caused me to question what caused Salon.com to publish this glowing valentine/commercial endorsement for Microsoft's .NET (a general catch-all marketing phrase covering MSFT's implementation of a number of standards supporting web services). Ignores most of the security shortfalls of .NET and compares Gates to Guttenberg. Should this bear the title "Paid Advertising"?
posted by O Boingo at 7:51 AM PST - 20 comments
National Pancake Week
isn't getting the press it deserves. It seems like sometimes with all this "War on Terrorism" and "Olympic Fever" stuff, we forget about the really important things in life.
posted by Samsonov14 at 7:17 AM PST - 11 comments
Kitty Cloning:
Texas A & M scientists have cloned a housecat, the "world’s first cloned companion animal". Do we need more cats that badly?
posted by Jos Bleau at 6:24 AM PST - 28 comments
Does anyone care that nobody needs to sing well anymore? Spot-on piece about the way that digital music tools aren't just making rotten singers sound OK (with software that shifts their pitch upwards), but good singers lazy ("hey that's fine, just copy'n'paste it into the next chorus").
And removing the excitement from studio performance. Is the only honest response to this electro-fakery to go all
Daft Punk? Or am I just an old Stevie'n'Retha'n'Marvin nostalgist?
posted by theplayethic at 3:36 AM PST - 53 comments
Cam Girls Gone Wild...
Looks like Webpig from
InternetGossip is putting together a little side project to complement his popular tabloid site. I bet the parents of these girls would be thrilled to know the type of subculture their daughters have gotten involved in. Nevertheless, this is genius, ( as far as tacky things like this go). There's a P.O. box somewhere in Orange County just begging to be filled up with cash from this methinks.
posted by rabbit at 2:05 AM PST - 40 comments
February 13
Valentine's Teddy Bear bomb warning
The FBI said a man, "possibly of Arab descent", bought 14 gas canisters, 12 packages of lead gun pellets and nine white Valentine teddy bears at Stevenson Ranch in California on January 15.
Please be careful.
posted by Tarrama at 7:41 PM PST - 16 comments
Kisses anyone,
favorite memories of kisses, that first french kiss, that first kiss...in memorable places, lets hear some kissing stories folks.
posted by bittennails at 7:22 PM PST - 23 comments
Colorado real winner of Games
Besides possible event fixing or the exhaustion of SLOC's 400,000 hot dog supply on DAY 5, what other Olympic donnybrook might be worth mentioning? This will probably not seem interesting to anyone outside of Utah or Colorado, but Denver Post columnist Woody Paige wrote an inflammatory column that has many Utahns, uh, losing their religion.
(You'll note that the link isn't to the Denver Post website -- that's because they yanked the Feb. 12 column from their site earlier today, without comment. A mailto link was posted on their splash page for complaints about the article, but even that's gone now.)
Talk about sour grapes.
I suppose that if the games are ever held in Tel Aviv, Woody will fill his column with references to "funny" Jewish apparel, hair styles, dietary habits, or worse.
FWIW, Barry Newman's column in today's Wall Street Journal was a lot more balanced . Sorry, no link -- subscibers only :(
posted by Big Dave at 6:13 PM PST - 13 comments
"Peaceful Tomorrows" launches tomorrow (Feb 14th).
"Peaceful Tomorrows continues the work of family members who took part in the Walk for Healing and Peace from the Pentagon to the World Trade Center (winter 2001) as well as those who met with Afghan families affected by the subsequent bombing campaign (January 2002).
Our goal is to facilitate dialogues on alternatives to war that utilize all of America's collective wisdom, skills and talents. "
Good luck Peaceful Tomorrows!
posted by crasspastor at 5:25 PM PST - 1 comments
If you're anything like me, you like to know something about your gay male escort before you spend your hard earned money... Well, now you can!! That is, thanks to a
blurb from Michael Musto in the Village Voice.
Introducing:
Male For Male Escort Reviews! Musto calls it: "The Zagats of pay-for-gay!" I call it..err...disturbing?
posted by adrober at 5:19 PM PST - 4 comments
Social Cruelty in Adults: Does High School Ever End?
An upcoming ABCNews Special with John Stossel (airing Friday) explores peer pressure, being in the "in crowd", and the role that popularity plays not only during our years in the groves of academe but also in the professional workplace. We'll see John's report on Friday, but I wish to redirect this discussion to the mefi crowd: Were you in the "in crowd" during your high school/collegiate years or on the outside looking in? Did it even matter, and if it did, how and in what way? Has it played a distinct role in the person who you feel you've become?
posted by iceblink at 4:43 PM PST - 43 comments
Free Digital Photo Enhancer program
~~ So many of you have visited my Pencam site, and know that I've become somewhat obsessive about taking pictures with an inexpensive digital camera. In order to make the pics I take look even halfway decent, I have to pull all of them into Photoshop, and tweak them a bit, adjusting the contrast, etc. I enjoy doing it, but it can be time consuming. Now, a company called
Media Chance has come to the rescue. They're giving away a cool little application that will automagically enhance your digital photos. It's really quite something. PC only, I'm afraid... still. If you've been dissatisfied with the results of your digital camera, it's worth checking out.
posted by crunchland at 3:02 PM PST - 26 comments
Taking a swipe at celebrity cause-fests:
The ever-witty
Pulp (whose latest album, "We Love Life," might
finally be seeing a Stateside release come spring) enlists a host of celebrity impersonators (how many can you point out?) for the video promoting their newest single, "Bad Cover Version."
posted by maura at 2:25 PM PST - 6 comments
"They are hardened criminals."
Is the "domestic terrorism" of radical animal-rights and environmental groups really the same as the 9/11 attacks? Or just an excuse to crack down on liberals?
posted by centrs at 1:50 PM PST - 50 comments
U.S. CONSIDERS MILITARY ACTION TO REMOVE SKATING JUDGES.
I don't mean to pimp Borowitz again so soon... but damn. Best line from this:
While the decision to use military force against the figure skating judges was Mr. Bush’s, sources say there was a split within the Administration as to the appropriateness of using U.S. troops and air power to change the results of an Olympic skating contest.... These sources indicate that Secretary of State Colin Powell favored using economic and diplomatic measures while Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz advocated detaining and torturing the figure skating judges until they reversed their earlier decision.
posted by mattpusateri at 1:38 PM PST - 3 comments
Ye olde Axis of Evil
turns out to be, really, just an exercise in getting rid of Saddam (registration required). Not that I blame W but shouldn't we get a few other countries to back us up in a potentially long, protracted war? Could North Korea be
right?
posted by boardman at 1:32 PM PST - 9 comments
Make way for the Mormons :)
Reports of religions' demise have been greatly exaggerated. The Economist reports, "[w]ithin four decades, one in 20 Americans may be a Mormon and there may be 50m or more worldwide. How will outsiders react to the next world religion?" Minivans, trampolines and canned food, hooray!
posted by kliuless at 1:12 PM PST - 29 comments
get me a job - win $200!!
marc needham, one of the chicagobloggers circle, is taking matters out of a recruiter's hands and turning them over to his network. it's simple: get him a contact or interview that leads to a position fitting his criteria and you get $200.
what i find interesting here is not the publicity skew that could be put on the event, but that recruiting can become grass-roots again. especially in an industry that's become as over-formal as have interactive conent agencies.
posted by patricking at 12:27 PM PST - 17 comments
For Lent, I'm Giving Up Not Drinking Cocktails - What About You?
I collect cocktail books but there are two web sites* that are just as good as the best bartender's bible. The first is
Dale DeGroff's. The second, sadly discontinued but still invaluable, is
Paul Harrington's. Both are very personal and reveal a deep knowledge and love of this quintessentially American and civilized art form.
Cocktails may very well be the only truly democratic and universally accessible pastime. They can be made at home quite cheaply by anyone and be just as delicious as the very best served in the very best bar to the richest imbiber in the world. Not to mention their incredible
Valentine's Day potential... so what's it to be, pal? *
Webtender, Drinkboy and Esquire's cocktail guides pale by comparison
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:41 AM PST - 53 comments
100,000,000,000,000 Poems.
In 1961, French writer and mathematician
Raymond Queneau published a work consisting of ten sonnets with the lines cut up so that they could be recombined in this number of ways.
Magnus Bodin's page offers all the variations (in English, French or Swedish). Queneau, who also wrote a book consisting of one small incident described in 99 different styles, was a member of the
OuLiPo group of writers, who chose to work under systematic constraints. Other members included
George Perec, who wrote a novel without using the letter E, (a
lipogram cleverly
translated by Gilbert Adair),
Italo Calvino, and
Harry Matthews.
