skip to main content
August 2002 Archives
August 31
Return of Bush's Faith Based Initiatives
"So the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives is pursuing a new agenda that does not depend on the consent of Congress, starting with the development of proposals to change a host of federal regulations to lower the barriers encountered by religious groups in dealing with the federal government." Kind of surprising this was leaked out before the November elections, because much like how social security privatization has been downplayed due to unpopularity ("My social security was in Enron??") - it's intriguing campaign fodder.
posted by owillis at 8:22 PM PST - 10 comments
In an a era where so much music seems overly mechanical
Funk45.com and
Galactic Fractures are terrific reminders that danceablity can be warm and loose and that human-powered music is the funkiest. These sites have what every good music site should have, encyclopedaic knowledge, detailed info, and truckloads of audio that makes you wanna find a good record store and hunt down the 45's yourself. And it's all presented in a way that encourages you to dig deeper. The song
You Got Me Mama by Hayes Ware is a favorite, but there's plenty of great stuff.
requires RealAudio
posted by jonmc at 8:09 PM PST - 6 comments
Women's group asks CBS to drop The Masters golf tournament
With all the issues facing women today in America, I have a hard time believing that getting a female member into the Augusta National Golf Club will help the cause of women's rights. It now appears that the National Council of Women's Organizations are also going after the employers of club members. Have they never heard of the old saying: "You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." Wouldn't fighting for equal pay in the workplace for women do more for the average female than getting female members into Augusta National Country Club?
posted by jasonbondshow at 1:59 PM PST - 61 comments
Self-portraits with an edge.
"In a series of extraordinary transformations, this young, Korean-born conceptual artist unfolds a multiplicity of lives and identities documented through the lens of her point-and-shoot camera as she "becomes" a
young punk in the East Village, a Connecticut-based exotic dancer, or a
senior citizen picking through thrift stores in Murray Hill."
Nikki S Lee takes
Cindy Sherman in another direction. Sherman's classic photographs, as their title
Film Stills indicates, are static and meticulously set up. But Lee takes her characters to the street, using real people as props and set.
Fluidity of identity? Artist-subject relationship? Comment on sub-cultures? Isn't contmporary art
great?
posted by statisticalpurposes at 12:27 PM PST - 24 comments
ICANN disses
the
the dot. The guy who runs the
Internet Multicasting Service teamed up with the guy who runs the
Internet Software Consortium and submitted a proposal to mange the .ORG registry. ICANN's conslutants [sic]
dumped on the proposal (300KB PDF) claiming it is among the worst proposals
from a technical standpoint. Mind you, ISC produces the software that runs the DNS and actually operates root and top-level servers. And ICANN thinks they lack the technical mojo? Wow! Are we all ready to admit that ICANN is completely corrupt and beyond saving? More info
here. (via
IP)
posted by chipr at 12:03 PM PST - 12 comments
Florida to settle 2000 election lawsuit.
Major provisions include a promise for massive reforms in voter registration, voter-roll maintenance and polling practices, as part of the lawsuit pushed by the NAACP. Granted, it's good that a large angered group is "getting over it" as many (even on this board) have still been explaining, but should skeptics (read: Democrats) such as myself read the Florida legislature's desire to settle as a sign that they may not have thought they would have won against charges of rigging the election?
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 9:49 AM PST - 11 comments
Amina Lawal Must Not Face Death by Stoning
says UK Amnesty International. Nigerian woman, divorced & single, with 3 kids, to be executed by a Sharia Court for giving birth outside of wedlock. Other pregnant unwed mothers, such as this
computer student, are seeking asylum outside of Nigeria to avoid being stoned to death by a Nigerian Sharia Court in accordance with
Islamic law principles. Amina's whole convoluted and horrible story is laid out nicely
here. Sharia Courts, and their ilk, punish sexual and "moral offenders" through stoning,
amputation,
crushing the victim with walls,
hanging, or even
rape.
Meanwhile, in another universe, the
Nigerian 419 scam has mutated into Amina Lawal's "barrister"
spamming the net with pleas for cash. Instead of that, sign the
open letter to the President of Nigeria asking that death by stoning be stopped.
posted by filchyboy at 1:11 AM PST - 14 comments
August 30
The Zymoglyphic Museum
including the works of
Frederik Ruysch.
Ruysch made about a dozen tableaux, constructed of human fetal skeletons with backgrounds of other body parts, on allegorical themes of death and the transiency of life.... One fetal skeleton holding a string of pearls in its hand proclaims, "Why should I long for the things of this world?" Another, playing a violin with a bow made of a dried artery, sings, "Ah fate, ah bitter fate."
Ruysch's work was eventually purchased by his student and admirer,
Peter the Great.
posted by vacapinta at 9:52 PM PST - 13 comments
Paper of Record
provides a hi-res, searchable(!), archive of historical newspapers, generated from microfilm collections. Looks like one for Cory at
Wrote['nother couple of similar links there]. Kind of new and largely Canadian at the moment, but worth watching, and subscriptions are cheap. Remember, those are Canadian dollars.
posted by Su at 7:56 PM PST - 3 comments
Ray would stay.
Hawai'i actor Ray Bumatai's brain tumor hemorrhaged on stage. He finished the show blind and returned, after surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, to finish the run of the play. Is this taking the old "the show must go on" adage a little too far?
posted by Joey Michaels at 7:46 PM PST - 8 comments
Women Rockin' 4 Women 2002 Festival.
THIS IS BIG. Over twenty talented women. Eight female fronted bands. Nine solo female artists. Third annual event. Two sound stages. One venue. One night. Benefitting shelters for victims of domestic violence. More estrogen in one place than you can shake a stick at. You're not busy on September 28th, are ya? Granted, it might be a bit of a commute for some, but...
Heaven's gonna touch Earth.
posted by ZachsMind at 4:51 PM PST - 33 comments
The trailer for the new
Seinfeld movie is the first I've seen which really takes the piss out of the whole trailer "In a time that land forgot.." sort of thing. I laughed, but I download these things from apple every day and then forget about the actual movies. I just know I'm alone...
posted by Zootoon at 4:50 PM PST - 14 comments
A search engine to help you find things you don't know about.
gnod stands for The
Global
Network
of
Dreams, and is a test of artificial intelligence. Building a database from the user choices, it helps you find books, music and misc. other by having you enter in things that you like, and based on what other people like, it shows you stuff you ought to like, too (which is slightly different from what Amazon does, showing you what other people have
bought). Don't know if all the Amazon Associate links detract from it all or not
posted by crunchland at 3:30 PM PST - 25 comments
From The Slow Wheels of Justice [Department]
we read that "there have been persistent complaints of excessive force by officers of Prince George's County Police Department, Maryland over many years. Cases of concern include police shootings; deaths in custody from dangerous restraint holds or other force and unresisting suspects mauled by police dogs....In November 2000 the US Department of Justice opened a civil rights investigation into the police department to determine whether it engaged in a "pattern and practice" of brutality and racial discrimination....However, after 20 months of investigation, the Justice Department has not yet issued any public findings or recommendations to the police department."
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 3:24 PM PST - 7 comments
Bubble Wrap: The Nation vs. The Weekly Standard
"Back in the '60s, the left was the home of humor, iconoclasm, pleasure. But over the last two decades, the joy has gone out of the left -- it now feels hedged in by shibboleths and defeatism -- while the right has been having a gas, be it Lee Atwater grooving to the blues, Rush Limbaugh chortling about Feminazis or grimly gleeful Ann Coulter serving up bile as if it were chocolate mousse"
posted by owillis at 3:04 PM PST - 9 comments
Is Google's use of cookies unnecessarily invasive?
Daniel Brandt, described by Salon yesterday as
Mr. Anti-Google, says Google "has inadequate justification for planting a cookie that expires in 2038 on every user, and also recording that user's search terms, IP number, and time-date." Brandt is the man behind the
NameBase conspiracy database (previously discussed
here), and also uncovered the
CIA's illegal use of cookies last March. He insists that Google's use of cookies, combined with the Patriot Act, allows U.S. authorities to "do a 'sneak and peek' search of a Google user's hard drive when he isn't home, retrieve a Google cookie id, and then get a keyword search history" specific to the user's computer. Oh yeah, he also thinks
PageRank is undemocratic.
posted by mediareport at 2:36 PM PST - 39 comments
Who was Ellen Raskin?
Even if you don't recognize the name, you've probably read her
Newbery Award-winning YA novel
The Westing Game. You might even have
her illustrated edition of
A Child's Christmas in Wales, which she printed on her own as a sample to show publishers when trying to jump-start a freelance career. She listed some of her influences as "Blake, Conrad, Hawthorne, James, Nabokov,
Piero della Francesca, Calude Lorrain, Gaugin, Matisse, Fantasia, baseball, hockey, zoos, medicine, and Spain." [more inside]
posted by redshoes3 at 1:30 PM PST - 13 comments
Where's Marlon Brando?
Wonder no longer: he's making bad acting videos and is just as nutty as ever. Very interesting and personal Rolling Stone article about one of America's finest (and one of my favorite) actors (I'm talking
On the Waterfront and
The Godfather here, not that
Dr. Moreau crap. Also, there's a companion RealAudio piece from This American Life
here, about 3/4 through). He's still every bit the enigma he's been for the past twenty years.
posted by The Michael The at 12:12 PM PST - 12 comments
Paracelsus: the mercucial mage.
The Fortean Times' David Hambling on one of the 16th's century's most colorful figures. A rabble-rousing non-conformist medical genuis who arguably was centuries ahead of his time, but also an egomaniac, drunk, alchemist and self-described "Prince of Philosophy and Medicine" and "Monarch of all the Arts"
posted by skallas at 9:35 AM PST - 5 comments
Three Supreme Court Justices publicy oppose executing teenage criminals.
In a rare move, Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Stevens made a public statement in a delay request to state their opposition to executing someone who committed murder before the age of 18. With the Court already banning the execution of the mentally retarded this year, is this another sign of a soon-to-be next step in the abolishment of the death penalty? Or does the average American still believe that regardless of what time, when you do the crime you walk the line?
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 9:05 AM PST - 49 comments
Marijuana: Fires' timing could devastate crops, locals say...
CAVE JUNCTION -- Flames are consuming a bit more than towering trees and the occasional cabin as two wildfires roar through the Siskiyou National Forest. At least some of the vegetation that has made Southwest Oregon famous -- and long ago took a generation of hippie kids off welfare -- also is going up in smoke. Which leads to the question: "Am I Eligible For Disaster Assistance? How Do I Apply?" Friends,
FEMA is there for you.
posted by Mack Twain at 7:28 AM PST - 4 comments
Is anyone going away for labor day weekend? Taking a flight? Check out what your airline may be serving at
AirlineMeals.net
posted by KnitWit at 6:33 AM PST - 8 comments
Is this the big one?
With some 18,000 sick and over 700 people having died of the flu in a country the size of France over the past couple of months, I find it odd that the media seems obsesessed with the US / Iraq thing and missing children.
The 1918 flu epidemic killed some 675,00 Americans alone, with a global tally in excess of 20 MILLION killed. Some of the photos taken back then
are pretty grim. It seems the power of influenza is that it (ahhem)
mutates and thats why it could once again be a big killer. Cynical as it might sound, as a race maybe we
need something like this to teach us that we've got a lot more in common with each other than skin colour and religion might otherwise lead us to believe.
ObDisclaimer: I'm unemployed right now, have maybe six months of canned goods in the flat; if this hits London, I ain't opening my door to nobody.
posted by Mutant at 6:29 AM PST - 22 comments
Down with Free Speech?
Poll shows American support for the first Amendment down. Would any politician be stupid enough to try to capitalize on this sentiment? Should we all be watching our words?
posted by Hall at 6:24 AM PST - 41 comments
Scientists ruin mouse's day.
Or maybe, "discover the end of all ends"? or something. This story is begging for clever headlines, and I cannot think of any. Too embarassing. But still, the possibilities raised by this study are endless. Oh, there you go, another pun...
posted by costas at 5:56 AM PST - 11 comments
Sinister cult hijacks Weblogs.com?
While working on an application that finds patterns in the data supplied by Weblogs.com,
Mo Morgan found some disturbing patterns:
"[...] between midnight and five there had been over 60 pings to Weblogs.com from sites that contained the string "srichinmoy" in their URI."
At first it just looks like some idiot abusing the ping
system. Or could this be something altogether more sinister?
posted by dutchbint at 5:25 AM PST - 30 comments
Doctor found guilty of offering kidneys-for-cash...
though the case against him sounds a little dodgy. It raises all sorts of questions (not least about supposed organ rationining, something discussed
in this link) - what level of evidence should industrial tribunals require for a guilty verdict? How legitimate is the kind of journalism pursued here - is this entrapment? And even if it was, does it matter if the guy does say he can get what's needed?
posted by humuhumu at 2:39 AM PST - 4 comments
August 29
Along with water, there's been increased interested in food issues lately. Probably the most controversial issue is genetically modified foods. And it looks like here in Canada,
they're not going to be labelled. The day after I read this in the paper, Steve Talbott published an issue of his
superb newsletter Netfuture, with
this thoughtful essay. [more inside]
posted by slipperywhenwet at 10:56 PM PST - 10 comments
Apple doesn't seem to think the DMCA bites
Apple is using their interpretation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to prevent third party dealers from providing software to Apple users enabling them to burn DVDs on external drives.
They have no problem with them burning DVDs on Apple drives, naturally.
And to think I was just about to
switch, too. Um, yeah.
posted by John Smallberries at 7:41 PM PST - 38 comments
You may be incompetent
and not even know it. According to Dr. David Dunning of Cornell University, the skills necessary to be competent are the same skills needed to recognize competence in others. You can read the whole report
here.
posted by Joey Michaels at 6:38 PM PST - 24 comments
Nine lives?
It seems cats do better when dropped...uh, I mean, fall, more than seven stories. Anything less and they fail to reach terminal velocity and don't land properly. Once the cats reach
terminal velocity they spread their legs (think parachute) and slow their fall. A cat has a far better chance of survival falling from 32 stories than four.
Dwarfs, however, do not benefit from longer flights.
posted by cedar at 6:22 PM PST - 36 comments
This explains everything!
Mystified by the recent flurry of corporate meltdowns? Do you find yourself thinking: "Are those CEOs CRAZY?" Well maybe they are!
posted by BGM at 5:35 PM PST - 14 comments
Alexa's Top 500 Websites
- Accurate or not, here is Alexa.com's list of their top 500 ranked websites - globally. This has been touched on both earlier
today and back in
April.
Today's top ten sites iclude two korean sites, one japanese, one chinese, and six us-based sites. Also a more-clear
definition of Alexa's Ranking system is here, complete with biases listed (such as IE users only, Alexa Users only, etc).
posted by kokogiak at 4:12 PM PST - 24 comments
Gourmet Magazine
had a pretty interesting article (wish it was up on line) about farm-raised salmon v. wild salmon. Farm-raised salmon is scary, especially with regards to
disease,
waste handling, food (feather meal, blood meal, bone meal and other things that wild salmon do not eat) and an industry which is controlled by a very small number of multinational companies.
posted by plinth at 3:50 PM PST - 23 comments
Apparently I live in the most diverse city in the United States.
Synagogue arsons, propane-tank-bomb-plotting and suburban hate crime aside, Sacramento is a pretty neat place, especially since my wife (Korean-American) and I (Jewish) can afford to own a house on our meager incomes and still go out to eat
Pho (Vietnamese),
Kitfo (Ethiopian),
Som Tum (Thai),
Kalbi (Korean) all within a short drive. It's not San Francisco, but neither is the cost of living. Do you notice the tension caused by resistance to diversity in your town, or are you too busy eating the
sushi to notice?
posted by luriete at 10:53 AM PST - 36 comments
If you've ever flown commercially in the past 16 years, you had to answer two questions about your luggage before receiving your boarding pass. Starting today, they are
no longer required since they "never prevented a bombing or hijacking."
posted by jaden at 9:58 AM PST - 20 comments
On The Road...
coming to a theater near you (scroll down in link). Francis Ford Coppola is working on a film adaptation of Kerouac's classic (?), starring Brad Pitt. Genius? Heresy? I can see the Barnes & Noble tie-ins now...
posted by serafinapekkala at 7:48 AM PST - 54 comments
Is this so called heighted security?
Why are we permitting people to bring on carry on luggage at all? If the airlines are unwilling to put a skymarshal on every flight then they need to arm the pilots. We really need to take much stronger steps in this area than the feeble attempts taken thus far.
posted by Wong Fei-hung at 6:23 AM PST - 61 comments
Neighbour jailed for branding pedophile's genitals.
A man attacks his two young nephews and his neighbours find out and burn him with a hot spatula as punishment. The neighbour is then imprisoned. I realise this is vigilante justice and on an intellectual level, it's wrong, but emotionally I'm finding it hard to muster much sympathy for people who attack kids and face a backlash like this. What are your reactions?
posted by Jubey at 6:08 AM PST - 45 comments
August 28
One of the Marine Corps' greatest living heroes was dying. A donor liver had been found, but he might not live long enough to get it. Who ya gonna call?
Semper Fidelis.
posted by swell at 9:23 PM PST - 56 comments
Beverly Hillbillies, Redux!
No... not a new movie, but a reality series under development by the shiny and shimmering
Tiffany Network. CBS scouts are scouring for a "rural, rustically telegenic" family to be whisked to a brand new home in Beverly Hills, and have a life of luxury bestowed upon them for a period of a year... cameras following them all the way. Crass exploitation of the poor when the gap between rich and poor gets larger and larger? Fun idea to see what happens when someone's dreams come true? Somewhere in the middle? What do people think?
posted by tittergrrl at 9:17 PM PST - 33 comments
Palestinian comic booted from Jackie Mason's comedy show
Ray Hanania, a Palestinian comic in Chicago, was set to open for headlining act Jackie Mason. A few hours before the show, Mason had him booted. "It's not exactly like he's just an Arab-American. This guy's a Palestinian," said Jyll Rosenfeld, Mason's manager. "Jackie does not feel comfortable having a Palestinian open for him." Ouch. (Imagine if the tables were turned: "Ray does not feel comfortable having a Jew open for him")
Too bad, really. If there's one thing the I/P conflict needs, it's more humor. Like this
Muslim-Jewish Comedy Night.
posted by laz-e-boy at 2:08 PM PST - 68 comments
Some people collect baseball cards.
Lots of people collect
comics. Others collect
stuffed animals,
salt and pepper shakers,
commemorative plates,
ventriloquist figures,
bottlecaps,
hubcaps,
antique radios,
farm implements, even
chainsaws. Some wealthy folks even collect
yachts. What makes a thing collectible? Are the best collectibles sold as "collectibles", or is "collectibility" a cynical marketing gimmick?
Of course, Elvis collectibles are a whole sub-culture all by themselves.
posted by mrmanley at 1:02 PM PST - 52 comments
Netscape market share at an all time low?
Not according to Heise Online, a major news site here in Germany. In their very substantial weblogs, Microsoft went from 66,9% down to 65% from March to August of this year, while Netscape/Mozilla rose from 21,3 % to 22,6 and Opera from 7,8% to 8,4%.
(Warning: Link in German, but you will understand the tables at the end of the article easily).
posted by vowe at 12:43 PM PST - 18 comments
What's a couple of hours?
Some men fishing made a gruesome discovery - a human head. The men placed it in a garbage bag. Then they kept right on fishing: "We didn't want to come in right away… It'd been out there awhile."
posted by ao4047 at 12:32 PM PST - 40 comments
"I think I'm big enough to play the game"
says Australian Parliament member Barry Haase, referring to his "purchase" for a day by brothel owner Mary-Anne Kenworthy (heh heh, she said 'member'). Auctioned to the highest bidder (he fetched $1000Australian) at the local Rotary Club charity auction, Haase will perform such duties as cleaning the brothel in a "frilly apron" and conducting a tour of the premises. Wonder if he'll wear anything besides what the proprietress' called her "tour hat"...
posted by runthegamut at 10:12 AM PST - 7 comments
According to
scientists who study sex we can toss some common misconceptions: there is no battle of the sexes; the Mars and Venus book is misleading; extreme body builders are not sexy; breast size isnt always sexy; men and women cheat equally; the notion of man "spreading his seed" is a cultural invention; thin is not sexy. All thanks to our caveman brain.
posted by stbalbach at 9:19 AM PST - 61 comments
Yoga in the classroom? EGADS!
That reeks of religious implications, say parents in Aspen, Colorado.
"For some families, the chanting that accompanies a selection of yoga techniques creates a challenge for separation of church and state." Aspen Elementary says the pilot program
"was proposed as a way to help kids cope with their return to school. Rowdy tots could be calmed and readied for class work after recess using a series of relaxing breathing and stretching techniques."
posted by msacheson at 8:43 AM PST - 66 comments
'Girls Gone Wild' goes to Burning Man.
The denizens of Black Rock City get pissed; Voyeur Video tries to save face. "Instead of stopping the sale, Voyeur changed the festival's name on its Web site, the suit alleges, to "Rainbow Fire Festival," but kept the description.
("Rainbow Fire Festival is all running around naked
and exposing yourself in front of your peers," the Web
site now reads.)" Lord help me, why do I find this all really, really
funny?
posted by maura at 7:17 AM PST - 64 comments
nerdc0re.
"0wnz0red", Cory Doctorow's fantastispooky new short story. There's something uniquely thrilling about seeing tech talk in fiction. A refreshing change from the literary equivalent of movie OS.
posted by condour75 at 2:20 AM PST - 26 comments
August 27
Howard Dean
Get to know that name because you will likely be hearing it often in the coming months. The Governor of Vermont is currently the only Democratic presidential contender who has officially declared his candidacy. He is gaining press nationally and internationally as a potential breath of fresh air on the American political landscape. An interesting mix of liberal populism and traditional conservative fiscal responsibility, he is known to rub colleges from both sides of the ideological spectrum the wrong way. Regardless of your opinion on his politics, do you think this man have a shot? Do the proverbial square pegs in the Democratic and GOP round holes ever stand a chance? Will the Bush and Gore juggernauts forever push differing ideas into the realm of third parties or is there room for descent from within?
posted by EmoChild at 8:27 PM PST - 41 comments
Is Dave Sim going mad?
Speculation has been running rampant in the Interweb comic book community that Dave Sim, writer and artist of
Cerebus, arguably one of the greatest comic book series of all time, has
lost his mind. Granted, many of Sim's
essays have been
misogynist, and he has publicly challenged
Bone creator Jeff Smith to a fist fight for a somewhat trivial slight, but that is hardly evidence of insanity. Has he crossed the line from extremist to madman? Is his writing a Swiftian satire or, as one critic called it, the
Mein Kampf of misogyny?
posted by Joey Michaels at 8:27 PM PST - 39 comments
Did you know "88" means "Heil Hitler"? Neither did a buyer at Target.
"
August 27, 2002 -- Target, the nationwide department-store chain, said today it will pull shorts and baseball caps emblazoned with neo-Nazi hate symbols from its shelves." After dithering for a few weeks, Target responded to tolerance.org's campaign, but is now shooting themselves in the foot again by being less than accomodating of returns of the offending (and I do mean offending!) product. The link above is to the original story, the Aug. 27 update is linked at the bottom of that page. Howcum I never saw this on CNN? 8
posted by BGM at 7:15 PM PST - 104 comments
FuckedCompany knocked offline for two days
due to headlines that sounded like Ford's advertising slogans. While FC is no stranger to
cease and
desist orders, Ford threatened
the web host directly, who ended up pulling the plug. Was Ford in the right, or did they overstep their bounds? Personally, it sounds a lot like suing a newspaper when a headline plays on your advertising.
posted by mathowie at 5:00 PM PST - 30 comments
Like
Tintin,
Asterix, or even the
Smurfs? Step right this way, to the
dark,
spooky side of
French cartooning.
Jacques Tardi, relatively obscure in this country, brings you
many lovely lonely images of
cityscapes and
small horrors, mostly within the amazing stories of
Adele Blanc-Sec, writer and adventurer.
At least
one of his books is still in print in English, and most can be
ordered from overseas, and are well worth it.
posted by interrobang at 4:22 PM PST - 23 comments
The book, Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge by Alan M. Dershowitz, (the one who accused five justices of the Supreme Court of outright corruption in siding with Bush in Bush v. Gore)
is reviewed by his old nemesis Judge Richard A. Posner, known best for his Cost-benefit analysis in legal issues. It's your call.
posted by semmi at 3:13 PM PST - 7 comments
Interesting
article about ways in which telecom companies can take what they have and make it more profitable as opposed to pie in the sky broadband/lifestyle schemes. Some cool ideas.
posted by zeoslap at 1:44 PM PST - 7 comments
Wild goose chase
- "British wildlife experts are mourning the loss of Kerry the goose after tracking him by satellite all the way from Ireland to an Eskimo's kitchen in Arctic Canada." No, seriously.
posted by paladin at 12:55 PM PST - 10 comments
A robot called
Pyramid Rover will explore two 8 inch wide mysterious passages in the
Great Pyramid at Giza. A previous robot exploration by the
Upuaut Project found the passage blocked by a slab with copper fittings which looked suspiciously like a door. The Pyramid Rove will carry ground penetrating radar and fiber optic cameras to explore what lies beyond the "door."
posted by caddis at 12:35 PM PST - 21 comments
Man missing since 9/11 found.
Missing for almost an entire year, give or take... well, actually take exactly 14 days... a 46-year-old schizophrenic amnesiac is found to have been resting in a hospital since the day he went missing in the general area of the World Trade Center. No one knows where he went, why he was there, and how he ended up in a hospital.
Strangely, the mans' family's faith was so strong in his survival that they refused for an entire year to collect 9/11 compensation, or for that matter even obtain a death certificate.
Umm.... wow?
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 12:32 PM PST - 14 comments
SatireWire is closing up shop.
Andrew Marlatt, the multi-trick pony behind the site, is citing "creative differences" with himself and is opting to walk away from one of the better-known bastions of Web humor, as well as one of those rare free content sites that, according to Marlatt, is profitable:
The site actually makes money — through advertising, through the book "Economy of Errors," and (primarily) through selling pieces from the site to publications like, say, the Washington Post, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, or the National Post in Canada. Nice little setup, actually. I've been very lucky. But the bottom line is, it has ceased to be fun. My heart is not in it. My head is not in it.
But just because Marlatt has chosen a different route to the dead pool that those sites that gave up the ghost because they were broke doesn't make this story much more discussion-worthy than any other croaked dotcom. In proper obit style, let's instead remember the great stuff we got from the site; if you've never
been, you'll find
all sorts of treasures.
posted by blueshammer at 11:43 AM PST - 15 comments
Here Comes The Rain Again
Virginia Gov. Mark Warner has decided to prove that he's a tough-on-acts-of-god kind of governor. He's no wimp when it comes to weather, our governor. Nosireebob. He's gonna show that weather who's boss!
He's appointed a
drought czar.
"Drought czar?" What's next? An education czar? A jaywalking czar? A stop-breathing-through-your-nose-on-the-elevator-please-goddammit czar?
Talk about your
linguistic inflation.
posted by NedKoppel at 11:11 AM PST - 19 comments
New Bog Snorkeling World Champion Crowned
People have such odd hobbies and collections.
I'm not talking about things like
CrossStiching, or
Air Guitar, or
Naming Your Pens, but really strange ones.
Air Sickness Bags are art to some, so are
Wal-Mart Purchase Receipts, and
Nobs, always fun at parties there's collecting
navel fluff, I'm not
Sure What To Call This, there's
Squirrel Fishing
, collecting
Odd Rod Cards, heck,
Books Have Been Written, even
The USAToday collects them.
I dunno, is Mefi a strange hobby?
posted by Blake at 7:36 AM PST - 14 comments
55,000 angry emails,
all because someone decided to forge an email from "pro-palestinian agitator" Francis Boyle. The best part?
"the FBI didn't find anything illegal". The guy
"spent nearly four days sifting through the messages, writing personal apologies to the offended".
It really is too easy...
posted by mrgavins at 7:24 AM PST - 8 comments
Is Current Israeli Policy Incompatible With Judaism?
Jonathan Sacks, Britain's Chief Rabbi and arguably the outstanding Jewish intellectual of his generation, has apparently broken away from the established stance of Orthodox Judaism and made public a series of worries and reservations that rabbis have been making privately ever since Sharon took power. It's not so much politics (though everything is) that is at stake but the
dissonance between the highly peaceful (indeed anti-military) and human character of Judaism and the hard, secular realism of present-day Israeli politics. Are they becoming irreconcilable? Were they always so?[
Jonathan Freedland, who interviewed Professor Sacks, had this to say about the bigger picture.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 12:58 AM PST - 103 comments
August 26
Welcome to "Hawk Tawk"
, with your host, Dick Cheney. The Vice President spoke to members of the
Veterans of Foreign Wars in Tennessee today, and unequivocally stated that the United States must preemptively strike Iraq, since there is "no doubt" Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction and plans on using them against the US and its allies (
excerpt of speech here). In other news, Qatar, a proposed launching off point by US forces,
announced its opposition to any attacks on Iraq. In addition,
National Reservists will continue to be on active duty for another year, the first time that has happened since Vietnam, and the
US Army has been gearing up for new action. What's that Chinese proverb about living in interesting times? (And I know people are sick of Iraq talk, but these are fairly significant events)
posted by tittergrrl at 7:48 PM PST - 111 comments
Texas singer asks lesbian fans to not show affection at her shows
A budding folk-rocker who also happens to be a
high school PE teacher has created a stir with an
Aug. 12 email to her fans. "I have had several complaints from bar owners, friends, fans, and potential fans regarding the outwardly show of affection that has taken place at my shows," writes
Michelle Mayfield. "This type of behavior, right or wrong, reflects on me as the artist who has brought you to that club...Please be respectful of the places where I am performing by being aware of the actions that can possibly turn potential fans away from my music or from my future shows." The resulting flap, and Mayfield's
apology, is made more interesting by questions about Mayfield's own sexual preference, which she called "no one's business in the first place."
posted by mediareport at 5:52 PM PST - 107 comments
What is going on at the New York Times?
More than 100 years ago, the New York Times, under owner Adolph Ochs, adopted the slogan: "All the news that's fit to print". But, critics are now asking if the New York Times only prints news it considers ideologically fit.
What has been happening at the Times is far more ominous than just veering to the support of one party or one ideology. There is a type of liberalism, pioneered in America, which tries to be fairer than fair. But trying to be better than fair is like trying to bend over backwards to be straighter than vertical or defining "objective" as being neutral between good and evil. That path leads straight to moral equivalence.
Perhaps the slogan should be re-written: "All the Newspeak fit to print".
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 2:22 PM PST - 39 comments
Ann Coulter Explained
For the benefit of members of the Left who just don't seem to get it, I offer a link to a short but pithy analysis of Miss Coulter's appeal.
posted by BGM at 1:32 PM PST - 57 comments
The other day a woman on the radio was promoting a charity walk for some disease and stated "
every 9 minutes someone dies from this disease. That's a World Trade Center disaster every month" Considering myself on the cutting edge of units of measurement, I thought, have I lost that edge?
I guess I Have.
posted by mss at 1:28 PM PST - 21 comments
Easly High, home of the Scarlet Letters.
Students violating the dress code of the South Carolina high school will now be forced to change into t-shirts bearing the phrases
"Dress for Success" on the front and
"Today I did not meet the dress code policy for proper attire" on the back. Boy, it's a good thing they're putting them on teenagers, because they would never think of creative ways to violate this idea in... what, about thirty seconds? Discuss your ideas for the new fashion trend: custom punishment signs!
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 11:43 AM PST - 34 comments
Fighting back:
Spammers want e-mail addresses. Give them e-mail addresses. Tons of e-mail addresses. This handy PHP script will add as many fake e-mail addresses to your web site as you want. 20 is the default, with command and space delimited, just like this:
lebsda@fihnekyjvbj.de, tzckk@zcwgituizwjgy.eu, lzteth@gvxmzqphddvhsd.de, wspvnmpitk@adlruenmiupuglcqn.nl, toulr@cttzrgrb.it, gxgb@yqkeermxyxxozvfws.dk, ucldeo@lwytvqqq.nl, brddshal@qmyhquiqtbaeggpx.com, ovu@zzxlbismicnqsuiubkfl.de, txxewr@ogpzcomgrhkd.br, goluv@twcnkfeghsh.com, tfexbuous@heev.ar, zjgeaztzvm@rvonhfrd.de, nhsgikjvjb@stncbqtnyyclaflm.jp, svgfdh@zeynvdd.nl, hxqios@yrdlshpyscndoslt.de, fxglj@sfkdxgyadbqk.ca, mtskzv@carbd.de, pigm@vnkcalneewdulz.com, nqnjwldpfk@ecifc.edu
And each call to the web site will give the spam harvester 20 spanking new addresses. (Web site is german, but the script is in english)
posted by vowe at 11:11 AM PST - 59 comments
The son of a rock god interviews a rock genius...
(Scroll down to "Audio") Sean Lennon's 48-minute interview with Brian Wilson covers all aspects of music, from the genesis of a great song, to the competition between artists in the late 1960's. (The interview is in four parts, in RealAudio format.)
posted by greengrl at 10:33 AM PST - 15 comments
Administration Says It Can Attack Iraq without Congressional Approval
Not a new story, per se, but this Post article lays out pretty well the arguments behind the administration's case, one being simply Bush's role as commander-in-chief. It's strange how closely this issue reflects earlier attempts by the administration to avoid Congressional and/or public scrutiny (Cheney's Enron meetings, for example). Why this aversion, and why fight so hard? And I have a sneaking fear that Bush will seek Congressional approval only after invading, and he will bully votes by claiming that reps have a patriotic duty to support a president in a time of war.
posted by risenc at 7:16 AM PST - 65 comments
August 25
Well, they've been found.
The remains of Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis, the highly-publicized first victims of the "summer of child kidnappings," have been found at the [former] home of the FBI's main "subject of interest."
Damn, damn, damn.
posted by wdpeck at 10:51 PM PST - 102 comments
Ralph Gibson's Interchange
allows us to create pairs of his dark, lyrical photographs by selecting them from two different stacks. The results are starkly beautiful yet surprisingly coherent. Gibson is often criticized as cold, brainy and aestheticizing, but fans like me love his photography all the more for it. His website isn't nearly as smooth and collected, but it contains a generous helping of recent work. The
ex libris and
l'histoire de france series are also outstanding: rich and luscious surfaces and fetishes, obsessively stared at and almost erotically immobilized. The
gotham chronicles photographs look like a new departure, if perhaps just a tad too
recherché.[
Those who'd prefer to navigate the site from scratch should go straight to the front page, of course.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:51 PM PST - 15 comments
A 63-year old Norwegian bus company owner has
amassed one of the worlds
largest collections of ancient manuscripts valued at over 110 million dollars. His story, how the collection is used and his plans for the sale proceeds are all first-class and an inspiration to private collectors of antiquities.
posted by stbalbach at 8:24 AM PST - 15 comments
The Invisible Library is a catalog of books that appear only within other books: in other words, a collection of imaginary books. With such names as "Growing Flowers by Candlelight in Hotel Rooms", "How Beautiful are Thy Feet" and "The Bitch Pack Meets on Wednesday", though, some of these books are just begging to be written. (more...)
posted by taz at 5:52 AM PST - 39 comments
"It was amazing,"
says 101, "we went to club after club. We never paid a cover, we never paid for drinks. We were escorted to the VIP tables. In Minneapolis the Geek Squad has been around for 10 years -- they're treated like rock stars. I mean, when has a computer tech ever been treated like a rock star?"