Techniques to consider when filling that blog becomes a chore.
posted by liam at 8:40 AM PST - 10 comments
Children's lives insufficiently documented. Video-shunning parent ostracized, jailed. I agree with this parent. Constantly taping your child, it does sometimes feel as if you're sacrificing actually being in the moment to capturing the moment, and this during some of the best "moments" of your child's life. If my understanding of old age is correct, however, memories are all you have. So I'm trying to nail me some shit down, for rocking chair days.
posted by luser at 8:18 AM PST - 23 comments
Is this really news reporting? This
entire article is based on one source: another ABC Reporter. I'm not saying the
allegations aren't true, but the ABC piece just seems more fit for a newsgroup posting than for a major media outlet. Tell me if it's just me.
posted by lawtalkinguy at 7:35 AM PST - 11 comments
Lego Shannanigans!
Lego that solves the rubik's cube, the towers of hanoi, is a vision command enabled, four-shot rotary cannon but probably still really hurts when you step on a single block.
posted by Spoon at 2:12 AM PST - 7 comments
February 12
The Deacon Effect.
"Two ladies will be tested. The two ladies chosen were "Sarah" and "Katie". Katie is the typical nice girl, on one hand she will probably put up with a ton of shit, on the other she probably has idealistic image of how men are supposed to act, think: Gentlemen. Sarah is your typical raving bitch, she won't put up with any sh*t, on the other hand her image of men is less idealistic and more "bad boy", think: Biker Trash. Both ladies will experience "Sabastian the ass..."
Two ladies. One man. Does being a jerk actually get you chicks, or does nice guys finish last? Sabastian finds out, in the name of science.
posted by jcterminal at 10:59 PM PST - 38 comments
Australians! Give Ramon a bed for the night..
'After almost 8 months of travelling through 13 countries, I took a break back home again in January 2002. Now it's time to hit the road again. I have put my mind on Australia.' I really enjoyed meeting Ramon last year, and it seems he is ready to hit the road again.. so take a chance, and invite him over. Or if you would rather read the weblog of a guy who has just been
attacked by natives in Borneo, check out
Marlow Bidforth's backpack adventure.
posted by wackybrit at 10:16 PM PST - 5 comments
This is unbelievable!
Make sure you read about Mike and Craig's adventures at the Adult Expo in Las Vegas. Talk about taking medicine to the sick. Thought provoking, to say the least. (This link is work-safe.)
posted by ooklah at 8:08 PM PST - 13 comments
this nytimes article
about okwui enwezor, the first non-european to head documenta (kind of like the olympics for art, but unfortunately always held in the town of kassel, germany) mentions an "anonymous and scandal-spreading e- mail message" which was sent to artworld honchos. in light of the fact that his curatorial style has a lot of artists and critics justifiably perturbed, i wonder what's in the email. of course i wonder what's in the email because it might be juicy, but i attempt to justify my curiousity to myself and to you.
posted by subpixel at 6:08 PM PST - 17 comments
Here's
a damning indictment of the (mis)use of regression analysis in the social sciences.
[Y]ou may have fallen for a pernicious form of junk science: the use of mathematical models with no demonstrated predictive capability to draw policy conclusions. These studies are superficially impressive. Written by reputable social scientists from prestigious institutions, they often appear in peer reviewed scientific journals. Filled with complex statistical calculations, they give precise numerical "facts" that can be used as debaters' points in policy arguments. But these "facts" are will o' the wisps. Before the ink is dry on one study, another appears with completely different "facts." Despite their scientific appearance, these models do not meet the fundamental criterion for a useful mathematical model: the ability to make predictions that are better than random chance.
posted by electro at 6:01 PM PST - 11 comments
Tales for The L33t presents 'Romeo and Juliet' (flash, ~5min)
Here's a classic of literature presented in new, revised language to reflect these changing times. It's quite possibly the most ineptly produced flash animation I've ever seen- yet I can't say I wasn't rather entertained.
Wildly fluctuating production values, a "soundtrack" that cuts in an out randomly, character animation so bad it
had to be intentional, and dialogue that... well. You really have to see it to believe it.
posted by hincandenza at 6:00 PM PST - 20 comments
Religion, Government, and Media
When all three are combined, as in Saudi Arabia, you get interesting newspaper articles. It would seem very strange to have a mainstream paper such as the New York Times having a section like this.
posted by LinemanBear at 1:07 PM PST - 29 comments
First the Family Guy gets the ax, and now this: according to
gotfuturama.com and
aint it cool,
Futurama will be cancelled. For me, there's officially no reason to watch the Fox network now, as they've cancelled the only things I recorded each week.
posted by mathowie at 11:13 AM PST - 58 comments
The Secret Diary of Gollum
: Day Thirty-One - "[Very] Dark in Mines of Moria. Bad for ogling. Have been following sounds of Legolas complaining loudly about state of his backpack and dank air of Moria being bad for his skin. Gandalf stuck gum in his hair while he wasn’t looking. Rather like Gandalf. Always has gum."
Ignore the fact that it's a
LiveJournal link. It's Middle Earth
slash-fiction. And it's funny. Really, really funny.
[via Modern Life is Rubbish]
posted by grabbingsand at 10:38 AM PST - 21 comments
Eating Healthy Can Make You Sick
With the current societal obsession with getting thin, what happens when people take this obession too far? Steven Bratman has researched this obession extensively and labeled it "orthorexia nervosa". But as interesting as this disorder is...
(more inside)
posted by harrycaul at 10:31 AM PST - 38 comments
Are there other universes?
It's mind-boggling to imagine how this might be so, but some scientists think it's possible. But if there's no way to detect something, does it really exist?
posted by Prawn at 10:02 AM PST - 60 comments
If, like me, you were part of the "underground" in the early 1990's, you'll remember that for awhile the 'zine scene seemed to be producing our next great crop of non-fiction writers. Of the original crop of greats
Paul Lukas(Beer Frame) published a book that quickly faded.
Jim Goad(Answer Me!) published a book, went to prison and is now up to his old tricks. David Greenberger(Duplex Planet) seems to be MIA.
Other 'zinesters stories seem to have followed the same pattern.
Is the reason the aging of their original audience? Are today's zinesters bloggers instead? Or perhaps todays media corporatization is, in part a reaction to that burst of independent creativity?
posted by jonmc at 9:59 AM PST - 33 comments
Another Prime Minister kisses ass.
Maggie tells us to git 'em, because "it is best that the United States, as the only global military superpower, deploy its energies militarily rather than on social work." (NYT)
posted by swift at 9:40 AM PST - 27 comments
Happy New Year!
While you're having some Dim Sum and King Cake at your parish Pancake Supper, remember to celebrate the Year of the Black Horse and get those fireworks set off before Lent begins! Oh, my. Now my head is swimming... have to go lie down.
posted by dwivian at 8:35 AM PST - 8 comments
Shock! U.S. takes all medals in snowboarding
Was anyone honestly surprised by this? Or (for that matter) when USA Basketball beats all opponents in the summer Games? We don't tend to win in things like figure skating, luge, bobsled, etc. ... so we add events like this, then trumpet them when we sweep the competition...
posted by krewson at 6:39 AM PST - 65 comments
The Valentine Candy Heart Generator
scribes the perfect romantic sentiment for the discerning geek in your life, assuming you can express yourself in eight letters or less. An oldy but a goody, for those 'net neophytes among us.
posted by johnnyace at 5:41 AM PST - 4 comments
Released today:
Al Qaeda's Mr Big? Lotfi Raissi has been in a British prison for five months, accused by the FBI of training the September 11th hijackers in their deadly mission. But
where is the evidence?
posted by asok at 2:49 AM PST - 2 comments
February 11
When a Palm Pilot
is mixed with an oven pilot light, you know it's going to be an awful mess. But if the Pizza was good, it was all worth it.
posted by h0ney at 11:44 PM PST - 6 comments
Jerry Springer: the Opera
has become a cult classic in London! Is this another testimony to the death of high culture or the popularity of American talk shows like Jerry Springer? Has anybody seen or heard about this themselves?
posted by crog at 11:18 PM PST - 7 comments
What were the skating judges watching?
What a robbery! The Canadian pair, Jamie Sale and David Pelletier were just fantastic, and deserved the gold. It is hard to imagine what the judges were thinking, because they had it all - technical merit, drama, passion, and excellence. And after the decision, dignity.
posted by wpeyton at 8:34 PM PST - 68 comments
Olympic Farce
"...there has been an attempt over the past few years to hijack the Olympic spirit, to minimize national pride and turn the events into a UNICEF-style celebration of global harmony and cooperation. The organizers are trying to turn the Olympics from a series of sporting contests into a multinational festival..."
posted by bunnyfire at 5:52 PM PST - 29 comments
The Secret Lives of Numbers
A couple of programmers took it upon themselves to use "a popular search engine"(just say it: Google) to determine the relative popularity of every integer up to one million. Even if you just take it as a big case of overthink, it's kind of fun to play with the Java-based visual representation, which provides some of the terms associated with the numbers as you click on them.
[Short warning inside; read before visiting.]
posted by Su at 5:44 PM PST - 20 comments
What exactly does "certified organic" mean?
The Consumer's Union has whipped up this good (if incomplete) idea of a resource for people to find out exactly what those so-called "eco-labels" mean. I had heard "free-range" means almost nothing, but didn't find info here on that. But I did learn a few things about how some labels are skewed by industry. Potentially a great site if they ever get around to populating their database and lose the dumb flash stuff.
posted by brookish at 4:38 PM PST - 4 comments
Damn, that's just sad.
13 kids. 4 moms. 1 dad. No dairy products, no sunshine, and apparently no clue. One child is dead of malnutrition, others have ricketts, and none of the adults are cooperating with authorities.
posted by ilsa at 3:51 PM PST - 25 comments
Bush abandons national strategy to bridge the digital divide.
After a year of public speculation over whether the White House was committed to expanding Internet access and skills to all of America's citizens, the administration has finally broken its silence. In its FY 2003 budget, the White House stripped over $100 million in public investments previously available for community technology grants and IT training programs--programs that offer real payoffs to rural communities, the working poor, minorities and children.
posted by badstone at 3:47 PM PST - 20 comments
"Hold on, please..."
Please! Do this! If we all do it, we can change the world! A national No-Call list would be great, but that assumes that telemarketers will follow the law.
posted by o2b at 3:11 PM PST - 45 comments
The Battle Over Bush's Gov. Papers.
What are they hiding? Executive order blocking Presidential papers, refusing to turn over Energy Taskforce member list, and now this! There must be something to hide. But what?!?!?
posted by bas67 at 2:42 PM PST - 10 comments
Kelly vs. Arriba (PDF)
Arriba search engine has been determined to be infringing on the copyright of photographer Leslie Kelly. The reason? Arriba displays thumbnails of copyrighted images in their search results, and displays the original page in a frameset. What kind of precedent will this set for Google and the rest of the web?
posted by johnjreeve at 10:55 AM PST - 17 comments
Is Comcast modifying your packets?
With the transition from @home to Comcast it seems that Comcast is considering the possibility of intercepting your port 80 web traffic and inserting ads or selling your browsing history to marketers. According to Federal law isn't monitoring and altering your traffic illegal or does that not apply to large corporations? With a possible AT&T/Comcast merger this is a little scary.
posted by suprfli at 9:49 AM PST - 17 comments
The America-Hating British?
In the UK's Spectator : "And this time it’s not just the usual America-haters at the Guardian and the BBC, but the likes of Alice Thomson, Stephen Glover, Alasdair Palmer, Matthew Parris, my most esteemed Telegraph and Speccie colleagues...many people over here had no idea quite how ridiculous you are. You’re shocked by us, we’re laughing at you. In fairness, instead of coasting on non-existent diseases and wild guesses at the weather, the always elegant Matthew Parris at least attempted to expand Guantanamo into a general thesis. ‘We seek to project the message that there are rules to which all nations are subject,’ he wrote in the Times. ‘America has a simpler message: kill Americans, and you’re dead meat.’ This caused endless amusement over here. As the Internet wag Steven den Beste commented, ‘By George, I think he’s got it!....’ PS What is an internet wag anyway?
posted by Voyageman at 8:45 AM PST - 19 comments
Chocolate french fries?
I thought Heinz might have gone too far with
green ketchup, but Cocoa Crispers, "brown chocolate fries designed for kids with a sweet tooth" really make my stomach turn. Also announced: Crunchy Rings - basically Tater Tots with a hole in the middle. Yum.
posted by ry at 8:39 AM PST - 38 comments
Could
this new digital camera technology finally spell the death of traditional emulsion-film cameras? According to inventor
Carver Mead, the X3 photographic sensor chip "delivers two to three times the image-producing power of today's digital cameras." Although not the first to try to bring this promising technology to the market place, Carver believes his new start-up company "Faveon," has made the breakthrough necessary to usher in the age of
affordable 35mm film quality digital photography.
link via techdirt
posted by lucien at 7:45 AM PST - 42 comments
This year's Anti-Bloggies
have been posted. I won an award for a characteristic of my site that faded into relative obscurity more than a year ago, but hey, free gift certificate!
posted by nickd at 7:35 AM PST - 12 comments
Wanna Cure Back Pain??
Australian Freestyle Skier Jaqui Cooper drank a potion of Diet Coke and crushed cockroaches to help cure her fractured vertebra. Finally, something roaches are useful for!
posted by Lanternjmk at 6:11 AM PST - 12 comments
Click and pay?
Imagine if one company held the right to collect a fee each time an Internet user clicked on a Web site link...
posted by Spoon at 3:31 AM PST - 16 comments
The world of the laid-off techie.
"Human resource experts say the underemployment trend in the current economic cycle is just starting to emerge. Many workers got the ax when mass layoffs peaked in the summer and fall of 2001, and they coasted on several months of severance and unemployment insurance, which generally lasts six months. With the tech job market still in the doldrums, they're now considering new gigs as waitresses, bartenders, forklift drivers or baby sitters--anything to pay the rent. " I wish the media hadn't/didn't focus so much attention on the suits who seem to only be able to "fail upwards" versus the folks in the trenches. (via
/.)
posted by owillis at 2:56 AM PST - 64 comments
February 10
Artificial womb.
Goodbye women, hello complex ethical debates.
... artificial wombs raise the prospect that gay couples could give 'birth' to their own children. 'This would no doubt horrify right-wingers, while the implications for abortion law might well please them,' he added.
posted by geoff. at 9:23 PM PST - 27 comments
Bob Mould on wrestling, the internet, and mp3s.
With
his first new album in years coming out, Bob's got a new outlook that's different than the old open taping/bootleg philosophy. Since he's distributing his own work, and paying for it all, you're taking money out of his hands, so he's going with the honor system. Is the value of music really going down, or will Bob have no problem finding people to pay for it?
posted by mathowie at 5:56 PM PST - 29 comments
Bigots are alive and well in America.
Here we are still fighting for equal rights for all Americans. Some will find this link uplifting because of the outpouring of community support, but to me it's just another sign of how quickly intolerance turns to attempted murder.
posted by fleener at 11:25 AM PST - 54 comments
Barry White to Serenade Sharks:
Sharks are to be serenaded . . . at The National Sea Life Centre in Birmingham in an experiment to help them mate. His love songs and other romantic tunes will be pumped in to tanks containing dogfish, starry smooth hounds and tope. Just in time for Valentine's Day ;) Thanks again to the fabulous
Nutlog.
posted by ryanshepard at 11:09 AM PST - 8 comments
This article
was mentioned briefly in another thread several days ago, but I thought it was time it had its own forum, since it's quite possibly the stupidest, most infuriating article you'll read all year (and it's only February). Let's see: poverty is positive because, "hey, I'm a writer!" Right. Now go get a job. (
Scalzi has a fine piece about the article).
posted by sassone at 6:38 AM PST - 98 comments
Is this the last days of the Empire, or just the beginning?
America the most powerful country since Roman Empire.
I for sure hope that the good old US of A don´t meet the same destiny as the Roman Empire...But!?
Has there been any country (empire) that survived being the biggest and best(?). Usually i read a lot about Swedens time of glory some couple of hundred years ago, now hoping that my grandchildren won´t read the same about the States.
Should we be worried about what the history tells us?
posted by Ulwen at 4:25 AM PST - 68 comments
Enron? Nader is glad you asked
While Democrats are readily dismissive of Nader's efforts, claiming he wrecked their chnces in the last election, the Demorats and the Republicans seemed incapable of standing up to the corporations and the largesse being handed out.
Could Nader have made a difference? Or, better, can he now make a difference?
posted by Postroad at 4:02 AM PST - 9 comments
Message to Pres. Bush:
Please stop kissing Saudi butt and kindly tell them to go to hell!
Bandar was instructed to cut off further discussion between the two countries. The time had come to "get busy rearranging our lives in the Middle East." Bandar's message was a shock to the Bush administration... But over the next two days, the United States went to extraordinary lengths to try to repair the relationship, its closest with any Arab country, finally satisfying the Saudis with a personal letter to Abdullah from the President himself.
posted by Rastafari at 12:32 AM PST - 8 comments
February 9
It ain't so dark anymore.
Dark matter seems poised to assume its place among those astronomical phenomena that were predicted to exist before being observed. The
planet Neptune and
black holes to mention two of them. The last 100 years have really been a boom time for astronomy, and they're not slowing down.
posted by holycola at 11:53 PM PST - 5 comments
I.B.M.'s MetaPad
(NYTimes link) is a slender black rectangle, that works as a PDA and a PC. Best part it's non-OS-centric. In desktop mode it uses Windows XP, in PDA mode it uses Palm OS, also should work with Linux. Not to be confused with
Metapad.