"The
Geek Squad
offers a flat-rate service. You call them with a problem; they quote you a price; they fix the problem. No matter what. No matter how long it takes. And, each agent guarantees his work -- forever."
posted by bingo at 12:58 AM PST - 14 comments
August 24
It appears
that there is another twist in the Abu Nidal death as reports are claiming that Saddam Hussein had Abu killed because Nidal didn't want to train Al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq and strike the US. This does contradict the Iraqi claims that Abu killed himself for plotting to overthrow Saddam.
This is getting stranger and stranger. Is this just creative writing by Iraqi opposition? Won't these claims be used to justify claims that Saddam is harboring Terrorists? Will the US awkardly praise Abu for turning down Saddam's offer?
Who knows..
posted by RobbieFal at 11:42 PM PST - 15 comments
The British Museum has put together a beautiful interactive display system they call "
Turning the Pages" for some of the rarest books in their collection, including the
Sherborne Missal. The technology has been developed to
realistically replicate the physical act of turning the pages of each individual book.
posted by anathema at 9:50 PM PST - 14 comments
The Virtual Tour of Edo
allows you explore the city that would one day become Tokyo, Japan. Classical images illustrate short descriptions of life in this 18th century metropolis.
Although modern Tokyo may look very "Western" on the surface, in its heart the spirit of Edo still lives on!
posted by Joey Michaels at 9:35 PM PST - 6 comments
Sell The Public Libraries
Llewellyn says many public libraries have been a disgrace for decades, and,
like most public institutions, they are architectural monstrosities.
"They have terrible hours, which they blame on underfunding. Their selection
is often severely limited, vacillating between being out of date and
carrying only the latest, tackiest bestsellers. Others have gradually purged
all books that offer ideas the ruling regime rejects."
It gets
MUCH worse! Past threads have shown the average Mefite to be a fan of public libraries, this guy, is to say the least, not.
posted by Blake at 7:31 PM PST - 48 comments
Tony Gwynn knows full well how costly a baseball strike could be
Baseball still has not recovered from the strike of 1994, especially in Montreal. The Expos were in the driver's seat for the National League East title when the strike hit in August of 1994. Before the 1995 season began, the Expos had traded several key players to lower expenses. Now the team is on Commissioner Bud Selig's contraction list for Major League Baseball. If the players union go out on strike this year, it could deal a fatal blow to the sport that was once was America's national pastime.
posted by jasonbondshow at 4:05 PM PST - 20 comments
On Solidarity, Community Spirit And Going Meerkat-Mad:
They're cute, they're smart; they're funny, they're sociable; they're even considered
the epitome of cooperative living. In fact, they could probably teach MetaFilter a lesson or two. In their
September issue,
National Geographic has gone stark, raving
meerkat-bonkers - and not a moment too soon either. We're talking new desktops here, no mistake.
.[Flash needed for first link - definitely worth waiting for it to load - Real or WindowsMedia for some other on-site features.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:06 PM PST - 20 comments
In a zone of their own.
Despite restrictions and police enforcement, protesters tried to make their voices heard. When did these "Free Speech Zones" start. Maybe they have always been around but I don't recall hearing that you had to be cordoned off to express peaceful dissent.
posted by bas67 at 1:48 PM PST - 18 comments
Smokey's Vault:
all about the history of the campaign, the "real" Smokey Bear, and Smokey's unique place in American culture. Created in 1944, the Smokey Bear campaign is the longest running public service campaign in US History. Smokey's forest fire prevention message remained unchanged for 50 years until April 2001, when the Ad Council updated his message to address the increasing number of wildfires in the nation's wildlands.
posted by josephtate at 12:35 PM PST - 11 comments
US terror suspect 'beaten in custody',
says the BBC. The US gov't
claimed there was a massive amount of evidence to link him to Al-Queda. Now, after 11 months of being held in solitary confinement without access to a lawyer and allegedly being beaten, he has been charged with having crossed the US border illegally in the past (he was
living in Toronto when he was arrested).
posted by 4easypayments at 11:02 AM PST - 29 comments
Do you ever just wander? Based upon the ideas of
psychogeography and the
dérive, a group called Special Airplane is orchestrating
Drift next week in Vancouver. Also ref.
The Cityspace Cut-Up @ Social Fiction, who seem somewhat responsible for this.
I don't see how Drift is "generative," but whatever; it's an interesting idea.
[badly-behaved javascript pop-links on the page; the supporting links in this post go to the locations directly]
posted by Su at 9:08 AM PST - 18 comments
August 23
Watch those Waterway in Florida
says the U.S. Coast Guard. Possible terrorist threats include drawing or taking photographs of the shore, being near the shore for a long time, and under no circumstances would any law abiding citizen be doing something as daring and thoroughly terrorist-like as
renting a boat.
posted by benjh at 6:18 PM PST - 37 comments
Secret Court Rebuffs Ashcroft:
A May 17 opinion by the court that oversees the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) alleges that Justice Department and FBI officials supplied erroneous information to the court in more than 75 applications for search warrants and wiretaps, including one signed by then-FBI Director Louis J. Freeh.Maybe the system actually works.
Thanks to
Dack for the link.
posted by mark13 at 2:43 PM PST - 10 comments
Pimp Anthropology (RealAudio file)
is the title of a 1999 episode
(description) of
This American Life. It chronicles the rise and fall of a man that, with three friends in the '70s, became a pimp, didn't follow the rules, and lost everything. It's amazingly honest, interesting and heartbreaking, and doesn't fall into the trap of glorifying pimping and prostitution. This is the best thing I've heard in a while.
posted by The Michael The at 2:12 PM PST - 8 comments
Bored at the office? Put some of that paper to good use: make some
paper airplanes. Those two links should keep you busy for a few days
(be sure to try out Nick's Plane. Possibly the best paper plane there is. Thank you Nick, who ever you are..), but if you're looking for something a little flash, you could try folding one of
these.
posted by slipperywhenwet at 12:44 PM PST - 18 comments
My buddy and I are in a pub, and I mention this website called
Gone and Forgotten, which is all about superheroes who were so ill-conceived that they were quickly abandoned. And my buddy says "What about the Metal Men -- do they talk about the Metal Men?" And I say "The Metal who?" And my buddy says "They were these robots, and they had each had the powers associated with the metal they were made of. Like, Lead could block x-rays, and Mercury could, I dunno, take your temperature or something." And I tell my buddy that, although I don't know if the Metal Men appear on the virtual pages of G.A.F., I am certain that
someone out there on the Internet has created a Unofficial Metal Man Fan Page. And
I am right.
posted by Shadowkeeper at 11:30 AM PST - 26 comments
The Google Quiz
tests your knowledge of art, film, and music, general trivia, or (ugh) their stuff for sale. It's
only open to US residents, but it otherwise an interesting testament to their product. Armed with just a google search window, you are given five questions that test your research limits. Someone here with l33t search skillz has got to win something.
posted by mathowie at 9:58 AM PST - 24 comments
In the midst of all the talk of possible terrorist deployments of Weapons of Mass-Destruction,
this seems like a somewhat dramatic, if effective, approach to pre-empting the threat of blackmarket nuclear proliferation. The co-operative approach adopted by the U.S and Russia - and presumably the Yugoslav Government itself - also seems encouraging.
Should this 'surprise-attack' approach now be used to negate the threat posed as nuclear facilities are decommissioned worldwide??
posted by Doozer at 7:19 AM PST - 3 comments
British Telecom patent does not cover the Internet.
Yea, another overreaching patent holder has gone down in defeat. BT has a
patent for a remote terminal/mainframe/modem combination which they asserted covered linking over the Internet. In a recent
opinion the US District Court for the Southern District of New York held that BT's patent was not so broad as to cover the Internet. Thank God. Are some people just too greedy?
posted by caddis at 6:47 AM PST - 5 comments
Half a billion Americans?
The Economist crunches census data from both sides of the Atlantic and figures that the US will hit the 500 million mark sometime in the next few decades, surpassing the combined population of even the expanded EU. In typical style, the Economist looks at the economic and political reprecussions of this, but skips another interesting question: how will a doubling of the population change America itself? will it make the US more environmentally friendly? reduce urban sprawl? will the shifting population balance change the culture itself?
posted by costas at 4:23 AM PST - 48 comments
August 22
Survive This!
Last week the Los Angeles
New Times reported that NBC had signed teenage kidnap/rape victims Tamara Brooks and Jackie Marris to
star in a midseason replacement "reality show", to be entitled "Survive This!"
After the initial jaw-drops of this revelation and alleged quotes from therapists and sex crime experts that "NBC may actually be doing the teens a service by exposing them to worldwide publicity", further along in the article we get this description of what the show will entail:
'Survive This!' contestants will be briefed by the girls before they are helicoptered to a remote, secret location. If things go according to plan, NBC will have placed several paroled repeat sex offenders in various locations miles from the drop zone. The contestants will have 48 hours to find safety at a remote building made to resemble a rural sheriff's station.
People were outraged. Protests were planned. There was just one catch.
The author of the article made up the whole thing.
One wonders how this ever got past the editors.
posted by chuq at 3:41 PM PST - 26 comments
Coincidence?
The man being questioned by police in relation to allegations that he took a £1,000,000 bribe during the takeover of Wessex Water (audited by Andersen and previously owned by Enron) is also on the board of the company whose track maintenance may have been responsible for the
Potters Bar Rail Crash.
Why am I not surprised to see so many of the same fingers in the same rotten pies.
posted by essexjan at 3:35 PM PST - 1 comments
An All-American Fugitive
When Margo Freshwater escaped from prison 32 years ago, she began a happy and law-abiding life, becoming a devoted mother, grandmother and wife. Now she's back behind bars . . . And unless she's given a new trial or is granted clemency . . . she will remain behind bars until she is an old woman . . . Meanwhile, the man who confessed to the killing probably will die a free man.
posted by mikrophon at 1:41 PM PST - 5 comments
Medical marijuana takes a hit.
Ajulemic acid (also known as CT-3) is a new synthetic THC analog that helps relieve arthritis pain without the side effects of other non-steroidal analgesics, such as aspirin and ibuprofen -- and without the high of its chemical cousin.
More inside...
posted by me3dia at 12:10 PM PST - 36 comments
NY Times Reporter Jumps to His Death:
Matt Drudge reports that
New York Times Business reporter/editor Allen Myerson jumped to death at the
NY Times building in New York City on 43rd Street this morning. Myerson was the Weekend Business Editor at the
NY Times and a member of the
Business Journalism Advisory Council. Among other things, Myerson reported on Enron. An abstract of a Myerson article that appeared in the newspaper last December says, "Enron Corp's failure is having repercussions not just on nation's energy industries, but is being felt through retailing, real estate, insurance, banking, Internet services, newspaper publishing, plastics and glass manufacturing, all of which Enron touched in its boundless appetite for risk and growth."
posted by maud at 11:39 AM PST - 52 comments
November 25th, 1997, marked the 134th anniversary of the battles for Chattanooga. On that day, Dave Buckhout and T.C. Moore retraced the route along which these battles flowed. They had cameras, a road map, and an '86 Buick.
The resulting website is an example of what's wonderful about the internet.
posted by ewagoner at 11:26 AM PST - 3 comments
Thailand's latest pet craze
The Thai government is cautioning people against a new fad sweeping Bangkok - raising giant African cockroaches as pets - saying the bugs could become a health risk if let loose.
posted by DailyBread at 10:44 AM PST - 22 comments
Demythologizing The Blues.
Blues reseacher and scholar David Evans breaks it down.
Country blues as a living tradition tied to a rural black culture - there is something of that culture left - I think it's essentially over.--that's from this
interview with David Evans--scroll past the autobiographical details for the meat and potatos. Paul Garon, of
Race Traitor and
Living Blues, has strong feelings about
White Blues. Similarly, black writer Jesse Douglas Allen-Taylor feels a chill amidst a white blues audience and asks
Whose Blues Are They? Also, n a related and timely topic, here's
Elvis Presley and the Impulse Towards Transculturation. (Hint: Elvis didn't sound black.
Well, duh...) Originally in the NYT--
no password needed now!--
The Blues Dying In The Land Where It Was Born, and as a bonus, the New Yorker profile on an outfit I love to loathe,
Fat Possum. Is is this
guy's fault?
And if you want to make the pilgrimage, let
Junior's Juke Joint be your guide! (don't forget to make that unannounced drop in on raysmj!) Added bonus:
R. Crumb's Charley Patton.
posted by y2karl at 10:01 AM PST - 34 comments
Game Studies
"is a crossdisciplinary journal dedicated to games research, web-published several times a year at www.gamestudies.org. Our primary focus is aesthetic, cultural and communicative aspects of computer games." A well-designed, well-written site about a media that seems often poorly studied outside of mainstream press.
posted by moz at 9:29 AM PST - 4 comments
It starts with Delaware... Over at Google Answers, a Microsoft Games Studio employee has posted a most interesting puzzle to solve. Over the course of the last twenty
months a list of states has been gradually revealed by his boss, but under what criteria are they listed? He's giving $200.00 to the winner; just think of
what you could
buy. The fine folks at the
Straight Dope are already on the case. To the Googlemobile! [via
Cardhouse]
posted by thewittyname at 9:26 AM PST - 75 comments
xrefer
is billing itself as The Web's Reference Engine, and with
100 reference manuals cross-linked and indexed, it may have support for that claim. I found it last night while looking for a definition for the word
eyot, which is where Frodo and Sam camp at one point near the end of the Fellowship of the Ring. The site is easy to use, and provides (at least in my mind) the feeling of browsing at the library, with all the related links that appear in a search context.
posted by hurkle at 8:48 AM PST - 7 comments
Starbucks announces wireless Internet access in stores
and plans to charge customers for it: $29.99/month for access in one store, or $49.99/month for access in all equipped stores nationwide. Seems a little pricey to me. And besides, don't cool coffeehouses offer free wireless Internet access? They're sure getting lots of coverage of the announcement in any case.
posted by tippiedog at 7:58 AM PST - 21 comments
"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."
Have we actually ever heard worse from this month's news-darling Ann Coulter? I don't think so, maybe other do. If this was from an Islamic Jihadist, we'd be at war with whatever country he came from (if Saudi Arabia, then we'd blame Iraq somehow.) How come the Bill Maher "we're the cowards" quotes get people fired, while something like this- and trust me, there's much more fun from Ann in this interview- makes Coulter a best-selling author?
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 7:46 AM PST - 115 comments
A sort of inadequate memorial tribute to John Sladek.
A twenty-year old interview with an author you've probably never heard of. More literary than Douglas Adams, and at least as funny. Think Terry Gilliam if he'd become a writer rather than a director (the most obvious comparison I could think of, them both being Yanks who emigrated to England). I could have added some more links, but if I tell you that he's even funnier in print you'll be googling away for yourself. Sad thing is, he's dead.
posted by chrisgregory at 1:57 AM PST - 6 comments
August 21
Google makes another killer app?
Rackmounted servers devoted to googling your own intranet or website. Just look at those
specs and features. Google is selling 1 server, retail $28,000, and they are marketing especially for corporate intranets. But imagine the power that would be at the fingertips of archivists, students, and researchers everywhere with a dedicated,
customized Google for their own website. Imagine being able to do a detailed search that would literally comb the
content of every page published by
Project Gutenberg. In seconds, you could call upon thousands of years of writing for any and all information on any specific subject. What kind of implications will this technology have long-term for students, researchers, and archivists?
posted by insomnyuk at 11:02 PM PST - 21 comments
Send a sheep
to your beloved in Ethiopia. You can choose from Medium, Big, and Very Big sizes...all with a guarantee! I like their holiday specials too -- check out number 5: a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red and a medium sheep. (though I think I'd
need a bottle of scotch if someone sent me a sheep.)
Similar to
this post, but I had more fun with this. Too bad it only delivers to Addis Ababa...
posted by Vidiot at 8:45 PM PST - 6 comments
The Saudis wanna sue.
A group of Saudis plan to sue the U.S. government and media organizations for the alleged psychological and financial damage they suffered in the aftermath of Sept. 11, their lawyer said Wednesday.
posted by kayjay at 7:19 PM PST - 24 comments
The Insider's Guide to Real Policing.
It's a job that connects all your favorite pastimes—sitting around, eating, bullying people, writing incomplete sentences. After years of research and development, our investigators have found that policing is the easiest job in the District. from Washington DC's
City Paper.
posted by Ty Webb at 4:35 PM PST - 8 comments
All Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology
Why did Bin Laden's homies do what they did on September 11? Why did Lindh (as per the Steve Earle thread below) do what he did? Here is a cogent answer.
posted by kozad at 3:37 PM PST - 19 comments
The
track list for We're a Happy Family -- A Tribute to the Ramones looks, uh, ...interesting. No Motorhead though, the
shame. I am glad that Rob Zombie is proving that it is possible to produce a tribute album without the omnipresent Sheryl Crow.
posted by BarneyFifesBullet at 2:56 PM PST - 12 comments
Peaceful co-existence with the animal kingdom, example #240.