[Via SVN]
posted by riffola at 6:12 PM PST - 19 comments
If you've ever worked in retail, you MUST download this song.
Apparently, back in the mid 1960's, Woolworth decided that the best way to motivate their managers was to hire one Michael Brown to compose and sing a
snappy pop tune just for them, with predictably bizarre results. Here at the store, it's become our new anthem. For more info the tune and it's creator go
here and scroll down.
posted by jonmc at 3:55 PM PST - 24 comments
21 assisted suicides in 2001.
Physician assisted suicide, officially known as Oregon's Death with Dignity Act, has been used by 91 people since 1998. The Oregon Public Health Service has released its
Annual Report, and the demographics are very interesting. The fear-mongering critics have been proved wrong in that it's not poor, uninsured, uneducated or minorities asking for this, yet the Bush administration and John Ashcroft are trying to nullify the law. Is physician assisted suicide wrong, and if so, why? Is it the business of the Federal government to interfere in a State issue such as this, and is this just another wedge of their pro-life agenda?
posted by Mack Twain at 11:58 AM PST - 15 comments
The 19th Winter Olympics
are now officially under way, begun with America's take on the traditional
opening ceremonies. What moved you to tears? What made you gag? Were you proud to be an American, or so embarrassed that you couldn't watch? Was the WTC flag presentation tasteful? Was John Williams' score inspirational? Did you like the ice dancing, the fireworks, and the Native Indian celebrations? Who did
you want to see light the Olympic caldron?
posted by johnnyace at 8:00 AM PST - 73 comments
Got a taste for quasi-celebrity schadenfreude? Then glut yourself on the promotional materials of C-tier entertainers at the
Hal Morris Museum. Care to slip down another couple of rungs on the ladder of fame? Have a look at the
Celebrities of Real Estate. (thanks, Misterpants!)
posted by MrBaliHai at 6:18 AM PST - 2 comments
The Case of the Head-Butting Hoopster.
High-school basketball players collide during a game; the guy from the visiting team allegedly head-butts the other but is called for only a personal foul. On the home team is the son of the local district attorney, who is sitting (or perhaps
ranting) in the stands. He's just sure that a crime has been committed, so ... (more inside)
posted by diddlegnome at 1:27 AM PST - 11 comments
Ask and you shall receive.
Move over, Amazon Honor System! Now you can sign up for a one-click service that lets visitors to your Web site donate something you'll
really appreciate: oral sex. Best of all, they don't keep a percentage of your donations like Amazon and PayPal do.
posted by kindall at 12:29 AM PST - 6 comments
February 8
Too bad I don't have an extra $80,000, because this
underwater imaging system could really help my fishing (and I could also tell even
better stories about the one that got away.)
posted by Dinzie at 6:57 PM PST - 1 comments
how few pixels are needed to still be "porn"?
"...I started experimenting with thumbnails that my mom could tell were porn. Then I started applying filters and such to see if I could obscure the suggestive content into a more abstracted form..." Has this art touched upon a new art?
posted by jcterminal at 6:01 PM PST - 24 comments
What should I do with my life?
"
I hit on an incredible wellspring of honest sentiment. Complete strangers opened their homes and their lives up to me, and confessed feelings and events they hadn't revealed to their closest friends. This was at a time when the stock market was falling, our faith in new technology had been lost, and the result of a Florida election left many feeling like they didn't live in a democracy. Everyone was reassessing what mattered to them and what they believed in." Preview page from Po Bronson's next book, still a work in progress.
posted by Calebos at 5:48 PM PST - 13 comments
Is it Live or Is it Moronic?
Yes ladies and gentlemen, though
they still deny it or have no comment, many famous
allegedly talented performers in the music industry do actually
lip synch. Since Milli Vanilli
accusations have been the norm, [sarcasm] but Inside Edition reported it today as if this was a brand new discovery, so it must be true. [/sarcasm] ...If a concert is advertised as live, shouldn't the advertising also specify whether or not the live vocalist actually vocalizes? What are the legalities involved if irrevocable proof is ever found? Or is it irrelevant because today's sophisticated audienes don't mind it when their favorite music performers lie to them?
posted by ZachsMind at 5:35 PM PST - 32 comments
Enduring Freedom: The action figures
Hong Kong hobbyists collect action figures with an intensity that in Japan would be labled Otaku-like. These action figures are more than toys, they are miniature replicas of real and modern weapons. Now you can buy your Covert CIA Agent Jones action figure and direct Long Range Airstrikes at home.
posted by AsiaInsider at 3:41 PM PST - 5 comments
"Who’ll stop the rain?
Apparently our government and a few of their closest friends in the military industrial-complex. " According to this piece in Alternet, there's been an ongoing US Gov't. project since at least the 1970s whose aim is to manipulate the weather, largely to give us yet another edge in military superiority. If you have more time than I do, read this Air Force white paper on the subject -
Weather as a Force Multiplier:
Owning the Weather in 2025.
I found the executive summary to be rather chilling.
posted by martk at 12:53 PM PST - 4 comments
Killer Dog Trial...
...continues to get weirder and weirder. The longer this story goes on, the stranger it gets. 3-way sex with a convicted felon, who belongs to a white supremacy group. The dogs are for protecting Meth labs for the group. The couple adopts "Cornfed" Schneider (the convict) as their son (he is 39 years old) because they can't marry him (polygamy). Add on to it charges of Bestiality between the female defendant and the male dog "Bane," and the story just gets more and more interesting. The story so far will be coming out in this week's
Rolling Stone Magazine.
posted by da5id at 11:24 AM PST - 16 comments
Muhammad O' Ali.
Geneologists have uncovered his Irish roots. His great grandfather was an Irish emigree who married an African American woman in Kentucky.
posted by Lanternjmk at 10:42 AM PST - 12 comments
Ohio school board considers adding "Intelligent Design Theory" to science curriculum.
I wish I could find better links than these. I've been hearing about this on NPR every morning this week, but have been unable to find any news links - I can't even find the Ohio State School Board site. They are debating whether or not to start teaching IDT, which seems to be Creationism with a pseudo-scientific background.
Here is a transcript of comments that were given to the board by John Calvert, J.D., a supporter of IDT. Anybody know any more about this theory?
posted by starvingartist at 7:50 AM PST - 64 comments
Art in the twenty-first century.
Twenty-one artists who are defining the visual arts for a new millennium discuss their life, their work, and their vision in Art:21 - Art in the Twenty-First Century, a four-part series premiering Fall 2001 on PBS. Art:21 offers a unique glimpse into 21 artists' personal experiences, sources of inspiration, and creative processes. The last episode played last night, but the site has a wealth of information on some amazing artists. Did anyone catch this?
posted by mad at 7:01 AM PST - 8 comments
White men can't jump...or do much of anything else.
"Look how white I am. Am I lame or what? Can't jump. Can't dance. Can't run. Can't dress. Can't hang. It's O.K. I know I'm a pathetic White Guy. I'm at peace with it. In fact I laugh about it all the time. I have to. Black athletes today love to make fun of us White Guys." Does the White Guy have feelings?
posted by Werd7 at 6:33 AM PST - 46 comments
Foreigners and Rulers,
this is an issue that albeit being an old one keeps cropping up, here is her official
position.
I am interested in opinions of whether you think it is okay for a foreigner (born and raised to "adulthood") to become a political leader of another country. And is anyone aware of a similar situation in others parts of the world where this has either been considered or has occurred.
posted by bittennails at 5:59 AM PST - 37 comments
Scientists in the USA have
discovered [NYTimes] a new cell in the eye responsible for resetting the biological clock. Its being called "heretical"..
Not every day, Dr. Provencio said, do scientists find a new body function.
posted by stbalbach at 5:54 AM PST - 3 comments
Scientists in Australia have
discovered a new gene. Called BRCA3, this genetic mutation causes up to 10% of the breast cancer cases which run within families. This breakthrough completes the search for the trilogy of gene mutations. The first two gene mutation markers were discovered in 1994 and 1995 respectively.
posted by lucien at 5:45 AM PST - 1 comments
Limp Bizkit Steal Music.
Well there's a surprise. Whilst crossing the country supposedly auditioning replacements for Monkey Boy, the world's most forgettable band, headed by Interscope VP Fred Durst, are taking the opportunity to steal licks from stacks of no-hoper guitarists for their own use without credit or recompense.
posted by GrahamVM at 5:05 AM PST - 34 comments
"Sexual dreams.
Most people have experienced them. Some people welcome them for their intensity and excitement; some people fear them as they induce guilt and shame. But, perhaps more so than any other type of dream, they always intrigue. They get our attention and "seduce" us into taking notice of our inner world."
posted by giantkicks at 1:39 AM PST - 7 comments
Great Jumpin' Jehosephats of Juxtoposition! The American Taliban & how he and his community from which he sprung should be viewed: Each side making their case.
One however, brilliant and equanimious. The other whiny and accusatory. Decide:
A or
B
posted by crasspastor at 1:26 AM PST - 9 comments
Worse movies of the 20th century?
I think not. There's lots of stinkers here, but including Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and ignoring such dreck as The Omega Man certainly has to be illegal somewhere. Let the "I thought this underrated movie was actually good" confessions commence. [via the null device]
posted by skallas at 12:48 AM PST - 81 comments
Presidential Makeover?
Instant freelance political cartoons. Kind of like those games where you use a magnet to rearrange metal shavings into a guy's funny beard, only it's the Commander-in-Chief. (requires Flash)
posted by samuelad at 12:09 AM PST - 1 comments
February 7
Scalia: Think the dealth penalty wrong? Resign
In particular, he says, any Catholic jurist who agrees with the Vatican's anti-death penalty stance should resign. One to raise an eyebrow over, given that Scalia - a jurist who just happens to be Catholic - has been a consistent foe of
Roe v. Wade and legalized abortion. He says his opposition to
Roe, however, is mainly legal, and adds that his religious views should play no role in his decisions.
posted by raysmj at 8:31 PM PST - 24 comments
Former Playmate of the Year wins another battle against Playboy.
1981 POY, Terri Welles has been fighting Playboy magazine for the last four years over the fact that she wants to mention the world famous nudie mag's name on
her (nude) web site, in her bio, and in her meta tags.
Apparently Hef's lawyers seem to think this is a bad thing, claiming that it would infinge on the Playboy trademark. Monday the appeals judge disagreed. My question is, why would something like this get Hef in such a huff?
posted by tsarfan at 5:26 PM PST - 17 comments
Brain tumor suspect guilty, again.
A follow-up to
this, wherein a man tried to blame his brain tumor for his walking uninvited into his neighbors' house and getting into bed with the wife, who freaked when she realized what was going on. Last week, he was convicted of stalking. On Monday, the judge convicted him of sexual abuse and burglary. The previous story left some unanswered questions. I can't answer all of them, but there's more info inside.
posted by diddlegnome at 2:52 PM PST - 2 comments
First genetic evidence of macroevolution found.
…the scientists show how mutations in regulatory genes that guide the embryonic development of crustaceans and fruit flies allowed aquatic crustacean-like arthropods, with limbs on every segment of their bodies, to evolve 400 million years ago into a radically different body plan: the terrestrial six-legged insects.The link is to a press release with a basic explanation; if you've got a subscription to Nature, you can read the whole article there.(via /.)
posted by darukaru at 1:36 PM PST - 7 comments
The new Mormon Temple
in Snowflake Arizona is temporarily open to the public before its dedication next month, however the Masonic-like rituals that take place inside are still top secret.
Shhh, don't tell.
posted by johnnyace at 12:46 PM PST - 24 comments
It's not a "sit-in"
but it rhymes with it.
"Caroline Estes is organizing a mass protest of a new Austin police policy to ticket women who flash their breasts at the upcoming Mardi Gras celebration on Sixth Street."
posted by mr_crash_davis at 11:19 AM PST - 46 comments
HOP
draws beautiful abstract images and real-time animations, based on "strange attractor" formulas, enhanced by mathematical and graphical special effects. It's a unique interactive fractal generator, but doubles as a cute screensaver if you're feeling lazy
(runs in DOS/windows).
posted by walrus at 11:04 AM PST - 2 comments
Jakob Nielsen
believes that
Cleartype can save you $2000/year. Um, yeah, Jakob.
Go just for the experience of seeing the God of Ugly Design say, "We desperately need better-looking computers..."
[link via
typographer.com]
posted by Su at 10:01 AM PST - 34 comments
The miniature earth.
A beautifully crafted Shockwave site, in your choice of Spanish, English, Portuguese or Italian that should give you pause to reflect just how fortunate you are.
posted by Lynsey at 10:00 AM PST - 45 comments
LucasFilm vs. Enron.
The people over at LucasFilm aren't very happy that Enron used Star Wars related names for the phony comapanies used to hide millions in debt. Chewco, JEDI, Kenobe Inc, Obi 1 Holdings LLC among the names used.
posted by Lanternjmk at 9:59 AM PST - 11 comments
Israel's Peace Army Mobilizes
"We will not continue to fight beyond the green line [Israel's pre-1967 border with the West Bank and Gaza] in order to rule, expel, destroy, blockade, assassinate, starve and humiliate an entire people."
This from an increasingly vocal group of Israeli soldiers and officers who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories. An encouraging sign of hope that there are a growing number of people in Israel who strongly disagree with the current policy of subjugation.
posted by mapalm at 9:59 AM PST - 9 comments
Remember
the 15 year old that crashed a cessna into a Florida building?
His suicide note is up at the smoking gun, and apparently "Al Qaeda and other organizations have met with me several times to discuss the option of me joining" and he thought "Osama bin Laden is absolutely justified" in a screed that blasts US involvement with Israel. Kids today.
posted by mathowie at 9:32 AM PST - 33 comments
There's no better way to go back in time than listening to
airchecks -- recorded segments of top 40 radio from years past, often an hour long, sometimes including commercials and news.
posted by luser at 8:31 AM PST - 12 comments
The diary of Nancy Crick.
Ever watched a parent or loved one die in agony? Ever begged a doctor to put them out of their misery? Should people be allowed to die with dignity? Read the diary of Nancy Crick.
posted by chrisgregory at 6:52 AM PST - 33 comments
Beam me up dipankar.
The dream of teleporting atoms and molecules - and maybe even larger objects - has become a real possibility for the first time. Look out! - it's nearly the future. Not long until we all get our silver faces.
posted by Spoon at 1:20 AM PST - 25 comments
February 6
Osama "The Stilt" Bin Laden
victim of "close encounter of the worst kind with a hellfire missile"? May be, maybe not. What's more interesting is the hopefulness with which they offer the possibility based only on his height.
posted by Hildago at 10:48 PM PST - 13 comments
"
AXIS OF EVIL" was supposed to
send a message. "
Those who condition themselves to think that an axis of evil surrounds them will only live a painful, gloomy and uncomfortable life. They will, in effect, loose many of their powers and abilities as a result of their exaggerated sensitivity and drown themselves in fatal ignorance of the blessings and good things of the world."
posted by sheauga at 9:41 PM PST - 17 comments
When Chyrons go very, very, very, very, very, very, very bad.
(Or, How To Lose Your Job In Just One Second) Niger Innis is the spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality, one of those scary
conservative African-American groups. He's also a regular MSNBC pundit. Well, he was on there the other day talking about Enron, and whoever was in charge of plugging the names into the rundown that hour was a little sloppy with his or her typing and ... well, just click on the link.
posted by aaron at 9:05 PM PST - 68 comments
The B-list of bad has an axis to grind --
According to one of
Canada's national newspapers,
Libya, China and Syria today announced they had formed the "Axis of Just as Evil," which they said would be way eviller than that stupid Iran-Iraq-North Korea axis President George W. Bush warned of in his State of the Union address.
Not only was this article in the paper today, it actually made the front page.
posted by heybate at 8:03 PM PST - 11 comments
Oh, I got it now. One "
rowdy" group in the streets lights bonfires, climbs lightpoles, blocks traffic, dances on cars and a police van as "bemused" riot cops looked on. Another group "
allegedly committed vandalism" and were consquently arrested in droves. See, if you generally run wild in favor of the status quo, the cops are your friends. If you march in opposition to the status quo you get arrested.
posted by raaka at 6:05 PM PST - 18 comments
How to survive in London on £7,000 a year:
I'd love to be rich, but it is so expensive. Only joking. Spending big money and accumulating material possessions has never interested me. I don't need retail therapy to cheer me up: my desires are focused elsewhere - in social justice and human rights.
Via
Nutlog.
posted by ryanshepard at 4:47 PM PST - 16 comments
Hate mobile phones?
Man... this site both makes me laugh, and makes me furious in anger.. because it's so damn hilarious, but I imagine if this happened to me I'd be horribly upset and angry... I hate the misuse of mobile phones, but I do USE one...
posted by twiggy at 2:37 PM PST - 33 comments
Funeral Home Murders Drug-Induced?
A mortician and his assistant found dead by coroner seeking death certificate
. Motive unclear. Says local police sergeant: "We have received reports from some agencies in the city that [criminals] might be involved in taking chemicals from funeral homes and using them to soak their marijuana cigarettes or regular cigarettes in, but we have not been able to prove a robbery or anything like that."
posted by brookish at 1:23 PM PST - 4 comments
With a grand prize of $10,000, the
First Annual Google Programming Contest is sure to catch the eye and keen mind of many a programmer who has thought "Oh, what interesting things I could do with 900,000 web pages in a pre-parsed and raw format!" The Google phenomenon has already inspired
add-on search tools and
a game or
two. What new tricks will add value to this handy web repository?
posted by girlhacker at 12:50 PM PST - 25 comments
Notmilk.com hacked?