At a local boat ramp in the Richmond, VA suburbs, there is a problem with black vultures causing damage to cars. The buzzards are being attracted by trash and food scraps being left by fishermen cleaning their catch. The birds are scratching trucks and cars, crapping wherever they please (the nerve!), and ripping out the rubber from windshield wipers. What does Chesterfield County decide to do about it? They hired the U.S. Department of Agriculture's wildlife services program to eradicate the entire flock.
posted by machaus at 2:49 PM PST - 29 comments
Is Preemption a Nuclear Schlieffen Plan?
The greatest and most difficult task facing a statesman in international affairs is reconciling the natural tension between the constructive nature of a nation's grand strategy with the destructive character of its military strategy. The emerging doctrine of preemption should be examined in the context of this challenge.
With this in mind, the author
continues with a "Dr. Strangelove" type warning. Are our leaders "doing themselves in" (and us with them) in the current 'war' on terrorism?
posted by tgrundke at 2:12 PM PST - 12 comments
Oh No! Not Another Underrated Artist Who Was Ahead Of His Time...
Oh yes: it's
Tom Thompson(1877-1917). This time, though, the Internet has helped exact a sort of revenge. For those unlucky enough not to live in stately Ottawa and be able to visit the exhibition of the great colourist's work there (
through September 8), someone has done a great job of presenting Thompson's paintings on the web, including a wonderful selection of
merchandise and an appropriately quirky little
quiz. So they do win a few, now and again...
posted by MiguelCardoso at 1:58 PM PST - 8 comments
How to make money off terrorism. This outfit will e-mail you "near real-time notices about terrorism related news and events as a free public service" and expects 50,000 to 100,000 subscribers. According to their
news-release page, "when subscribership reaches significant levels the email alerts will be an effective advertising medium for in-house efforts as well as outside advertisers." As in, for example, "Alert: there has been a biological warfare attack. This message sponsored by Clearasil Anti-Bacterial Soap."
posted by beagle at 1:46 PM PST - 13 comments
Da liddle guy checks out (in 18 months)
Jean Cretien, the Prime Minister of Canada, has just announced he's stepping down thereby avoiding a party revolt and also neatly sinking his main opponent's chances. Will Canada ever find another PM who is as politically astute and at the same time as cartoon-like and embarassing (cough) Mel Lastman (cough)? Favourite memories, please.....
posted by BGM at 12:02 PM PST - 51 comments
"'Curious strength' drives every aspect of the campaign."
Introduced to the US in 1918,
Altoids (Flash) have existed since the reign of George III, and were marketed as a digestive aid for over a century; shortly after their US debut, they were even billed as "an antidote to poisons in the stomach". Today they hold a distinctive place within their industry, with quirky ads and a
reputation as being The Mint to Beat. Their tins are
tricked out by craftsy types, their history is catalogued (and sometimes
embellished), and they have had
shrines built in their honor; not to mention their alleged
bedroom merits, which are widely accepted despite
Snopes' few words on the subject.
BTW: the new Tangerine Sours rock, IMHO, but Cinnamon is thought by some to be
Evil...
posted by atavistech at 10:22 AM PST - 32 comments
Bush to Urge Logging Plan to Help Curb Fires
(registration metafilter/metafilter). Puppet-boy Bush wants to open up selective national forests to logging to help prevent forest fires. While we're at it why don't we kill all the endangered species before they die out? Let's use those polar ice caps for Poland Spring, they're melting anyway!
posted by mad at 7:47 AM PST - 55 comments
Kids got sunburnt
A deputy doing round at a county fair in Ohio noticed three children walking with their mother. Their faces sunburnt like they were "dipped in red paint". Their mother is charged with felony negligence and is facing a 15 year sentence if convicted.
I remember getting a sunburn back in grade school, what's the statute of limitations on charging my 1st grade teacher?
posted by omidius at 7:28 AM PST - 55 comments
A wargame carried out by the US military was rigged
to ensure the success of the American side against unspecified Middle East opponents, according to the retired General commanding the Middle East forces. Most amusingly, he managed to sink most of the American navy, and the game had to be stopped so the ships could be "refloated". I have to wonder, does this wargame indicate that America could be biting off more than it can chew, if it decides to invade Iraq by itself, or was this $200million down the drain?
posted by salmacis at 5:52 AM PST - 45 comments
Multiculturalism v/s Democracy
On this day in 1858, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois and Abraham Lincoln, a Kentucky-born lawyer and one-time U.S. Representative from Illinois, began a series of famous public debates on the issue of slavery, during the course of which Lincoln said:
"They [Founding Fathers]
meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all: constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even, though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, of all colors, every where."
I argue that when a culture values slavery, when a culture is built upon a system of basic inequality, regardless of the reasons, that culture is incompatible with Democracy and the ideals of American society, and can not and should not be embraced by Americans.
Is it possible that part of the anger at the US stems from the "spreading and deepening" influence of American principles, and not just at our economic and military mistakes?
posted by ewkpates at 5:43 AM PST - 28 comments
Frans
Masereel - a great woodcut artist, pioneer of the
wordless novel. You can see all of his 1925
Die Stadt (The City) and
Landscapes and Voices (1929) at
Graphic Witness (Though his
Passionate Journey is one of my favorite books.)
"First published in Germany in 1925 The City is a portrait of urban Europe between the wars, told in one hundred woodcuts of exceptional force and beauty. Frans Masereel portrays parks and factories, shipyards and brothels, crowds, lovers, and lonely individuals with remarkable subtlety and nuance while exploiting the stark contrast of the woodcut medium.
posted by vacapinta at 12:37 AM PST - 8 comments
August 20
Qwest Finds Buyer For QwestDex
The buyer is a group led by the Carlyle Group and Welsh Carson Anderson & Stowe.
The question is: Why does an investment firm that primarily deals in Defense Contracts want a phone directory company? Tell me I'm just being paranoid.
posted by bas67 at 9:19 PM PST - 7 comments
Embryos can be donated on the slippery sloped side of town.
Though proposed by pro-choice, pro-stem-cell-research Arlen Specter, the Bush administration is pushing for a pubilc awareness program that promotes donating unused embryos to infertile couples.
Of course, Bush's insistence on using the term "embryo
adoption-" a term never used by any clinic in the program, but strangely used by a Christian anti-abortion/pro-adoption agency, coupled with the knowledge that Bush has jumped at virtually anything that remotely could lead to redefining the status of a fetus, leads to the inevitable question: does Bush really care about getting more infertile couples to have children, or is this a(nother) subversive attempt to Federally promote the idea that a cell cluster is the same as a newborn infant?
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 8:27 PM PST - 63 comments
Iraq's Aziz Says U.S. Attack Would Fail
This is a news story? What is the Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz supposed to say? "W. has been right all along, Saddam is a tyrant. We need to get him out. Even Saddam agrees he has gone to far." or "Now that you mention it, our military is a mess, the stuff we have bought is junk and your tanks will rip it to shreds."
posted by Coop at 7:34 PM PST - 14 comments
Be thinkful? sure, whatever...
It turns out that Phil Donahue's new show is just a sort of left-wing version of Bill O'Reilly's. What a shock. Read how guests are ambushed and shouted down by the guy who "doesn't let the government tell him what to think".
posted by clevershark at 2:44 PM PST - 38 comments
Pentagon busily ruining the credit ratings of service personnel.
"Hapless" military personnel are ordered to use a government-issued credit card for travel expenses, then submit for reimbursement. But the reimbursements (and even paychecks) frequently come late, making the soldier unable to pay the credit card bill -- thus branding them as "delinquents", "credit risks" and even causing their wages to be garnished.
"U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan have found themselves stranded in the desert without a dime because their credit was suddenly cut off, according to a May 29 report in the
Military Times, leaving families behind in a nasty Catch-22: Swallow the debt, or borrow more money to pay the bills so their credit wouldn't be ruined."
It truly gives one the warm fuzzies to see that our government and military leaders give our service personnel the respect they deserve.
posted by chuq at 12:48 PM PST - 48 comments
Launching this Sept 11th
(ok, the 10th, but still): the DEA Museum will open a "powerful new exhibit that traces the historic and contemporary connections between global drug trafficking and terrorism." Good idea. Tasteful timing.
posted by engelr at 12:26 PM PST - 42 comments
Nasa plans to read the minds of terrorists...
NASA wants to use "noninvasive neuro-electric sensors," imbedded in gates, to collect tiny electric signals that all brains and hearts transmit. Computers would apply statistical algorithms to correlate physiologic patterns with computerized data on travel routines, criminal background and credit information from "hundreds to thousands of data sources," NASA documents say
posted by Espoo2 at 11:30 AM PST - 12 comments
A dangerous drug...
Is it possible that the anti-malaria drug Lariam contributed to the recent series of murders at Fort Bragg? Three of the soldiers involved were on the drug, which has been known to cause aggression, paranoia, hallucinations, and thoughts of suicide. After identifying the potential side-effects, why are we still prescribing this drug to our troops?
posted by greengrl at 8:03 AM PST - 20 comments
If Earthlink starts killing pop-up ads
will a trend emerge? I hate pop-up ads, but they must have some effect because I see more and more. I can see the logic in Earthlink's attempt to gain customers by promising to block pop-up ads, but will it have an effect? I can get other pop-up killers without getting it from
Earthlink. Why don't they address
spyware and attack web advertisers where they live?
posted by john_lustig at 7:28 AM PST - 27 comments
August 19
Now
here's guy who'll be pretty popular with the ladies: Italian man refuses to stop shtupping woman -- whom he'd just met -- in pool,
until she has an orgasm.
posted by baylink at 7:11 PM PST - 55 comments
KEKeKEKe
"Possession of blue objects."
Visual poetry diamond of the Hungarian language - I'd love a pronuciation guide. Have you a favorite lexical chunk?
posted by dorcas at 12:53 PM PST - 10 comments
Justice, American style.
In July 1997, Michelle Bosko is raped and murdered.
Police find no sign of forced entry and recover numerous semen and skin samples as well as fingerprints.
The detectives ask the husband for his
"gut feeling" for who did it. The husband
fingers their neighbor. After many hours with a detective
with
a history of coerced confessions, he confesses and implicates his roommate. His roommate
implicates three other men. Subsequent confessions from those men implicate a total of
seven men.
None of the suspects match the DNA or fingerprint evidence. Two years later, on a chance recovery of a jailhouse confession,
a suspect admits to the killing. He has several rapes/assaults to his record and was a friend of the victim.
He later confesses to the crime and says he acted alone. He matches the DNA and fingerprint analysis.
The district attorney does NOT believe him, and convicts a total of five people for the crime.
posted by patrickje at 12:00 PM PST - 51 comments
The Grey Goo guys gain ground.
"The controversy involves the potential perils of making molecule-size objects and devices - a field known as nanotechnology ... The ultimate nightmare was the so-called Gray Goo catastrophe, in which self-replicating microscopic robots the size of bacteria fill the world and wipe out humanity."
While 'gain ground' may not be wholly accurate (it was alliterative), the theory is being given lots of play in scientific circles as nano-devices approach practical status.
posted by o2b at 11:49 AM PST - 26 comments
The new tapes obtained by CNN
are somewhat disturbing. Has anyone else been able to catch some of them, either online, or on CNN Live? The chemical testing on the dogs is particularily interesting. Suddenly, experts are wondering if Al Qaeda has more technological capability then was previously estimated. Do you think that they have indeed made it past the stage of torturing dogs, and could pose a serious chemical threat? What is the likelihood that these weapons will be used?
posted by dgt at 11:17 AM PST - 36 comments
Oh no...not again...
In the latest twist to the long-running Ginger saga, it's now being rumored that the two-wheeled device unveiled by inventor Dean Kamen last December isn't in fact the real deal.
posted by mathis23 at 10:18 AM PST - 39 comments
The
other other reparations movement:
Penile reparations. "...even where the procedure is performed at the professional standard, a circumcision is litigious if the consent is not informed... An army of lawyers will be there with this precedent and many more in their arsenal." [more inside]
posted by Slithy_Tove at 10:10 AM PST - 158 comments
Fancy Helping Rearrange The Deckchairs On The S.S.Nation?
Witness the lavish excesses of Newport's "gilded age" as you visit the summer cottages of the Vanderbilts, Astors and Morgans; relive the fairy-tale wedding reception of Jacqueline Bouvier at her childhood summer home, Hammersmith Farm... Got a few thousand dollars to spare? Fancy a luxury cruise, leisurely discussing the evils of globalisation and the Bush administration with the likes of George McGovern, Howard Zinn, Katha Pollitt and the
editorial gang of
The Nation? Welcome aboard! Or perhaps Sir or Madam would feel more at home rubbing elbows and spilling eggnogs with Kenneth Starr, Milton Friedman, Dan Quayle, Tom De Lay on the
S.S.National Review. What?! Still too left wing? Well, go ahead and join Oliver North, the NRA and
other soft-spoken voices of moderation on their
Freedom Cruise to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the glorious liberation of Grenada! Your own private tour of the island, conducted by Ollie himself, is included.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:46 AM PST - 8 comments
The other reparations movement.
According to this article, Jack Kershaw, of Memphis, Tennessee wants to file a lawsuit which seeks redress for grievances with the federal government for gross violation of international law during the War Between the States, especially during Sherman's March to the Sea (some call it a
myth). Kershaw is a
board member of the
League of the South, a
non-racial Southern secessionist movement located in Alabama). Can a
small secession movement which publishes a magazine called the
Southern Patriot and sports a Confederate flag everywhere be taken seriously by mainstream America? I personally don't think Kershaw has a snowball's chance in hell of winning such a suit, but the idea is interesting, especially if one is trying to trace the origins of America's practice of ignoring international law and just conduct in war, which seemed to start with the un-Civil War. What do you think?
posted by insomnyuk at 9:25 AM PST - 45 comments
Lesson learned in Houston, Texas yesterday: shop at a 24-hour Kmart in the middle of the night,
go directly to jail. If you're a 10-year-old girl having a late dinner with your father at the next door Sonic, well, it's off to jail with you, too.
posted by ewagoner at 9:23 AM PST - 103 comments
WarFlying
Well it had to happen eventually didn't it? Have you ever gone on a hunt for wireless networks in your neck of the woods? Find anything you shouldn't have? And have you ever actually seen a
WarChalk yet?
posted by Mwongozi at 8:57 AM PST - 7 comments
Farah Janjua,
a diverse photographer has many accomplishments in her field. Since her debut as a photographer in 1990, her work has been displayed in numerous exhibitions both national and international. Her most outstanding achievements include her photograph
"Hopeless"(scroll down) being the only photograph from outside the United States published by The International Library of Photography in their book 'America at the Millennium' in the year 1999.
My personal favorite is this picture named
"Malang" on her official
website.
posted by adnanbwp at 8:04 AM PST - 4 comments
Hosting Provider Bans RIAA
- According to this press release, Information Wave Technologies will actively block all RIAA IP space because RIAA is intentionally seeking to invade customer networks / hosts to check for copyright violations. Additionally, they are going to deploy a "honeypot" system (simulates a GNUtella client sharing copyrighted material) in order to log requests for the files and correlate them with attempts to invade the host -- RIAA's stated plan to combate music piracy.
posted by Irontom at 6:42 AM PST - 24 comments
The Washington Post follows an agenda.
There truly exists a bias in the press and here's an example. Metatalk had a thread on there being so many NYT links, perhaps this helps explain why. Many many more examples of the Post's biases can be found at SpinSanity and other such sites but this one comes from "next door" in Baltimore.
!Only MetaFilter is trustworthy!( P.S. Looking for an example of "liberal bias?" This isn't it.)
posted by nofundy at 6:08 AM PST - 28 comments
Abu Nidal is Dead. The Bin Laden of the 70s and 80s. Having read his
biography years ago he makes Kyzer Soze childsplay...
possible suicide.. yeah, suicide Israeli style. The War On Terror heats up one more terrorist scum dead.
posted by stbalbach at 6:07 AM PST - 12 comments
The
Johnny Carson website, where many episodes are for sale on VHS. Bad news: It will cost me about $3,000 to collect all the
Albert Brooks appearances. This week they're playing a (quicktime) monologue from 1977. Anybody else got the warm fuzzies for Johnny?
posted by luser at 12:40 AM PST - 13 comments
Look at Me
A stirring gallery of found photographs. Surely, others have gathered such found contacts of human iteration?
posted by plexi at 12:05 AM PST - 16 comments
August 18
Iraq: In all but name, the war's on
How do you tell a war has begun? This is not the 17th or 18th century. There are no highfalutin' declarations. Troops don't line up in eyesight of each other. There are no drum rolls and bugle calls, no calls of "Chaaa...rge!". When did the Vietnam War begin? When, for that matter, World War I? When mobilizations were ordered setting in motion irreversible chains of events or at the time of the formal declarations of war?
posted by bas67 at 8:44 PM PST - 24 comments
Living in the Blog-osphere
MSNBC Science and Technology takes blogs more and more seriously. First, they created their own blogs, including some which were already discussed here from the start, for example a Science and Technology Weblog
Cosmic Log by Alan Boyle, now articles in the upcoming Newsweek print issue. Are they really onto something here? Are blogs going to be good official forums to present news fast?
posted by neu at 7:15 PM PST - 8 comments
Harry Stephen Keeler
has been called one of the strangest writers who ever lived. He has also been called the Ed Wood of Mystery Writers. His plots are labyrinthine, convoluted, insane, built on coincidences. There's a
Harry Stephen Keeler Society. His works are now
being re-printed. And, if you're feeling brave, you can
read many of his works on-line.