A growing feud between the notmilk man Robert Cohen, who wrote
Milk: The Deadly Poison and
VegSource.com who hosted his site leads to VegSource removing all content from the notmilk.com site. Cohen sends out a newsletter saying that his site had been hacked, VegSource
responds and calls Cohen a
"big fat liar". Is this an abuse of VegSource's discretion? Is this just petty name calling? Whose extreme views will reign supreme here in Vegan Stadium!?
posted by jonah at 12:37 PM PST - 8 comments
Students Plagiarize Less Than Many Think
RIT Profs say 16.5 percent of students reported having "sometimes" cut and pasted text into a paper without a citation, only 8 percent of students reported having done so "often" or "very frequently", but 50.4 percent reported that others "often" or "very frequently" cut and pasted text from the Internet.
"High-school students who are growing up with the Internet, they're having real difficulty" distinguishing what is and is not plagiarism, he says. "Many of them are developing an attitude that anything on the Internet is public domain, and they're not seeing copying it as cheating."
posted by Blake at 10:36 AM PST - 10 comments
Not Flying Down To Rio For The Carnival?
Never mind! Beat the crowds but catch the beat by listening to this year's terrific
sambas before the rest of the world can. This is the
real shanty-town stuff, not the watered-down touristy rubbish[
WindowsMedia required]that passes for Samba. This year my favourite for first prize is
Mangueira. What's yours? The
Brazilian Carnival[
learn all about it here] starts Saturday and goes on straight through to Tuesday. For the latest inside information - including the Bin Laden Mask controversy -
O Globo's special web site[
In Portuguese]is unbeatable.
Enjoy!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:29 AM PST - 13 comments
Tiffany goes Topless
80's teen pop sensation Tiffany will appear in a photo spread in an upcoming issue of Playboy. She says "it's time the world realizes she's no longer 18 but a wife and mother."
posted by Lanternjmk at 9:13 AM PST - 54 comments
E911 technology allows for the location of a cellular phone to be determined by the wireless service provider within several hundred feet. As consequence, privacy groups have been extremely resistant to the implementation of E911. In the wake of the September 11 tragedies, however, the balance between privacy concerns and national security to have changed for many American citizens.
Sort of via
2600 This seems to be coming, what do you think?
posted by thirteen at 8:50 AM PST - 20 comments
Ever wonder how Lord of the Rings would've turned out had it been written by Raymond Chandler or Gene Roddenbury? Me neither, but fortunately for us Alison Brooks and David Flin
have. Be sure to take a look at some of their
alternative history scenarios while you're there.
posted by MrBaliHai at 8:38 AM PST - 4 comments
"Everything's changed"? No, very little has changed. Exhibit A: the
upcoming broadcast of the complete "in-the-belly-of-the-beast" WTC collapse video by CBS. Only three "very special" sponsors, and 50 million are expected to watch. Including me. (Hey, I'm a complicated person and/or hypocrite)
posted by luser at 7:59 AM PST - 16 comments
Bob and David need your help!
"We've always felt that everyone down the line has severely under-estimated our fans, both in numbers and sincerity. Don't be dicks about it, but just let them know that there's an audience waiting out there."
posted by nicholm at 7:49 AM PST - 14 comments
Who
are the new revolutionaries? A Mefi
thread from yesterday contained the quote "We are skinheads, and we are revolutionaries." That got me thinking... who are the social revolutionaries these days (not political, there are plenty of those)? People who are trying to lead humanity to a better way?
posted by dammitjim at 7:15 AM PST - 8 comments
How green is your car? If it's the Honda Insight (at 57 MPG), it's very green... if it's the Dodge Ram 2500 Pickup (at 11 MPG), well, shame on you. Check out the
"Green Book: The Environmental guide to Cars and Trucks".
posted by hotdoughnutsnow at 6:55 AM PST - 9 comments
New Survivor 4 Contestants Announced
Sixteen back-stabbing, over-competitive, fame-seeking, hunger-loving castaway wannabes were announced this morning on CBS'
Survivor site. Fewer people watched the mother-of-all-American-reality-TV-shows in it's last incarnation in Africa - will this one in the Marquesas continue the ratings slide?
posted by stevis at 6:42 AM PST - 10 comments
Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Gap....
If ever there was a candidate for being sued this site would be it... with a three-minute music video setting logos, brand names and glossy corporate imagery against adbusting in-jokes and shots of police brutality. Anti-capitalist anthem or the ultimate in product placement? And how long until the site's namesakes get it pulled off the Web?
posted by skylar at 6:36 AM PST - 19 comments
Chef says bin Laden fled to Iran.
"Osama had three offers of escape," he tells the Christian Science Monitor. "One from Iraq, one from Iran, and another from some mafia types.... We received a lot of Iranian currency, and the commanders distributed it to the soldiers," he says, adding that he received 700,000 rials ($1,400) for his own personal use." He also says that bin Laden prefers quail for dinner.
posted by thescoop at 6:35 AM PST - 8 comments
Microsoft announced a month long moratorium on new coding in order to fix bugs.
Purcell,their privacy chief is
quoted as saying Gates "is really annoyed by the incredible pain we put everyone through in computing" . Microsoft's bug problems and security vulnerabilities have lately been getting out of hand. There has also been rumours last month that Gates wants the entire company reoriented towards ..well providing bug free products. Do you think that serious changes are underway in Microsoft? What does it really take for an sofware development enterprise the size of Microsoft to have to provide secure, reasonably bug free products? (via
GMSV)
posted by justlooking at 12:45 AM PST - 23 comments
February 5
The Bad Taste Tour of Branson, MO.
"Branson is a strange, kooky place nestling deep in the Ozarks. One of those quaint, old-fashioned American country towns where ... the menus in the restaurants have Biblical quotes next to the appetizers and where people walk around wearing orange duck beaks. "
posted by grabbingsand at 9:14 PM PST - 22 comments
Plus P Technology
, 'specialists in the training and use of lethal force', teach self defense in the way of the gun. Is this a good idea gone to far? Notice the banner link to a militant group on the bottom of their page.
posted by jasonspaceman at 6:32 PM PST - 3 comments
Everybody remembers
this girl from the cover of National Geographic c1985 and on the cover of their Best 100 Photos Ever book. Now she's
in hiding on the Afghan-Pakistani border believing the CIA are after her when they found out she gave English classes to Bin Laden's daughters. There was already a major hunt for her after the photo came out
posted by Zootoon at 6:08 PM PST - 16 comments
SmallPox 2002 - Silent Weapon...
It is April 2002, and a smallpox outbreak occures in New York. 4 and a half months later and 60 million people across the planet are dead.
Tonight, The BBC broadcast a fictional documentary
as if it were filmed in 2005, looking back at the smallpox pandemic that swept the world in 2002 and killed 60 million people.
Heavily rooted in fact, it was disturbing viewing, to put it mildly. Did anyone else in Europe see this?
posted by tomcosgrave at 4:30 PM PST - 22 comments
The Welfare of Animals (Slaughter or Killing) Regulations.
Ah, what would the silent animals do without we oxy-moronic humans looking after their welfare. Pity they taste so good.
Some giblets to chew on: "No person shall use, or cause or permit to be used, any mechanical apparatus to kill any surplus chick unless the apparatus contains rapidly rotating mechanically operated killing blades or projection...any person who slaughters by a religious method any animal which has not been stunned before bleeding shall ensure that each animal is slaughtered by the severance by rapid, uninterrupted movements of a knife, of both its carotid arteries and both its jugular veins...no person shall use, or cause or permit to be used, a water bath stunner to stun any bird unless appropriate measures are taken to ensure that the current passes efficiently, in particular that there are good electrical contacts and the shackle-to-leg contact is kept wet...no person shall bleed any bull, cow, heifer, steer, calf, sheep, goat or pig in a slaughterhouse, knacker's yard or lairage within sight of any other such animal."
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 3:06 PM PST - 17 comments
Interesting
The guy who wrote
Your CSS Bores Me(previously linked and discussed
here) has decided to accept his own challenge. For the month of February, he will be applying a different stylesheet to the index page of his site, with no manipulation of the HTML document itself. This is one to watch, if you're also a code geek.
posted by Su at 2:42 PM PST - 21 comments
Prison survival guide
NEVER invoke debts you cannot repay. It is best not to invoke any debts period. When you first enter any institution, you will be approaced with 241 offers. Meaning that the person will front you 1 item (pack of cigs, commisary food, whatever) but you will have to repay them two. This is a classic trap for unexperienced inmates. If you smoke, quit. If you want items from the commisary, etc. wait until you have money on your books, or your in a position with your prison job that you can run your own hustle, and have items to barter with. The basic rule, is to NEVER take ANYTHING on credit. This will get you killed or seriously injured or TURNED OUT and pimped to pay your bill real fast.
posted by keithl at 11:10 AM PST - 51 comments
NYT Magazine's Lauren Slater on Self-Esteem
Last year alone there were three withering studies of self-esteem released in the United States, all of which had the same central message: people with high self-esteem pose a greater threat to those around them than people with low self-esteem and feeling bad about yourself is not the cause of our country's biggest, most expensive social problems. The research is original and compelling and lays the groundwork for a new, important kind of narrative about what makes life worth living -- if we choose to listen, which might be hard. One of this country's most central tenets, after all, is the pursuit of happiness, which has been strangely joined to the pursuit of self-worth.
Great, long article on the change in perspective on self-esteem. Do you question yourself? How does your self-esteem impact yourself or others around you? Is high self-esteem importatnt to you? What if your high self-esteem could negatively affect others around you?
posted by gen at 9:17 AM PST - 39 comments
The grid: The future of scientific networks.
"Built on the Internet and the World Wide Web, the Grid is a new class of infrastructure. By providing scalable, secure, high-performance mechanisms for discovering and negotiating access to remote resources, the Grid promises to make it possible for scientific collaborations to share resources on an unprecedented scale, and for geographically distributed groups to work together in ways that were previously impossible."
posted by talos at 6:01 AM PST - 6 comments
Dark knees say it all.
If a man's knees are dark, he is not a virgin. If a boy urinates straight up into the air, he is a virgin. If the urine sprays, he has had sex before.
posted by arrowhead at 5:54 AM PST - 10 comments
It’ll Never Be The Same Again
(~2.5mb mp3 down at the bottom there.) After Neil Young’s predictable
homage, Paul McCartney’s song I can’t stand nor can I escape; Bono’s immense display of poor taste; the atrocious "What’s Going On" cover (I laugh at you Limp Bizkit!); I finally found a tune that makes sense of 9.11 for me. Ryan Adams’ "
New York, New York" doesn’t count because it isn’t about that Tuesday. Fine track though.
posted by raaka at 4:32 AM PST - 23 comments
New poster boy for perverts!
The latest rising star on the FBI's top ten chart is a gimping, balding southpaw (name is Michael Scott Bliss by the way) who likes to videotape himself molesting young girls and then put the clips on his computer. Sounds like a sociable fellow...
posted by Bixby23 at 1:31 AM PST - 14 comments
February 4
Fake profits are causing the stock market to descend.
Could someone explain to me the meaningful difference between Enron and Amazon.com? One company recently reported fake profits of $5 million, while having billions in debt. Enron, well...no profits either, and billions in debt. So why is Amazon.com considered "promising"? Enron had a revenue stream too.... Prediction: Amazon.com's stock will be "revalued" sharply lower as people get lucid about real profits and as the accounting/profit scandals spread.
posted by ParisParamus at 6:37 PM PST - 19 comments
Arafat's duplicity revealed on video.
His call for an end to terrorism, published in The NY Times suggests peacful intentions. This article claims he has made videos which suggest to Arab audiences that his talk is merely strategic and he has the elimination of the State Of Israel as his goal
posted by Postroad at 3:30 PM PST - 35 comments
Cybracero: Wave of the future
. No longer will immigrants have to cross borders to do manual labor thanks to this visionary and exciting technology. Telerobotics mean that manual labor from 3rd world countries can now do their work from home! Check out the video and technology pages for examples of how this revolutionary idea will change the world!
posted by cell divide at 2:20 PM PST - 4 comments
Bush and Blair Nominated for 2002 Peace Prize
''The background for my nomination is their decisive action against terrorism, something I believe in the future will be the greatest threat to peace,'' Nesvik said. ''Unfortunately, sometimes ... you have to use force to secure peace.'' ---Harald Tom Nesvik
posted by ezfowler at 1:17 PM PST - 25 comments
Search engines sued over pay-for-placement.
"The maker of a popular weight-loss system filed suit against four search engines this week, alleging that their policy of letting advertisers pay to appear in top-ranked search results violated federal and state trademark and fair-competition laws." [from CNN]
posted by tranquileye at 12:05 PM PST - 14 comments
Privacy of MP3 fans at risk
A new security hole has been discovered in one of the world's most popular file-swapping programs
Morpheus which could allow anyone to gain private information about its millions of users.
posted by arnab at 10:34 AM PST - 12 comments
The ultimate nightmare?
Hilarious discussion ensues when a poster to a messageboard describes an embarrassing little problem... No images, but probably not safe for work. (via Haddock)
posted by salmacis at 10:26 AM PST - 20 comments
Sounds like progress to me...
The American Academy of Pediatrics released a report that children of same-sex parents do as well as opposite-sex parents, and despite some teasing, cope well. Seems that it's more important for two people to be in a loving relationship than what their sex is. I think it's a pretty big deal for a professional organization to produce this report. You?
posted by gramcracker at 7:39 AM PST - 20 comments
So much for name recognition.
Mighty Big TV, a fairly well-known site that's been mentioned in print media and numerous other outlets, has inexplicably changed it's name to
Television Without Pity. Of course, the dynamic aspect of the web allows for such things, but is it wise? If "Campbell's Soup" became "Spud's Chicken Noodle Concoction" tomorrow, would you still buy it without batting an eye? Would it matter if MetaFilter became "Matt's Pancake Heaven?"
posted by crunchland at 6:32 AM PST - 28 comments
'If you want to know what Utopia is like, just look around - this is it,'
the article asks is human evolution over? Two interesting "facts?" "points?"
1) the blending of our genes which will soon produce a uniformly brown-skinned population. Apart from that, there will be little change in the species.
2) Just consider Aids, and then look at chimpanzees,' says Jones. 'You find they all carry a version of HIV but are unaffected by it. Something very similar could soon happen to humans. In a thousand years...
Link via
www.cursor.org.
posted by bittennails at 6:03 AM PST - 39 comments
February 3
Patriots win it 20-17.
Everyon thought it would be a blowout for St. Louis, But the Pats pull it out with a last minute field goal. All in all, a good nail-biter of a game. If it can't be my Giants, at least it's an east coast team.
posted by jonmc at 7:08 PM PST - 85 comments
A Poll on Fark
asks its members whether or not they would pay 5$ a month to belong to thier discussion group. How many of you would pay for MeFi? Do you any of you feel that there would be benefits to having MeFi become a pay for service? I do, and I'm out of work!
posted by xammerboy at 9:53 AM PST - 29 comments
I've been accused in the past of only posting clever and astonishingly cynical quips - so just to prove that I'm no fly-by-night-non-serious-funster here is an informative link. It requires no flash plugins of any sort..... ladies and gentlemen I give you....
What Is Cynicism?
thank you.. As usual, details within.
posted by y2karl at 2:33 AM PST - 32 comments
Salon makes a go of premium service.
'When Salon announced almost a year ago that it would introduce fee-based content, web pundits dismissed it as a futile gesture that was bound to fail. It appears the critics were wrong' It is funny what passes as a success nowadays. Salon has closed off 30-35% of its content, including all news and political coverage, and even after these draconian measures only 0.8% of its readership have subscribed. In this fluffy bunny critique Salon’s marketing director Patrick Hurley explain how they achieve this extraordinary success. (more inside)
posted by RobertLoch at 12:16 AM PST - 18 comments
February 2
There are dozens of people on the internet who have been victimized by
her, and yet no one seemed to do much about it.
So they did.
posted by oh posey at 10:37 PM PST - 24 comments
Bye Bye Amtrak?
"If Congress and the Administration do not appropriate adequate funds for FY '03, Amtrak may be forced to discontinue
all long-distance train service effective October 1." Rail advocacy groups have
differing reactions.
posted by mrbula at 10:14 PM PST - 28 comments
Erotica runs rampant:
"Pornographic images, erotic paraphernalia, and raunchy sexual talk are reaching a near-saturation point in the daily lives of Americans, through television, movies, magazines, and the Internet, say a growing chorus of expert voices. And the target market is an increasingly younger audience."
Frontline also has a special called
American Porn running this coming week, exploring how the
mainstream profits from the adult biz.
posted by owillis at 8:19 PM PST - 61 comments
Gates, Bono, unveil 'DATA Agenda' for Africa
"We have an agenda," said Bono at a news conference, "which we're calling the 'DATA Agenda': 'Debt, AIDS and trade for Africa, in return for democracy, accountability and transparency in Africa.'