Keeler created, and was seemingly the sole practitioner of, a genre he called the "webwork novel." This is a story in which diverse characters and events are connected by a strings of wholly implausible coincidences
posted by vacapinta at 3:47 PM PST - 20 comments
"Do loose numbers do more harm than good?"
That's the question asked by Norimitsu Onishi in a thought-provoking article in today's
NY Times (reg req). Inflated numbers have often had an impact on policy and people's thinking, but when the truth comes out it can make a difference, for good or ill. (More inside.)
posted by languagehat at 3:08 PM PST - 8 comments
August 17
Is there any need for a Men's Movement?
Or is the struggling existence of such organisations, and the sporadic publishing of
Achilles Heel magazine, for example, evidence that organised groups and 'movements' for men are redundant? Maybe it's evidence that 'men's' needs are still under rated and unsatisfied, and that we don't focus on our needs because we are working too hard?
[More inside] >>>
posted by dash_slot- at 6:17 PM PST - 22 comments
Just another crazy person's site,
but I catch myself wasting way too much time here, so maybe you will too. The guy's name is David Blomstrom if I remember right and he really really really cares about Seattle Public Schools. It's his thoughts on the issue that are intriguing though; he's very right about somethings, horribly wrong about others and crazy as hell through out.o
posted by Slimemonster at 2:15 PM PST - 7 comments
Onward Christian Soldiers.
"The Fraternity of St. Sebastian is a military brotherhood, still in formation. We are recruiting young men, called to military life, to comprise the charter membership of a Public Association of the Faithful. In the fullness of time the Association will seek institution as a religious, military congregation. And rather than serving a state or civil government, our Corps will serve the Church."
Though not yet
officially "blessed" by an Archbishop of the Catholic Church, plans are under way for a
bootcamp and, of course, a training compound, as well as the eventual
"turning over of [recruits']
real property" to the Association
(in the spirit of poverty and of the Knights of Templar.)
Is
St Sebastian a new resurgence of the spirit of the
Knights Templar of olde (sic)
(as opposed to the new)? A church "security service"? Or a new cult-like
militia?
WILL I SOMEDAY REGRET GIVING THEM PRESS IN THIS LINK?
posted by argybarple at 1:49 PM PST - 23 comments
The link between geekiness and Aspergers Syndrome (a mild form of autism) is fairly well known, if not scientifically proven. But now, a study
reported in tbe BBC says that there's a wildly high incidence of childhood autism where geeks are mostly mating with other geeks...
posted by baylink at 12:28 PM PST - 40 comments
The Bush regime is completely called out.
(NYTimes) "If the White House wanted anyone to listen, it would not have staged eight separate panels simultaneously on a Tuesday morning in the dog days of August, assuring that complete coverage would be available only on C-Span."
posted by crasspastor at 12:15 PM PST - 34 comments
The FBI on hacking vs. The Russians
That is crazy! 100 hundred years for hacking computers when there are people that actually hurt other people - maliciously...
rapists, murderers, US politicians...
"If Russian hackers can be convicted on evidence obtained by the Americans through hacking, it means the U.S. secret services may use further illegal means of obtaining information in Russia and in other countries," an FSB spokesman told Interfax on Thursday.
Not only that, but the seriously...can this sort of thing just slide by?
posted by Kodel at 10:50 AM PST - 2 comments
So you want to book
a show for your college? Norm MacDonald is available for $25k and Dave Attell is a steal at $5k.The Red Hot Chili Peppers go for $100k, though.You could always pass the hat, I guess.To hire these people, you have to go through you-know-who.
posted by BarneyFifesBullet at 10:14 AM PST - 44 comments
DCF leader: It's OK to spank
The man named Thursday by Gov. Jeb Bush to head Florida's notoriously inept child welfare agency is an evangelical Christian who views spanking that causes ''bruises or welts'' as acceptable punishment. In a 1989 essay entitled The Christian World View of the Family, Regier and co-author George Rekers railed against abortion and gay couples forming families, and emphasized that husbands have ``final say in any family dispute.''
posted by bas67 at 6:35 AM PST - 82 comments
Room for rent. Similar to the Clinton administration that they
heavily criticized, the Bush folks have opened a bed and breakfast up in that big White House with the cee-ment pond. Rates are steep but one thing many guests share is a membership in the exclusive
Pioneer Club.
One of my favorites is Edward Rose, Mr. Rose is a staunch Bush supporter having donated more than
42,000 dollars in the past along with $2,000[
1] directly. Then there is the Betts family, patriarch Roland was Dubyas frat brother and besides selling him the Texas Rangers has donated
$19,000 along with another 4K[
1] directly. For outright generosity it's tough to beat Brad Freeman, who opened his pockets to the tune of some
190,000 dollars.There's Joe O'Donnell (
$9,250)and James Simmons (
$27,550)... the list goes on but you get the idea. Aside from the Pioneer Club the only other thing these people share is great wealth and successful business careers, considering his choice in houseguests is this the right person to hold corporate America accountable?
posted by cedar at 5:57 AM PST - 32 comments
August 16
An aesthetics of inadequacy.
"Despite Aeschylus's statement, 'All knowledge comes from suffering,' all that came from my suffering was suffering."
An interview with Alan Shapiro, the author of Song and Dance, about poetry as an attempt of mourning.
posted by semmi at 9:31 PM PST - 3 comments
There is a hedonistic school of thought
which holds that future generations will experience a level of happiness and sense of well being beyond even the finest china white heroin rush and that this will be the norm. While I do agree that our understanding of mental health is limited to our advances in neuroscience, I just can't see how this is healthy or even remotely possible even within the next 500 years.
posted by Modem Ovary at 7:15 PM PST - 49 comments
Is there really a
$7 billion lawsuit against the Bush administration -- filed on behalf of 14 of the victims' families -- charging that he let 9-11 happen on purpose? Seems like kind of a weird thing for a few web sites to fabricate, but a
google search doesn't reveal many mainstream news sources.
And what do folks think of the "Let It Happen On Purpose" theory... or more importantly, the evidence that the theorists cite?
posted by queequeg at 1:52 PM PST - 17 comments
The Axis of Medieval.
Claims of support for women and women's rights in the current regime are nothing more than hot air according to Mr. Kristof. He says their record and the facts tell a different story. The details are shocking. Kowtowing to religious fundamentalists in the US causes devastating results abroad.
Would programs like these qualify for using some of the wealthiest persons dollars instead of a tax cut?
posted by nofundy at 12:21 PM PST - 46 comments
So
what? Jeez, the media's all
up in arms about the multiple editions of
Fellowship of the Ring being released. Really, is there not enough in the world to legitimately gripe about? Are Rings fans really being ripped off? It's not like anyone's putting a gun to your head and
forcing you to buy
any of these discs. Isn't more choice better than less, even in the disposable DVD world?
posted by WolfDaddy at 12:01 PM PST - 44 comments
Moon Trees
- Trees grown from seeds that went to the moon on the first manned mission, including their seedlings and offshoots. Most of them are marked with plaques, but it's only now that an official record is being recreated after they'd been giving them out willy nilly for decades - heh. There might be a moon tree in your very own town square! Click
here to see the list compiled so far.
(via Wren's Nest)
posted by thunder at 11:39 AM PST - 21 comments
The Football Prospectus is up and running.
The good folks who work on the Baseball Prospectus have turned their attention to NFL. This is their inaugural effort. Their contrarian thinking and in-depth statistical analysis has (slowly) started to creep its way into MLB coverage. Can their unique take and historical perspective change football's conventional wisdom as well?
posted by herc at 11:28 AM PST - 9 comments
Is this a legitmate criticism....
or just complaining that the Administration has lost its aura of invincibility? From the Daily Standard, an opinion piece stating that former Clinton administration officials are unfairly criticizing the Bush administration. A short, interesting read. What's your opinion? Should former officials criticize their new leaders?
posted by pjgulliver at 10:57 AM PST - 20 comments
KCRW's
morning radio show,
Morning Becomes Eclectic has some of the best live in studio performances from a broad range of excellent musicians. And better yet, all of the performances are archived and streamed online. Recently they have had
Flaming Lips,
Morcheeba and
Cousteau. Some of my favorites from the past are the
Coldplay show (as well as a solo appearance by singer
Chris Martin),
Starsailor and
DJ Shadow. I know there are plenty of other resources similar to this, but I think it's hard to find a better collection than this for live recordings. (Search the archives
here)
posted by jonah at 8:49 AM PST - 33 comments
Excuse me sir, your dad likes hookers.
Friday fun for all the family! Enter details about people you know and the PrankBot will send an email prank to them. They only have 3 pranks to choose from so far, but good for a giggle. Your company didn't need that email bandwidth anyway, right?
posted by sonicgeeza at 7:44 AM PST - 23 comments
Odd and silly
Flash cartoons, for those of you who enjoy this sort of thing. You'll find all the pillars of modern comedy here: evil pants, pipe-smoking chimps and breakdancing robots. Go to "Errata" and you'll find the cartoons. My personal favorites are Danville Hustle and Sassafras. (Warning: chubby download)
posted by picea at 7:06 AM PST - 2 comments
Minutes
of lost Rat Pack meeting recently discovered in Las Vegas! This satirical piece by Bob Odenkirk brilliantly lampoons the group dynamic of Old Blue Eyes and his pals.
posted by MrBaliHai at 4:46 AM PST - 17 comments
Elvis was a hero to most but he never meant shit to me …
"Media arrogance and dishonesty means we are eternally bound to live in a skewed world where Elvis is king of rock'n'roll, Clapton is the guitar god, Sinatra is the voice and Astaire is the greatest dancer."
Is it right to celebrate an artist who’s fame derived from appropriating and diluting the
original music of black America?
posted by niceness at 4:23 AM PST - 111 comments
When I Die I Want...
The whole world to dance? Stop in its tracks? No one to notice? Everyone else to die too? Or will a simple deleted MetaFilter thread do? It's not only control freaks who have an idea of how they'd like their own funeral to go.
Matthew Parris, for instance, wants a trial with a counsel for the prosecution, as well as the obligatory one for his defense... [
Cultural attitudes to death vary wildly and convey different images which may or may not exactly reflect the predominant attitude towards life. Well, for making your own very particular arrangements, despite the gruesome sideshows, The Sepulcher and The Dark Side Of The Web are two resources to die for.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:06 AM PST - 7 comments
August 15
Wil Weaton cut from new Star Trek movie
... Along with 48 minutes of film, Wil Wheaton's cameo as Wesley Crusher was cut in the first production cut of Star Trek: Nemesis. Rick Berman, Producer, called Wheaton personally to let him know. In heartfelt commentary related through his online journal, Wheaton ended his description of his feelings at the news by saying, "Somewhere in Brooklyn, Wesley Crusher falls silent forever".
posted by SpecialK at 8:35 PM PST - 34 comments
Does invading Iraq require more than declaring Saddam Hussein "evil"?
The New York Times reports public opposition from people not easily labeled Brie-sucking scared-of-war libyerals -- people like Henry "Bombs Away" Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft. Meanwhile, hawks argue that
not attacking after all Bush's rhetoric would "produce such a collapse of confidence in the president that it would set back the war on terrorism."
[registration required]
posted by sacre_bleu at 8:25 PM PST - 62 comments
The old battleaxe is back.
Impressed with his performance at the New School,
Camille Paglia and the
Blog Queen seem to have a bit of a partnership.
I post a link about the conflict in the Levant with fear, loathing, and asbestos, but nonetheless, this mini-article is a well thought-out piece.
posted by goethean at 5:49 PM PST - 8 comments
Are You Up For The Challenge?
It's about adventure! Urban Challenge is not how fast or how far you run or how well you know the city. Did Columbus know the seas well enough to look for a new route to the West Indies? Did Lewis & Clark adequately train for their expedition to find the Northwest Passage?
posted by Gargantuan at 3:56 PM PST - 15 comments
Happy birthday, Julia!!
American cooking diva Julia Child turns 90 years of age today. She might be slowing, but she hasn't stopped ... and she certainly hasn't stopped eating
butter and cream.
Her contributions to American culinary arts, particularly in the area of home cooking, are nearly immeasurable. When you have a look at
the way we were cooking before "The French Chef" came along, you'll be doubly grateful for what she's taught us.
She's left her longtime home in Cambridge, Massachusetts for much smaller digs in Santa Barbara, California ... and subsequently donated her legendary kitchen and over 1,200 items from it to the Smithsonian Institution, who disassembled it and
painstakingly rebuilt it inside the museum. Julia's Kitchen at the Smithsonian opens to the public on Monday.
posted by chuq at 1:16 PM PST - 35 comments
If You Want to Talk About Class Warfare...
Molly Ivins gives it to 'em:
Some days, you have to believe that right-wing ideologues have lost touch with reality completely. Their latest proposal to prevent future Enrons is - ta-da! - cut the capital gains tax. And exactly what does that do to prevent future Enrons? Nothing.
posted by Ty Webb at 1:07 PM PST - 9 comments
The strange history of Michael Jackson's face.
Kind of like the Anna Nicole show -- unbelievably frightening, yet you can't look away. Anyone catch the VH1 special the other day where they electronically blurred his cheeks? wonder why... (Link courtesy of Slate.com's "In Other Websites" featue.)
posted by Vidiot at 12:34 PM PST - 32 comments
Think some executives are finally going to get what's coming to them?
Meet David Novak, an ex-con who was convicted of one count of mail fraud. His sentence?
Club Fed (scroll down). He is now earning $125 an hour consulting for soon-to-be inmates about how to survive the enforced vacation (with 7-day furloughs to strengthen family ties!). The best part? No fences, no guard towers, nothing to keep you from escaping except the knowledge than when they catch you, you'll have to do REAL prison time. I mean, give me a break...they even have a fucking SUNBATHING BEACH. I can buy the "we don't want to waste a lot of resources [punishing people]" line, but for crying out loud...isn't that supposed to mean concrete cells and no cable?
posted by taumeson at 9:37 AM PST - 37 comments
Game Boy (and Girl) indeed!
The fine folks at
Nintendo's Street Team are coming to a festival, concert, or amusement park near you (if you live in one of the eight selected cities.) Appearing like a cross between a robot and a human billboard, these cats attract kids like someone handing out free
frozen twinkies. I saw them at the Taste of Dallas festival. Anyone else spotted them? Would you do it for $100 per day? Or would you be more like the guy that said "I would have paid Nintendo to do this job."?
posted by Ufez Jones at 8:05 AM PST - 20 comments
metapet:
it isn't friday yet, but by tomorrow you could have some bio-engineered creatures working for you while you play...
posted by ultradian at 7:33 AM PST - 7 comments
The 1940s Again?
While this in't to internment level yet, I find it terrifying. What to do about this government? This article was originally LA Times, but has been reposted to Common Dreams....
posted by pjgulliver at 7:28 AM PST - 78 comments
Hooters Air Inc.
With all of the discussion about airlines going bankrupt and our economy in jeopardy, some people are surely thinking ahead.
If it'll be 'Hooters Girls' flight attendants, it's too early," Cattell said. But she didn't dismiss the idea.
posted by aaronchristy at 5:55 AM PST - 16 comments
August 14
Shocking photos
which show just how much glaciers have melted in the last century. Now that the North Pole is a swimming pool, the Ross Ice Shelf has, as the Onion put it, embarked on a world tour, and the worst flooding in 800 years is hitting Eastern Europe, aren't we maybe a little bit worried about climate change... just a little, maybe?
What freak weather phenomenon is creeping you out these days?
posted by AlexSteffen at 11:05 PM PST - 82 comments
UW sells out
-- for only $2.3 million. As part of the "Academic Innovation Alliance Initiatives" agreement with Microsoft, the University of Waterloo's Electrical & Computer Engineering department has agreed to teach C# to students. In addition to discussion on uwstudent.org,
Slashdot thread, press releases from
MS and
UW and a
rebuttal release from the UW Federation of Students.
posted by shrub at 7:24 PM PST - 20 comments
It's Marching Season!
There's an
godless american march comin' to DC this fall (November 2)
"Our leaders, including the President, must stop calling the nation to prayer, or claim that we are a "Christian" country..."(Amen to that!!!) and
"We must remember to not "feed the fundies" by engaging in arguments with religious protesters and hostile "prayer warriors" who want to "save" us."From what I understand, this will be the first big march on Washington since our new wartime laws have been implemented....will atheists become "unlawful combatants?" Anyone up for it?
posted by amberglow at 7:04 PM PST - 52 comments
E-mail is trespass?
A disgruntled employee's emails to his former co-workers are a legally actionable form of 'trespass to chattels', says Intel. Have you ever trespassed to chattels? Should you fined or even jailed for it? 3 lower courts in Claifornia have said 'yes' to all or part of that last question. (linked to in a thread today, but it deserves it's own).
posted by Jos Bleau at 5:40 PM PST - 12 comments
Screw you
worldcom, enron. In Australia we
know how to make a loss. AU$11,962,000,000 in fact. One has to wonder how much of this is a "paper loss" or how much of this is "creative accounting for tax purposes". Or just where the hell did the money go?
posted by Neale at 5:37 PM PST - 17 comments
Princeton Disciplining Staff for Yale Web Site Break-Ins (NY Times)
What a great example to set for the students. Princeton officials in the admissions department hack into the Yale Admissions department system.
No one gets fired and the university official who first performed the dastardly deed, Stephen E. LeMenager,
"...would be moved to another job at Princeton." as punishment.
Also,
"...its longtime dean of admission and Mr. LeMenager's boss, to remain in place until next June, when he will retire as previously planned.
What is Yale's take on this?
"Yale's president, Richard C. Levin, said in a statement yesterday that he was impressed by the thoroughness of Princeton's investigation,...".
This is the best,
"...when Mr. LeMenager told a Yale admissions official of his ability to enter the Yale Web site at a meeting of Ivy League admissions officials in May, Dr. Tilghman said, the ensuing discussion at the meeting was about security issues, not about the impropriety of the action."
The president of Princetons final words on the situation,
"We will learn from this and make changes," she said, "and move on as a better place."
And now who is surprised by what happened at WorldCom, ENRON, TYCO and on Wall Street ?
Shouldn't Princeton make an example of these clowns?
Shouldn't Yale demand more satisfaction?
I guess they don't call it the Ivy
League for nothing.
Fire the bastards!
posted by flatlander at 4:53 PM PST - 17 comments
Another smoking gun.
Tobacco companies fought the marketing of anti-smoking products in the 1980s and '90s, by exerting financial pressure on companies that make nicotine gum and patches--like Dow Chemical. (NYT, reg req'd - CBS News version
here)
posted by gottabefunky at 2:34 PM PST - 3 comments
Virtual light -
"...the wires plug into Patient Alpha's head like a pair of headphones plug into a stereo. The actual connection is metallic and circular, like a common washer. So seamless is the integration that the skin appears to simply stop being skin and start being steel."
Cameras that jack into a blind man's brain, allowing him to 'see' may soon be here.
posted by GriffX at 2:19 PM PST - 23 comments
Would you like to be part of my pyramid?
We all know someone who has tried to sell us a "multi level marketing" product.
Usana and
Amway are 2 popular MLM companies. Can you really make money with these pyramid schemes? There are sites that talk about
avoiding scams and others that show support for those who
have been burnt, but they sometimes turn around and support mlm and network marketing.
Does anyone know these people? What kind of cars do they drive? What kind of person gets into network marketing and who are these "successful independant distributers"?
1,
2,
3,
4,
5
posted by tomplus2 at 12:51 PM PST - 44 comments
US F-15's almost shoot down Korean Airliner on 9-11
Pilots on Korean Air Flight 85 mistakenly issued a hijack alert at 1:24 p.m. ET on September 11th, as they neared Alaska on the way to Anchorage. Military officials, who had ordered two F-15 fighters to tail the jet, told Anchorage air traffic controllers that they would shoot it down if it did not turn away from populated areas.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 12:44 PM PST - 8 comments
There's a guy
with an "immensely detailed, three-dimensional, interactive, constantly updated map of New York City," which "could provide the DNA for a re-created city" if something happened to destroy New York. Besides the nitpicking (do you want to recreate every awning and kiosk?), there's the big question: does it make sense to try to recreate in detail something that's gone? Or as the article puts it, "At what point do we accept the reality of loss?" And if a city were destroyed so utterly it couldn't be recreated, would its surviving inhabitants wander the world endlessly, keeping their lost home alive in their hearts and customs, like R.A. Lafferty's
Angelenos?
posted by languagehat at 11:45 AM PST - 25 comments
All your Ideas
are belong to US. What happens when you agree that your inventions belong to your employer, even when you aren't done inventing them yet? Why, they sue you!
posted by dwivian at 11:30 AM PST - 14 comments
Today's lesson:
Write a letter to a congressman, get fired for it. Was this abuse of a work email account, or a miffed congressman's office overstepping its bounds? Ah, dissent in the 21st century, what a time we live in.
posted by mathowie at 9:17 AM PST - 66 comments
Trouserpress.com is back!
After a hiatus of over two-and-a-half years,
Trouserpress.com was re-launched today. The site contains just about all of the band profiles and album reviews from editor Ira Robbins' comprehensive and informative
Trouser Press Record Guide book series from the 80s/90s. Since all but the most recent "90s rock" book are out-of-print, it's great to have this amazing indie/new wave/punk/alt rock music reference available once more.
posted by nstop at 9:09 AM PST - 13 comments
Is a 'Pax Americana' possible?
And if it
is possible, is it a good thing or a bad thing?
It depends on who you ask. And if not the US, then who?
Europe has neither the force of arms nor the political cohesiveness.
China seems to be the only other contender, but it begs the question: should America even
try to mediate world disputes, or intervene when (and
only when) our national interests are at stake?
posted by mrmanley at 8:48 AM PST - 28 comments
Diamonds
, a symbol of love for a large part of this century. Yet there is an underlying monopoly who have socially engineered the whole entire idea that a "Diamond is Forever". Does your notion of a diamond change knowing that a consortium is ensuring that their Monopoly is Forever?
posted by mutantdisco! at 6:54 AM PST - 105 comments
today a fellow mexican will be executed in texas
, for killing a cover agent 13 years ago… besides the mexican government, e.u. & u.n. are also calling for clemency; they argue that u.s. authorities denied him legal assistance from the consulate. right now, suárez medina only wants to die. the question is: isn't it better to die than be in prison all your life? i would prefer to be killed instead of living in jail more than 20 years. the sad about suárez medina case is that he has been in jail 13 years from now and anyway he is going to be killed! the texas government should have killed him immediately he was found guilty. “i prefer to die than spend the rest of my life here inside because here there is no life.” said suárez in an interview. in punishment standards i find worst to live in jail forever than being executed. what would be worst for you?
posted by trismegisto at 6:28 AM PST - 30 comments
How Al Qaeda Slipped Away
"American officials concede that there was a mass escape from Tora Bora—as well as a broader exodus by various routes into Pakistan and Iran—but insist that Al Qaeda now is crippled and too busy running to do much damage. “Perhaps we could have got them wholesale,” says one senior Defense official. “Now we’re doing it retail. In the end, it doesn’t make much difference. We’re getting them.”" We might want to take care of this
before we "invade" Iraq.
posted by owillis at 2:17 AM PST - 14 comments
August 13
Blogcritics
A sinister cabal of the web's best writers on music, books and popular culture miscellanea - updated continuously Could be interesting.They linked one of my mefi posts in
this article, too. Don't I get a royalty for that?
posted by BarneyFifesBullet at 10:16 PM PST - 4 comments
Gross.com
seems like your run-of-the-mill small law firm website, but the
fun pages are oddly fascinating, featuring tidbits like
Personal Injury Drama and the "Year 2001 Compliance" song. A weird look into one office's collective psyche.
posted by swift at 5:09 PM PST - 5 comments
As a lifelong
DC Comics fan, I think I can truly state that Dr. Fate's
fabulous blue and gold costume made me the gay man that I am today. Likewise,
Element Lad's admitted shyness towards women (and pretty pink outfit) helped me identify with him as a gay teen. Until now, though, I didn't know where I could find others whose gayness was so closely intertwined with a love of comic books. The
Gay League changed all that. Warning, some of the fan-submitted artwork, featuring generously overendowed (even by superhero standards) men and women is probably a little risque for work. We're here, we're queer, we love the
Legion!
posted by WolfDaddy at 2:36 PM PST - 24 comments
Stomping on the little guy.
Popular weblogger Davezilla has been handed a cease and desist from
Toho Co., Ltd, owner of the Godzilla trademark. The text of the C&D implies that they own the rights to any word ending in the letters "zilla". [more inside]
posted by y6y6y6 at 1:31 PM PST - 106 comments
"The myth of oil prosperity runs wide and deep".
"Petroleum-led development strategies have delivered nation after nation into a spiral of debt and dependency. And yet, governments, corporations, and international financial institutions continue to reinvest in the growing, global oil economy". Consider
Nigeria, the point of focus of attention of environmentalists, human rights activists and fair trade advocates around the world. With its
annual debt service obligation at over $4 bn, more than a third of its export income, Nigeria has in recent years pegged its annual budget allocation for actual debt servicing at $2 bn. Lower export earnings forced it to cut this to $1.5 bn in the 1999 budget. Who's to blame? Theftocracies, the IMF, World Bank, oil companies, foreign governments? Since it is clear that debt restructuring harms more than helps, will there be more
debt relief, and finally, who ends up paying the banks when loans are written off?
posted by Mack Twain at 12:33 PM PST - 6 comments
Adam Ant, who once assured us that
"ridicule is nothing to be scared of", admits
pub affray & has been remanded on bail, after using a fake gun to take revenge on pub-goers that took the piss out of his clothes!
Adam seems to have suffered quite a lot - both
before and after - his heyday, and his behaviour has led to him being compulsorily detained on at least one occasion.
Quite apart from the fact that Police do not seem shy of killing
anyone who could be a threat and
might be armed with a pistol, has there ever been such an exact fall from grace for a celebrity - whose personal 'philosophy' came back to haunt him like a Shakespearean tragedy?
posted by dash_slot- at 12:00 PM PST - 34 comments
How will Democrats respond to a left-wing, pro-life, presidential candidate?
Congressman Dennis Kucinich is being loudly promoted as the left-wing dream candidate for 2004 -- someone who can bring the Naderites back in the fold and send a message, that mainstream / moderate Democrats won't or can't, about being for the "people, not the powerful." Yet he has always and continues to oppose legal abortion. Can he be nominated? Would most progressives prefer a conservative Democrat who is right (in their opinion) on abortion, to a progressive who they see as wrong in that issue?
posted by MattD at 8:50 AM PST - 68 comments
Things you won't hear
at the Wacko dog and pony show today on the economy. Would some real discussion of these issues have been so bad? Isn't public discussion and consensus how our form of government is supposed to work? Isn't the keynote speaker a prime example of what is wrong in corporate America today?
posted by nofundy at 7:22 AM PST - 68 comments
We've seen some cool
mobile phones before, but looking at the current North American cell phone offerings, I'm sorely disappointed.
AT&T seems to have the latest/greatest phones, but their service is by far the worst.
T-mobile has the Sony Ericsson t68. But none of these phones can compare to some of those picture snapping
Japanese Jskies and
i-modes, and cool European
Nokias. How hard is it to bring these technologies to the North American GSM network?
posted by mad at 6:39 AM PST - 38 comments
Strandbeesten
(=Beach Animals) is a site by Dutch artist Theo Jansen. Over the last decade, he constructed a number of strange constructions from plastic tubes that walk around on the beach, driven by the winds. A bit like
Sodaconstructor but now for real. The video quality is a bit poor, but still it's worthwhile.
posted by swordfishtrombones at 12:46 AM PST - 18 comments
August 12
Serial killer blog.
Well not really. More of a religious rant than true crime novel, but the case of the Son of Sam murders has been reviewed for the possibility of a second suspect. An article in
Fortean Times may have opened the floodgates, but I am unable to find an online source. Did anybody else see this story?
posted by destro at 11:17 PM PST - 8 comments
"Plugs in the City"
My Spock like left eyebrow went up questioningly at the ease with which Charlotte York discreetly ordered her embarrassing book with
1-click® shopping. She was going to buy it at the books store with Miranda, who had just come from a
Weight Watchers® meeting and was trying to resist the cravings for
Krispy Kreme®. Mmmm... original glazed is my favorite, too. While I enjoy the fact that HBO doesn't have commercials, I thought that is why I paid $20 a month. Some how I prefer real ads to this
insidious crap. It was creepy and also destroyed a lot of the immersion of the show for me. The whole episode seemed stilted and odd.
posted by McBain at 10:10 PM PST - 56 comments
Goodbye Galen and Barbara.
World-renowned wilderness photographer and writer Galen Rowell, and his wife and business partner Barbara Cushman Rowell, a photographer and writer in her own right, died early Sunday morning in an airplane crash outside of Bishop, Calif.
posted by faithnomore at 9:12 PM PST - 6 comments
Redefining the keyboard.
CPUs have gotten smaller, monitors have gotten wider, chairs have gotten ergonomic. Technology has resized our machines to fit our lifestyles, business needs, and personal comfort. But for the past
128 years, the mechanics by which we input text into machines has been dictated not by technology, but by the limitations of our hands. Soon, this era may be over if retired engineer
John McKown gets his way. McKown has invented a palm-size one-handed
wearable keyboard. Should we embrace this giant leap into mobile computing? Or are we not able to part with a century of
QWERTY? (Via
NYTimes. Similar ideas have also been
discussed here previously.)
posted by PrinceValium at 5:15 PM PST - 19 comments
The September 11th 'Ground And Freeze' order which halted air travel for 4 days didn't come from the president, nor SecTrans... not even the Adminstrator of the FAA. Nope, it came from
Ben Sliney. [ Actual journalism in McPaper. Whoulda? ]
posted by baylink at 2:52 PM PST - 22 comments
SlamBall
is America's newest sport. Combining Basketball, full-contact play, and massive trampolines into an extreme-team sport for the masses. Anyone seen it? Dude! or Dud?
posted by cell divide at 1:02 PM PST - 30 comments
Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe reiterates his threat to re-distribute land.
"One farmer, one farm policy." What this fool doesn't realize (or perhaps more terribly, really does), is that this policy will cause a devastating
famine, and bring about economic chaos: "
Commercial agriculture is Zimbabwe’s biggest private employer, providing work — and, almost invariably, accommodation — for about 350,000 people. If Mr Mugabe carries out his threat to evict 2,900 white farmers, the workers and their families — a total of 1.2 million people — will join the ranks of the dispossessed..." Not only that, but his government has been terrorizing black farm hands and others thought to have opposed him in the recent "election." What can be done about Zimbabwe? The EU seems willing to help in case of famine, but there is no guarantee their money will get past Mugabe's pockets.
posted by insomnyuk at 12:04 PM PST - 30 comments
Kinder, gentler minders
in Kabul? President Hamid Karzai has re-opened the
Department of the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Department head Mohammad Wazir Razi Kabuli promises no beatings or jailings for violating Islamic tenets, as was common under the
Taliban Ministry of Virtue and Vice. Instead, "propaganda" will be used influence the people of Afghanistan. However, when asked what would happen if, for example, a woman was caught wearing makeup in public, Kabuli said
"It's too early to talk about that."
posted by mr_crash_davis at 11:56 AM PST - 11 comments
Perseid Meteor Shower-(Peaks Sunday & Monday)
"The August Perseids are among the strongest of the readily observed annual meteor showers, and at maximum activity can yield 50 or 60 meteors per hour. However, observers with exceptional sky conditions often record even larger numbers. Also, during an overnight watch, the Perseids are capable of producing a number of bright, flaring and fragmenting meteors, which leave fine trains in their wake."
posted by DailyBread at 11:19 AM PST - 13 comments
At
kuro5hin a couple of weeks ago there was a
post about what life was like in your area of the world. The idea led some enterprising person to create a
website built for the same purposes using the original questions. Seems like a cool way to read about
far away places from real people. It's not too full yet, but I'm sure that will change soon enough.
posted by rhyax at 10:48 AM PST - 19 comments
Can Dumbing Down Save Our Libraries?
An intersting story from
The Sunday Herald that says libraries are facing a stark choice: modernize or die.
The author say we just can't win, if we put in a bank of
computers we are accused of dumbing things down, if we demand
silence in the reading rooms and purchase books that aren't "popular" we find ourselves charged with
elitism.
He says the public library has an altruistic purpose of making knowledge freely available through the printed word. The trouble is that those
high principles were undermined by the
librarians themselves. Facing a revolution in communications, they tried to become
all things to all people.
He focuses on England, but I think many of these issues are international. Are public libraries out of date?
posted by Blake at 10:38 AM PST - 26 comments
Tech support war stories
compiled by category for your viewing pleasure. Every nuance of hardware and software is represented in this extensive collection. This is why the tier 1 techs wake up screaming at night.
posted by dr_dank at 10:00 AM PST - 14 comments
The Apostrophe Protection Society:
...reminding all writers of English text, whether on notices or in documents of any type, of the correct usage of the apostrophe should you wish to put right mistakes you may have inadvertently made.
posted by acridrabbit at 7:57 AM PST - 57 comments
Brown Cloud threatens SE Asia
Having flown into Mumbai a couple of times over the past years, and to Singapore once, I thought I saw this, but passed it up to gunk on the windows. Turned out it was gunk in the sky.
posted by rshah21 at 3:12 AM PST - 34 comments
August 11
Leon Sergeivitch Termen, born in Russia and later a US resident, is best known as the inventor of
The Theremin, the first real electronic instrument. The Theremin is played by standing and
wavings one's hands. It was used to give a futuristic sound to
classic sci-fi films and still looks plenty sci-fi
when played[quicktime clip] and the music it produces is
strange and beautiful[real player].
Old Leon himself ended up getting kidnapped by Soviet agents and sent to a Siberian prison camp. After his release, he continued to work for the KGB, creating one of the first "bugs" -- then used to eavesdrop on the American Embassy. He was mostly unaware of the fate of his eponymous instrument. Meanwhile, his former lover,
Clara Rockmore, went on to try and change the thermin from novelty to serious instrument, she even had
her own unique playing style (heard in the real player clip above). Want to play?
build your own, or
download your own, and join the whole
odd subculture.
posted by malphigian at 10:57 PM PST - 25 comments
US Airways Bankrupt.
It had to happen to one of the big airlines eventually, what with 9/11 and the hesitancy to fly following. But on top of everything else financially as of late... it just deepens that already sick feeling. Who's next?
posted by dopamine at 10:12 PM PST - 17 comments
Meet John Clare.