As bracing as it is to see a picture of Bono with Bill Gates, there is an interesting message here. Bono compares Africa today with post-WWII Europe, describing it as vulnerable to extremism. Bill Gates is fronting the cash to improve health care and raise living standards in third-world countries.
posted by planetkyoto at 7:11 PM PST - 12 comments
Alexandre Dumas on film
This AP/CNN article says Dumas’ books make good movies, but aren’t being read as much as they used to be. Do the changes the movies make improve the books, or would more faithful adaptations be better?
posted by kirkaracha at 3:12 PM PST - 15 comments
What
is Daniel Pearl trying to tell us? (
hint) The non-POW's at Guantanamo Bay have found their own
special way of showing contempt for their captors.
posted by Real9 at 2:01 PM PST - 18 comments
Jiminy Cricket! It's our Corporate America Flag billboard!
Once upon a time (quite recently, in fact), the good people of Adbusters received a call from a production assistant for a movie being made by Miramax, a Disney corporation. It seems the new film needed an establishing shot of Times Square in New York City. But something was in the way.
Jiminy Cricket! It's our Corporate America Flag billboard!
Disney gave us three options. We could (a) take the billboard down for a week or two; (b) cover up the billboard; or (c) change the billboard's corporate logos back into stars.
Flag Picture.
posted by Niahmas at 12:32 PM PST - 28 comments
So what happened?
News from
New York. A banner was unfurled (somewhere - nobody really saw it). A Starbucks had an incomprehensible something spray painted on a window. A few people protested cheap kakhi's at the Gap (I passed this one on the way to a meeting and, ironically, some appeared to be wearing Gap clothes). The Falun Gong exercised outside, but on the whole this week has turned into a non-protest ... with the 10,000 that organizers expected turning into about 500. Has the anti-globalization movement had the life drained from it by Sept. 11? Is this just a temporary lull?
posted by MidasMulligan at 10:08 AM PST - 47 comments
Easy anonymous email
I thought I'd post this since many anonymous remailers no longer exist. In this age of anti-terrorism I don't know how long it will exist.
posted by mecran01 at 9:47 AM PST - 12 comments
Another copyright miasma.
The
Todd M. Beamer Foundation, named for the passenger who reportedly foiled the hijackers of United Flight 93, wants to copyright the phrase "let's roll" for its own non-profit uses. But others applied for the copyright first. Says one: "I don't care what your name is, it's first in, first swim. It's all about good old American capitalism." So who's the hero here?
posted by argybarg at 9:42 AM PST - 14 comments
Don't let the URL fool you,
it's completely work safe, and yet
oh so naughty. I wish more sites would do this. It would lead to mass confusion, and last I heard, that's the next big monkey-making trend.
posted by jcterminal at 7:24 AM PST - 15 comments
Syria on brink over conflict with Lebanon
Our good friends on the far Left never address this other occupation in the Middle East, an occupation that is not the Israelis in Palestinian lands; and our policy makers in Washington almost never discuss the issue either, but to the people who live in Lebanon it is their country that for many years has been occupied by some 35 thousand man army of Syrians against their will. And it is beginning to anger them.
posted by Postroad at 4:57 AM PST - 11 comments
February 1
The filename says it all.
This is an office-friendly, ROFLMFAO kind of photo. It's two great tastes that taste great together. Put it on your desktop if only for a day. Have a super weekend.
posted by KLAX at 10:23 PM PST - 39 comments
BusinessWeek's Game Edition
With all the hype that games, consoles, and MMORGs are getting in mainstream media, will this be another case of media overkill or will we see the industry blossom as a real alternative equal to the movie and record industry.
posted by AsiaInsider at 8:17 PM PST - 7 comments
How's this for a rape defense:
It wasn't me, it was my alter ego.
Edward Lawrence Frostbutter, 17, told police that he does not remember assaulting the 16-year-old classmate in a restroom stall in Calvert High School on Jan. 16, according to court documents.
Instead, he said his alter ego "Sam" was responsible, and he told police that "he felt awful about what Sam had done," according to charging documents.
posted by Rastafari at 8:07 PM PST - 12 comments
A New Pirate Radio Station Comes to SF
Pressure FM is a new pirate radio station in San Francisco. They focus on dance music, but only broadcast from 6pm-Midnight on Fridays using 88.1 FM. This article focuses on the group's plan for the station (dance music), and how they hope to turn it into a 24/7 broadcast. The Bay Area has a
rich history of FCC vs. Pirate Radio battles, but I am curious to see if the feds will take on an all music station. Sure, the operators say that, "[Pressure FM] is clandestine, so it's politically charged," but I wonder if the FCC will ignore them as harmless DJs, only to later respond when Clear Channel executives freak out over underground music in the Bay Area finally getting a legitimate, non-internet, outlet.
It should be an interesting barometer of the Bush Administration's tolerance for independent broadcasters (political or not).
posted by ezfowler at 3:16 PM PST - 6 comments
Today is the 80th anniversary
of the
unsolved murder of William Desmond Taylor, silent movie director.
"What was the motive behind Taylor's murder? One interesting theory that came out at the inquest involved the woman Taylor was seeing at the time of his death, actress Mabel Normand. She was a cocaine user, and Taylor had gone to the federal government for help in stopping the pushers who were selling her drugs. Seeing their business threatened, this scenario goes, the pushers decided to hire a hit man to "silence" Taylor."
posted by mr_crash_davis at 2:34 PM PST - 2 comments
What role gender plays in marriage, let alone custody is often debated. However in the case of the
Kantaras custody case in Florida, gender just got more confusing.
He used to be a
she. What constitutes gender? As a transsexual, is he the real "father?" Was their marriage legal? And what's best for the children in this kind of circumstance? Further more, can we really leave it up to Judge Gerard O'Brien to make this decision for all of us? And how did some
other judges feel about this issue?
posted by eatdonuts at 12:05 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
Nuclear power for the home...
A group of woodcutters found an object that had melted the surrounding snow, so they drag it back home to warm the camp unfortunately turns out it was jam packed full of Strontium90...
posted by zeoslap at 11:34 AM PST - 26 comments
What were you saying on the morning of 9/11?
I have been very dissatisfied with
this archive of the news on 9/11. I think this stuff has its place. But, it does not help us tell our grandkids how people were reacting that morning. For posterity's sake, I think it is much more important to record what happened on blogs and other online communities that morning. So, I am trying to collect online conversations that took place
immediately after the news of the attacks broke on September 11. I have one link from
here and one from
Slashdot. Sorry if I am missing out on important ones. My hope is that this post will lead to more links to conversations. I am not interested in
war blogs unless they have a reference to a conversation on the morning of 9/11.
posted by SandeepKrishnamurthy at 11:09 AM PST - 48 comments
Science and technology in the developing world.
SciDev.net went online last month, with the backing of the UK Department for International Development. Its main goal "is to enhance the ability of all its users to engage in informed debate on ways of applying science and technology to social and economic development in an environmentally responsible way." Hopefully, a useful tool for globalisation discussions.
posted by liam at 10:42 AM PST - 3 comments
World Social Forum 2002
started yesterday in Porto Alegre, Brazil, my hometown. Planned to be 'an answer to the World Economics Forum' that takes place in NY this year, can it really offer an answer to so many problems or is it already blind from the start? (more inside)
posted by rexgregbr at 10:01 AM PST - 13 comments
Newspapers lose the web war.
While newspapers recognized the risk the web posed to their core business, they often erred by forcing their new online ventures into the mold set by their pre-existing business model. A look at what made newspapers succeed or fail online from a Harvard Business School professor. (Warning: business-speak; via CNet.) Has your local newspaper done a good job on the web?
posted by mcwetboy at 9:06 AM PST - 8 comments
Sperm donor is the legal dad?
Hmmm, because this guy donated his goods to a lesbian couple, he is the biological father of three children... but now that the couple broke up, the mother wants child support and took him to court.
He fought it, but she won...
posted by darian at 9:02 AM PST - 19 comments
Al-Jazeera Severs Ties With CNN:
Does it strike anyone as particularly rich that Al Jazeera, the Arab television network, decided to sever ties with CNN after CNN broadcast portions of a video showing bin Laden making his least ambiguous statements yet on al Qaeda's alleged involvement in the terrorist attacks of 9/11?
[more inside...]
posted by verdezza at 7:53 AM PST - 3 comments
Master U.S. And Poodle U.K.?
On the right and the left, a lot of Brits seem to be questioning what they see as the UK's increasingly subservient attitude towards the U.S. Has something changed in the once proud British character or, as Nick Cohen argues in today's
New Statesman, is it all just politics?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 1:52 AM PST - 13 comments
What is Math Rock?
I had no choice but to provide this link. It's funny! It's different! It's twisted! Scroll down to the email at the bottom of the page.
link via kottke. Please, let not this thread turn into a kottke.
posted by ashbury at 12:05 AM PST - 61 comments