In 1832, he wrote to John Taylor, saying:
'in spite of every difficulty rhyme will come to the end of my pen -- when I am in trouble I go on & it gives me pleasure by resting my feelings of every burthen & when I am pleased it gives me extra gratification & so in spite of myself I rhyme on.'*
And John Clare
knew difficulty. Born to dirt poor farmers in 1793, he wrote his first poem at 13 and published his first book of poetry at 27. Yet he found himself committed to the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum by the age of 48. Why? It was determined that he suffered from too many "years addicted to poetical prosings."
A poet of the sonnet form, he has suffered from a lack of academic attention until
just recently. He does, however, have a
society in his name, and a John Clare
conference will be held in North America next year.
posted by grabbingsand at 7:40 PM PST - 10 comments
Mention
Whirlpools, and people tend to assume you're talking about a Jacuzzi.
But not all
whirlpools man-made. When powerful tidal currents are forced between a narrow fjord, and then come up against another current traveling in a different direction, the result is a large water vortex.
Being tidal means they are predicable. Some of the more famous
whirlpools are the
Corryvreckian(Scotland), "
Old Sow" (Canada), Moskstraumen and
Saltstraumen (Norway), and the
Naruto (Japan). Notice how they each claim to be the largest of them all.
...Just one more thing to ponder the next time you
pull the chain
posted by BentPenguin at 6:54 PM PST - 14 comments
Truck-nutz?
Can it get any more crude, I mean 'red', than this? (here, another
brand and lots of pics - click on mugshots). Who in their right mind would hang these under thier bumper?
posted by tomplus2 at 12:53 PM PST - 33 comments
Get "Your Ticket to The Future" Here!!
From the site :"We establish a fund in current time. You make a small contribution to the fund, and in a few hundred years that small amount grows to a very large amount. From that fund, moneys will be taken and used to retrieve you, perhaps seconds after you join, perhaps even moments before your recorded death, perhaps some other point in your lifetime. Further, the fund may even pay to have you "rejuvenated" medically (assuming this is scientifically possible at that time,) and support you financially for a number of years. (Note: Retrieving you just before the moment of death is just one possible scenario, but one that would avoid any Star Trek(TM) type paradoxes. There are an unlimited number of other possibilities, and we do not know what they will do, we can only make reasonably informed guesses.)"
I wonder, Scam or Genius at work here?
posted by bhmwks at 11:21 AM PST - 30 comments
Well, let's just give into the idea of world-wide tribalism as the fact of life, as groups only understand and
condemn (NYT) what hits their own kind. The hell with other kinds of people. They probably suffer differently anyway, if at all.
posted by semmi at 11:04 AM PST - 13 comments
A rebuttal
to the "cult of Turn Off Your Computer," or as might be more familiar here: "It's Only a Website."
Curious about others' views on this. I've been on-line for so long(shut up, not consecutively), avatars/personas/whateveryoucallem just seem like silly extra work to me, outside appropriate contexts like on-line RPGs and the like.
posted by Su at 10:27 AM PST - 16 comments
This nuclear detente, as sponsored by Oracle
The growth of the IT industry in India, which has many connections to the US and the West, might be a stabilizing factor in the country's relationship to Pakistan. Hopefully, the presence of western companies and economic growth will also be a check on the growth of
hindutva, or Hindu nationalism. (NYT registration required)
posted by rks404 at 9:11 AM PST - 3 comments
Open Source or Bust?
"Named the "Digital Software Security Act," the proposal essentially would make California the "Live Free or Die" state when it comes to software. If enacted as written, state agencies would be able to buy software only from companies that do not place restrictions on use or access to source code. The agencies would also be given the freedom to "make and distribute copies of the software."" If open source wants to be taken seriously, shouldn't it compete on the merits (or with martketing) rather than forcing gov't agencies to use it?
posted by owillis at 7:10 AM PST - 44 comments
Is The King Finally Dead, After 25 Years?
Elvis Presley died on 16 August 1977 and, silly season or not,
The Observer, kicking off with
Nik Cohn's above-linked essay, has assembled a cracking collection of articles, interviews and humorous pieces about the controversial crooner, mainly directed (I'd say) at
non-fans. To my mind, the most enjoyable are
Nigel Slater's brave attempt to make the famous
Presley sandwich; the weird interview with
Larry Geller, his
hairdresser and spiritual advisor; the account of Elvis's only (secret)
visit to Britain;
Michael Odell's funny set of instructions on
how not to behave at an Elvis party; an
interview with George Nichopoulos, the doctor who wrote out more than 10,000 prescriptions for him; a round-up of ludicrous
ex-girlfriends' memories and, as an after-thought, a collector's report on locating that legendary first
"Uh-huh" of his. It's all good stuff but one has to ask whether, in this day and age, it isn't, er,
overkill. Is Elvis Presley still that relevant or is he slowly becoming a figure of fun? Whether or not he's actually dead, of course, is entirely another matter...
posted by MiguelCardoso at 1:08 AM PST - 22 comments
August 10
"When
Shiva holds the center of the stage, the role of the personalized Brahman is colored with death and destruction. Shiva's stern asceticism casts a blight over the fields of rebirth. His presence negates and transcends the kaleidoscope of sufferings and joys. Nevertheless, he bestows wisdom and peace and is not only terrible but profoundly benign. Shiva's nature at once transcends and includes all the polarities of the living world." "
Shiva opens his third eye only in anger, and the offender is burnt to cinders.
posted by sudama at 11:41 PM PST - 26 comments
The Sky Trust would sell a gradually diminishing number of carbon emission permits to the approximately 2,000 oil, gas and coal companies that bring fossil fuels into the U.S. economy. With the income from these sales, the Sky Trust would pay equal yearly dividends to every American.
An interesting idea, but it seems like any group that plans to ask congress for a charter so they can control the sky would need to think things out a little more. Would auto manufacturers be charged for the emissions made by the vehicles they produce? Would the private citizens who buy them? And what is to stop any corporation from simply, say, opening shop in another country to avoid the hassles.
But, the largest question in my mind was, who actually expects the current government to do anything that would place
environmental matters over commerce?
posted by Kellydamnit at 10:54 PM PST - 2 comments
Government plans to use Flight 93 cockpit tapes in Moussaoui trial
"Additional recordings would be played from the cockpit of an executive jet that tracked Flight 93 on Sept. 11"
"An official for NetJets, a company that sells shares in private business aircraft, confirmed that the plane tracking Flight 93 belonged to the company.
The official, who asked not to be identified by name, said the company was asked not to comment on the Sept. 11 flight but would not say who made the request."
Finally someone admits that there was a plane up there when Flight 93 crashed. But who was it and why?
posted by bas67 at 9:01 PM PST - 15 comments
Tipper Gore's Ticket Tangle
Seems the reported Gore hustle to get freebies for the Springsteen concernt just one more piece of nonsense to discredit the guy. Ah, so early and things heating up.
posted by Postroad at 3:48 PM PST - 31 comments
So long, Big Kinky.
"Uncle Tom" Friedman, the father of legendary Texas writer, singer, and cat lover, Mr. Richard "Big Dick" "Kinky" Friedman, has stepped on a rainbow and been called home to Jesus. A touching obituary to a fine man.
posted by shecky57 at 10:11 AM PST - 11 comments
Dear Mr. Ashcroft:
People who download copyrighted music files deserve jail time, and you should start prosecuting them.
Signed: Joe Biden, John Conyers, Dianne Feinstein...
posted by xowie at 7:43 AM PST - 54 comments
The Passport: the next step in its evolution may include
invisible information encoded into your mug shot, but if you are wondering where it all began, the Canadian
passport office identifies one Nehemiah of Persia, ca. 450 BC, as candidate for very first passport holder.
Some think that it was all downhill from there. Regardless, there might be very good
reasons for getting more than one passport, which you can do
legally, or
less so.
Lenin had a fake passport. So did
Hitler, though he didn't know it. (More inside.)
posted by taz at 5:41 AM PST - 5 comments
Water for thought. Is 8ouncesx8glasses a day a myth at best or a beverage industry conspiracy at worst?
"I did 43 years of research on that system -- the osmoregulatory system. That system is so precise and so fast that I find it impossible to believe that evolution left us with a chronic water deficit" ..just drink enough to slake thirst -- and this includes coffee, tea, and even
beer!
posted by stbalbach at 4:42 AM PST - 31 comments
Legionnaires Disease.
Today I have discovered that two people I am related to in the second degree have been stricken with pneumonia. One as you read this is in ICU and near death. One traveled last week to San Francisco. The other to southern Oregon. The two cases are completely unrelated, other than that I know of each case seperately. What do we know of Legionnaires?
posted by crasspastor at 2:21 AM PST - 15 comments
August 9
No butts about it...
Bloomberg plans to ban smoking in small bars and restaurants in NYC. Why not? The
pope took it even further. And after all, it won't hurt
business owners. Perhaps a better plan would be to limit
food portions instead. How do
NYC smokers feel about this? I know
Carrie Bradshaw will not be too thrilled.
posted by bmxGirl at 12:51 PM PST - 125 comments
Mighty Wurlitzer Talking Points.
Get used to hearing these repeated over and over again.
"The volume covers defense, the environment, taxes, Medicare and other campaign issues. Each chapter includes a section entitled "Answering liberal critics" with suggested answers to potentially troubling questions."
...and how to lie and obfuscate effectively perhaps? There's clearly a lot of worry about being on the wrong side of many issues. I've reported, you decide.
posted by nofundy at 12:16 PM PST - 16 comments
ICKY!
Sometimes I think I made the right
Career move. People complain about having to
write papers, study, and do too much home work, but, how would you like to hold your hand in a cage full of mosquitoes to determine if they are ready to feed in order to get your degree (in entomology)?
Don't worry, the mosquitoes used in the tests are raised in captivity and do carry not any diseases suchas the
West Nile Virus.
If you're like me, you asked yourself,
What do entomologists do?
posted by Blake at 11:16 AM PST - 6 comments
"A Contrarian View of Open Source" -
Bruce Sterling on the open source attitutude:
"Don't like it? Hey, just reconfigure it yourself, don't bother me!" It's the Hippie Squat Model of software architecture. "If I want to paint the doors and floors bright blue and put the toilet right into the kitchen, why not?"
posted by GriffX at 10:48 AM PST - 12 comments
The Illustrated History of the Roman Empire
claims to be the leading on-line resource for Roman history, with over 70mb of content. They have many short essays and lots of graphics and interactive maps. The UI could be better (especially for the maps), but it's a good time sink just the same.
posted by ewagoner at 10:45 AM PST - 9 comments
A Kick Butt Political Ad.
"WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT TO ME, BOB?" download.
I can imagine a lot of politicians with exposure on this issue. Will this hurt them? If so, who will use them more, Libertarians or Greens?
posted by kablam at 10:12 AM PST - 25 comments
Fragx returns.
200 words or less with a 3-word title: one of the earliest and most interesting writing experiments on the web is finally back, and the slate is clean. John Casler's Fragx (short for fragments) challenges the most verbose of us to strip it down, distill it to its most basic elements, then put it up for a healthy flogging by other writers. Sounds like good practice.
posted by frykitty at 7:36 AM PST - 33 comments
Becketts Bounce
A great bit of Flash art for those with literary tastes (words but no pictures) and a soft spot for Sam Beckett.
posted by rolo at 6:31 AM PST - 10 comments
Life Is A Magazine, Chum...
Come to the Magazine! A lot of us grew up with
Life Magazine and there's a certain nostalgic/narcissistic pleasure in looking at the cover of the
week you (if you're over 30, that is) or your parents were born in. Their
wacky and
classic covers are also worth checking out, even though there are some inevitable repeats. Oh - and never forgetting their astonishing
classic photographs, of course.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 1:05 AM PST - 18 comments
August 8
Clear Channel killed the radio star...
Okay, so
you and your compe
tition buy up all these radio stations and kill the little guys with the big hearts, then one day your audience turns on you. What do you do? You coldly attempt to mimic the attitude of the once successful radio stations that you and your enemy helped kill years before, and a fickle audience buys into it, at least for awhile. You still look like a bunch of
boners, but hey at least the
Arbitrons look good for a couple quarters.
The Zoo and Q102 are spinning in their vampire-like graves... Is this a success story, or an autopsy? Can good radio survive corporate mentality?
posted by ZachsMind at 6:44 PM PST - 24 comments
Is modern literature too pretentious?
"In the bookstore I'll sometimes sample what all the fuss is about, but one glance at the affected prose -- 'furious dabs of tulips stuttering,' say, or 'in the dark before the day yet was' -- and I'm hightailing it to the friendly black spines of the Penguin Classics"
This essay from B.R. Myers in The Atlantic has been expanded into a book. I thought this
defense of Raymond Chandler makes a good point about how literature (or at least its critics) can be exclusionary.
posted by owillis at 11:24 AM PST - 112 comments
Forget TIPS, TIA is the real deal:
DARPA's Information Awareness Office is beginning the bidding process for the development of a next-generation information handling system,
Total Information Awareness (TIA). The system will capture, cross index and maintain pedabytes of information including: financial, education, travel, medical, veterinary, country entry, place/event entry, transportation, housing, "critical resources", government
and communications.
By the way: DARPA's Information Awareness Office is run by by
John Poindexter, who was convicted of conspiracy, lying to Congress, defrauding the government and destroying evidence.
posted by jonnyp at 9:58 AM PST - 29 comments
Corporate Terrorism Approved
"The International Labor Rights Fund filed the suit with the U.S. district court in Washington last year on behalf of 11 villagers from Aceh who contend that they were victims of murder, torture, kidnapping and rape by the military unit guarding Exxon Mobil's gas field."
"the State Department said the lawsuit would "risk a seriously adverse impact on significant interests of the United States, including interests related directly to the ongoing struggle against international terrorism."
I guess the villagers killed weren't part of the axles of evil so it is OK to contract out their murders?
posted by nofundy at 8:49 AM PST - 26 comments
The "Axis of Evil" v. the "Forces of Evil."
Saddam Hussein warns the US that any attack on Iraq is "doomed to failure." While the Bush Administration claims that there are no firm plans to invade Iraq, the rhetoric on both sides is intensifying. Are the Hawks on both sides gunning for a showdown? Can a diplomatic solution be reached? If the Bush Administration's goal is to oust Saddam, have we foreclosed any hope of a meaningful "dialogue"? Reportedly, even some generals are wary of invading Iraq. I think containment of Saddam is a much better option than war. Does anyone disagree? What are the alternatives?
posted by Bag Man at 8:39 AM PST - 121 comments
Rockbitch have done their last gig. So no more golden condom awards.
Rockbitch are/were a band of outrageous gay and bisexual women (and one guy) who live in a sex-commune in France (although they are mostly British). They gained notoriety for their explicitly sexual performances which ended with a golden condom thrown into the audience. Whoever caught it, male or female, would be joyfully fucked by members of the band backstage. Yes for real. It sounds like rock and roll exploitation gone mad but what is surprising is that their philosophy of sexual liberation and magic seems remarkably coherent, and they are very articulate and responsible (a very strong safe sex code). And sexy. Trouble is after a BBC documentary and much abuse in the press it seems they can't play live any more. Is the world just too straight for Rockbitch, or is this the last gasp of sixties hedonism?
posted by rolo at 5:12 AM PST - 35 comments
August 7
Ben Franklin was a member of a dinner club that evolved into a sort of secret society, think tank called
The Junto. That group met every Friday from November, 1727 for several decades. Out of those meetings, the group invented the first subscription library in north america, the most advanced volunteer fire department of the time, the first public hospital in Pennsylvania, an insurance company, a constabulary, improved streetlights, paving and what became the University of Pennsylvania. Has anybody ever heard of this? Could something like this work today?
posted by willnot at 9:28 PM PST - 21 comments
There'll Always Be An England: Wymondham College Remembered.
Where matrons are called
Scrotum;
food is delightful torture;
nicknames and slang surpass anything in "How To Be Topp";
staff cars look like Dinky toys; strange and cruel
rules and punishments are perversely celebrated - and
smoking is
de rigueur in the best bicycle-shed fashion. Before anyone mentions the playing fields of Eton, they should know that aptly acronymed WC is a
comprehensive school, i.e. public and free, as opposed to "public" schools which are (of course!) private, exclusive and expensive in the UK. And it's only about 50 years old, though it feels and looks like 500.
Anyway, it's a
sooper, smashing website, full of the real
flavour and fun of
olde England. Well, East Anglia actually, old fruit! (
These few links I've suggested don't even begin to do it justice. Talk about Monty Python; I nearly died!)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:52 PM PST - 6 comments
c not a constant!
Over a period of billions of years of course. If this theory is true, then E=mc
2 might not apply to a large period of time.
posted by riffola at 8:24 PM PST - 29 comments
Adbusters TV launched.
Everyone's favourite
culture jammers and
uncommercialists are looking for your video contributions.
"The next time you and your friends organize a street party, liberate a billboard, shoot an indy documentary, or throw a
pie into the ugly face of authority, we want people worldwide to catch it the next dayThere is an inaugural
contest to get the content flowing. They are looking for video, audio, and animation in three categories: Direct Action
(jams, spoofs, pranks, protests); Epiphanies (personal works); and Mini-Documentaries.
posted by boost ventilator at 5:07 PM PST - 10 comments
A computer aided simulation builds a spiral galaxy from
its beginning. In all, 390,000 particles were placed in an arrangement similar to a newborn galaxy. The end result after three months is an event that is believed to take billions of years to occur.
(animation)
posted by samsara at 4:14 PM PST - 7 comments
But it was broken when I got here!
New numbers indicate that the recession started before Bush came to office. Do Bush's statements succeed in making him less responsible for the recession in the eyes of the public? Do these kinds of statements restore people's faith in the economy?
posted by rks404 at 3:44 PM PST - 24 comments
"Pulp"
means a lot of different things today. To many people, "pulp"means something lurid, sleazy and sensationalist. That's what Quentin Tarantino meant when he called his movie "
Pulp Fiction," a violent and outrageous look at the seedy side of American life. "Pulp" refers to something thrilling and low-rent at the same time - that, at least, is a common definition of the term.
"Pulp," however, can refer to
something more specific, a certain kind of
magazine. [more inside]
posted by mooseindian at 2:08 PM PST - 15 comments
"The old doctrine was that nuclear weapons were far too big and nasty to use, and now they've moved towards developing nuclear weapons they can actually use".
On the aniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, does the development of
'low-yield nukes' threaten to blur the distinction between conventional and nuclear warfare.
posted by gravelshoes at 12:37 PM PST - 29 comments
“The
Obtainium ideal is to find useful and valued material for free.” Here’s a very new resource for low-cost or no-cost stuff of all kinds. It’s a breath of fresh air for those of us compulsive craftfolk who are frustrated with the
upscale, hipsterish tone of the current DIY resurgence. Most posters are SF based, but they’d like to broaden their horizons.
posted by Fenriss at 12:26 PM PST - 9 comments
U.S. Defies Judge on Enemy Combatant
From the WashPost.....
yesterday's action was the first time the government has not agreed to a judge's request.
The government's action sets the stage for a constitutional confrontation tomorrow. Is anyone else as appalled and disturbed by this as I am? Isn't defiance of the justice system a deeply dangerous precedent?
posted by pjgulliver at 12:05 PM PST - 65 comments
Is the planned WTC memorial in the wrong place?
"There is a desperate futility in the project as presently conceived, because even if the whole site were turned into a memorial garden it would be in the wrong place.
For most of the dead did not die there at all, but a thousand feet away, a sixth of a mile, directly above. "
Finally IMHO the perfect solution! The city gets its office space back, the country gets its memorial, the world gets a shockingly wonderful new piece of architecture.
posted by revbrian at 4:01 AM PST - 59 comments
August 6
The Doomsday Argument
Rarely does philosophy produce empirical predictions. The Doomsday argument is an important exception. From seemingly trivial premises it seeks to show that the risk that humankind will go extinct soon has been systematically underestimated...[more inside]
posted by crunchburger at 11:36 PM PST - 50 comments
For the past year or so pinhole photography has been an important part of my artistic practice. These are some of the sites that have inspired me:
pinhole visions is a great all round pinholing resource, and also hosts the Pinhole discussion
mailing list. The discussion list was one of the launching points for the 2nd annual world pinhole day, this past April 28th; check out the
image gallery. Artist sites worth checking out include this page on
Dianne Bos,
Martha Casanave's incredible work (both pinhole and not),
pinhole.nl (Dude! Meat cathedral), The
Oehl's fantastic self-portraits, and
polaroidsandpinholes.com. Finally, if you're heading out to Burning Man this year, you could check out
Camp Pinhole where each year they "build, operate, and burn a van-sized walk-in pinhole camera/darkroom" (cool!).
(First post. Be nice)
posted by slipperywhenwet at 9:28 PM PST - 11 comments
Right.
Let me get this straight.
A security guard
found a handbag
unattended in a night club. He then
searched the bag, supposedly looking for ID, and found a small packet containing a white powdery substance, which he handed over to the Central Narcotics Bureau.
A woman, Ms. Low, later says the handbag belongs to her.
The Judge notes that "There was no denial that this was her handbag. She claimed it was hers."
Ms. Low's friend, after being offered immunity from prosecution, then says they
both snorted cocaine earlier on in the evening.
On the basis of the evidence presented, Ms. Low is sentenced to 18 months in prison.
posted by netsirk at 7:30 PM PST - 46 comments
Timmy leaves his Princess.
Josh Ryan Evans, the actor who played Timmy on my favorite soap opera (
Passions) died Monday evening from a heart condition.
What's creepy is that the exact same day on the show, his character died.
The producers are editing out anything to do with Timmy, although I really hope that there's a legitimate memorial on the show for the character. He's been the soul of the series, and he simply can't be replaced.
Of course, I expect Tabitha to go full on evil now...
posted by Pinwiz at 4:41 PM PST - 55 comments
Did you know that two to three million people (1 in 10) have
died from starvation in North Korea since 1995? I didn't. Is branding them a part of the "Axis of Evil" making it worse?
posted by queequeg at 4:06 PM PST - 31 comments
Talking Cock,
a humorous and sensitive look at the penis and the relationships men form with it, is starting to gain a lot of attention in the UK (now bring it to the States, dammit). Based on more than 3,000 responses to a still-online
questionnaire, humorist Richard (Dick!) Herring has devised a one-man show that covers everything from Freudian nightmares to different cultural views of the penis, to the biscuit game. Oh, and the reader submitted
penis poetry is a hoot. Warning: definitely average nearly nude male picture on the front page. May not be safe for work.
posted by WolfDaddy at 3:51 PM PST - 20 comments
A very well designed site on the
Analemma. Don't be scared off by the math, as there are excellent diagrams and quicktime movies on this difficult to visualize phenomena. Difficult, but not impossible, to photograph (probably less than 10 photos are in existence)
Ulrich Bienert came close, and has a gallery and some tips if you're so inclined.
posted by quercus at 2:01 PM PST - 12 comments
The Weekly Standard: Patio Man and the Sprawl People
There he is atop the uppermost tier of his multi-level backyard patio/outdoor recreation area posed like an admiral on the deck of his destroyer. In his mind's eye he can see himself coolly flipping the garlic and pepper T-bones on the front acreage of his new grill while carefully testing the citrus-tarragon trout filets that sizzle fragrantly in the rear. On the lawn below he can see his kids, Haley and Cody, frolicking on the weedless community lawn that is mowed twice weekly by the people who run Monument Crowne Preserve, his townhome community. More inside...
posted by gen at 1:48 PM PST - 65 comments
Windows dissatisfaction at all time high.
Of 1,500 corporations surveyed, nearly 40% are actively seeking alternatives to Microsoft and their new licensing schemes. "This cumulative dissatisfaction will not necessarily translate into corporate defections to rival operating systems. But it does open the door a crack and raises the possibility that Linux and Mac OS X can gain new footholds in an overwhelmingly Windows world."
posted by jragon at 1:24 PM PST - 12 comments
Mice and Martians!
Mice sent to Mars, first all-rodent space crew. I like the article's style:
"The crew will have no exercise wheels, however. Their motion would interfere with the centrifugal force inside the spacecraft."
posted by agregoli at 11:35 AM PST - 3 comments
The Death of a Dirigible -
"The airship Shenandoah, nose to her high mooring mast, was floating gracefully with the variable breezes. Her twenty gas bags were about 91% full; her tanks loaded with 9,075 pounds of water and 16, 620 pounds of gasoline..."
I was fascinated by this account of the disaster that befell the Navy airship 'Shenandoah', marking the beginning of the end of the era of rigid bodied airships.
[ Via a comment on /. ]
posted by GriffX at 9:06 AM PST - 14 comments
Bravo, MetaFilter Grammar Posse!
Following
this memorable thread, Lauren Weiner, the editor of much esteemed
Knuckerap, has kind words for those of us who contributed to it. [
Embarrassingly, Ms. Weiner seems to think Matt Haughey's one and only MetaFilter is my web site. I'm honoured, so do please take your time before letting her know it ain't so. ;) ]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:48 AM PST - 45 comments
The Memory Hole
" Last month the Office of Management and Budget got sloppy: it issued a press release stating flatly that tax cuts were responsible for only 15 percent of the 10-year deterioration. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noticed, and I reported it here.
Now for the fun part. The O.M.B. reacted angrily, and published a letter in The Times attacking me. It attributed the misstatement to "error," and declared that it had been "retracted." Was it?
It depends on what you mean by the word "retract." As far as anyone knows, O.M.B. didn't issue a revised statement conceding that it had misinformed reporters and giving the right numbers. It simply threw the embarrassing document down the memory hole."
I'd like to propose a new word, "rovian."
posted by nofundy at 8:42 AM PST - 10 comments
What a
real depression looks like. Total collapse of the middle class, malnutrition, starving bands of marauders eating road-kill, it's every survivalists dream come true. Until last year, Argentines were part of the richest, best-educated and most cultured nation in Latin America. Not anymore.
posted by stbalbach at 7:11 AM PST - 47 comments
August 5
The Ant Farm: A small inventor success story.
Levine, who never attended college, gave lectures, wrote chatty books about ants and made appearances on "The Shari Lewis Show." "I spoke to Lamb Chop for a half an hour about ants," he said. "I felt like an idiot." Reg: cpunks/cpunks
posted by skallas at 7:14 PM PST - 9 comments
A Seattle group is pressing for a tax on espresso.
And recently they've collected the
17,000 signatures necessary to put the issue on the ballot. I'll be the first to mark myself out as a raving anti-taxation loony, but I generally accept things such as the income tax as a necessary evil given our current governmental structure. What annoys me about initiatives like this, however, is the selectiveness of it -- with an income tax, everyone pays proportionately. When you go taxing espresso, you're making some random group that you arbitrarily select pay for something they may not have any concern for. This is a step beyond sin-taxing, in that there is usually a link, however tenuous, between the tax and what it is meant to pay for. Is there any logical connection here?
posted by jammer at 3:33 PM PST - 32 comments
Homer Simpson is Canadian, says Groening.
In Montreal for a performance of "The Simpsons", Matt Groening noted his dad was born in Canada and Homer is named for him so...
"That would make Homer Simpson a Canadian".
He goes on to say the show will be on for at least another 14 years.
That should give us something to talk ab
iot.
posted by Blake at 3:01 PM PST - 24 comments
Whither the Green Party USA?
Reporting from the Green Party 2002 midterm convention,
The Nation's writer reports an (uneasy) consensus for "spoiling" selected races against the Democrats, but less clarity on how to get from there to a policy-making role in government.
posted by MattD at 1:41 PM PST - 17 comments
Cops Abuse New Anti-Terror Law.
The raid was perhaps the state's first known instance of law enforcement officers using new anti-terrorism police powers in a case unrelated to terrorism... Ahh, yes. The War On Drugs meets The War Against Terror.
posted by fnord_prefect at 12:55 PM PST - 13 comments
"The
Associated Press, which usually does not report names of sexual assault victims, stopped identifying the girls by name after authorities said they had been raped. The AP resumed reporting Marris' name Friday after she came forward and used Brooks' name after she appeared on national television Monday."
Richard Roeper and the
Los Angeles Times cover the media decision to cover rape differently than other crimes.
posted by rcade at 10:46 AM PST - 41 comments
Another of our industries,one that actually produces something, has started what appears to be a
death spiral. This
industry survey was used as supporting evidence as they presented their case to the ITC in May, ahead of a report to be submitted to the House Ways and Means Committee this fall. Some of the business owners comments are
here. Who benefits? Near as I can tell,
This Guy. (Best if read aloud)
posted by mss at 10:22 AM PST - 4 comments
In 1937, Nebraskan Joycolyn Knapp took a road trip with her family; in 2000, her grandson put her
trip journal on the web. In addition to a mileage log and a list of expenditures (229 gallons of gas: $40.02), the journal contains dozens of photos of Depression-era America, including
Yellowstone,
New Orleans, and
San Francisco. The
postcards Grandma Knapp chose to save and the
things she chose to document are wonderful both in themselves and for their portrayal of the American road trip before the birth of the interstate highway system. (via
Portage)
posted by snarkout at 10:14 AM PST - 8 comments
2" GI Joe Rifle Confiscated in Airport Security Crackdown
Airport security staff confiscated a TWO-INCH plastic gun from a toy soldier. "They examined the toy as if it was going to shoot them . . . Then they asked me if there were toy grenades as well. I thought they were joking, but they weren’t smiling — they were deadly serious." Have the terrorists already won?
posted by dogmatic at 9:43 AM PST - 43 comments
Lots of comics news coming from SDCC, including a strong showing for media tie ins.
Television:
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation by Max Allen Collins (author of
Road To Perdition and several
CSI novels) is coming from
IDW Publishing and
Alias written by J.J. Abrams (writer, director, producer and creator of the TV show) coming from newbie Arcade Comics
Film:
John Carpenter's Snake Plissken Chronicles with the involvement of film director John Carpenter, producer Debra Hill and actor Kurt Russell coming from Hurricane Entertainment via Crossgen's
CGE and
Shrek, xXx, Reign of Fire all from
Dark Horse.
CSI could translate into a comic really well and Max Collins is a more than capable writer.
posted by davebushe at 7:08 AM PST - 16 comments
The Brand And Burger Concerto: Luxury And Poverty For All In The U.S.A.
Is luxury becoming democratized? Are ostentation and conspicuous consumption not only tolerated now but
demanded of anyone but the poorest and least ambitious? As
James B.Twitchell, whose well-off father drove a Plymouth, pithily puts it in this adaptation of his book
Living It Up: Our Love Affair With Luxury, would
you go to a doctor who drove a Plymouth? Well, he confesses he wouldn't. His essay is full of interesting (though perhaps too easily answered) questions. Are time and philantropy really the two remaining luxuries for the truly wealthy? And is it really true almost anyone can now be king for a day or an hour?
[
I'd add that what he says about the U.S. is even truer of present-day Western Europe, where the stigma previously attached to ostentation was much more powerful among the middle and upper classes than ever it was with rich American WASPs.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:10 AM PST - 23 comments
August 4
Could 9/11 Have Been Prevented?
From the Time Mag. article
"
Long before the tragic events of September 11th, the White House debated taking the fight to al-Qaeda. It didn't happen and soon it was too late. The saga of a lost chance.
posted by bas67 at 9:51 PM PST - 22 comments
Reclaiming the Commons
"One of the great questions of contemporary American political economy is, who shall control the commons? "The commons" refers to that vast range of resources that the American people collectively own, but which are rapidly being enclosed: privatized, traded in the market, and abused." This is a fairly long, but incredibly well researched article about the "silent theft of our shared assets and civic inheritance".
posted by dejah420 at 9:49 PM PST - 23 comments
Israel weighs response to attacks
after the strike on the hamas leader and the collateral damage caused in that attack - a friend of mine and i discussed that it seemed like the people who should be most upset were the relatives and friends of the as of yet undead/injured in the next retaliatory attack... when is the senselessness of the cycle of violence going become clear?
posted by specialk420 at 9:46 PM PST - 20 comments
Black Blobs on Slum Streets.
Perhaps this is the way the world will end, instead of a cataclysmic apocalypse, the earth will simply turn into a large ball of unidentifiable goo. Seems logical to me.
posted by jeremias at 8:28 PM PST - 25 comments
Check Out This Librarian
There's more to being a librarian than just stamping books and telling people to
Shush. The Washington Post has a little Q&A with Jim Gates who has been librarian at the Hall of Fame Library for seven years.
Just in case you think all librarians are little old ladies, you might want to
check out This Ad for Mack's Earplugs, it features a lovely librarian, who is also a World Champion Masters Triathelete. Of course, our own
Jessamyn has been saying this kind of thing for years now.
After all,
The Web Didn't Kill Libraries. It's the New Draw.
Now
shush!
posted by Blake at 12:48 PM PST - 27 comments
Verizon v. Ralsky and Additional Benefits LCC
Verizon is suing Alan Ralsky in Federal court for sending enough spam -- more than 56 gigabytes -- to "virtually paralyze" their e-mail servers on at least two occaisions. The trial begins Sept. 23. Ralsky's response: "These (anti-spammers) feel we've infringed on their personal space. They want to own the Internet." Ralsky and his lawyer claim that he is picked on because he is open about what he does, yet Ralsky
denied it to Brian Livingston last year.
More about Ralsky.
Some good anti-spam information sources and tools include
Spam Laws,
CAUCE,
SpamCop, and
Spamcon.
posted by pmurray63 at 11:47 AM PST - 11 comments
BlogTree.com
is a blog genealogy site: "You can register your blogs and record which blogs inspired their creation." It's an interesting new way to catalog and find blogs in tandem with Blogdex's
social network explorer. Which blogs inspired you to start your own blog and have you in turn inspired anyone else to blog? The favorite blogs thread was a long time ago so those of you who've had blogs for years, which new(ish) blogs inspire you to continue blogging now? [ via
Blogroots ]
posted by lia at 8:37 AM PST - 23 comments
I want a lotus blossom bride.
I've had enough of these pushy American girls; I'm going to send for Chinese take-out. These folks promise me that I can have "whatever you had imagined in your patriarchal, colonialist longings." Allreet - M. Butterfly, here I come!
posted by Perigee at 4:26 AM PST - 46 comments
August 3
"Broken Promises and Political Deception"
by Al Gore in the NY Times: " For well over a year, the Bush administration has used its power in the wrong way. In 2000, I argued that the Bush-Cheney ticket was being bankrolled by "a new generation of special interests, power brokers who would want nothing better than a pliant president who would bend public policy to suit their purposes and profits." Some considered this warning anti-business. It was nothing of the sort. I believe now, as I said then, that "when powerful interests try to take advantage of the American people, it's often other businesses that are hurt in the process" — most of all, smaller companies that play by the rules." (I think it's safe to say Al is running)
posted by owillis at 8:13 PM PST - 98 comments
How To Say Yes (Or No) To British Food:
Apart from the language barrier (ably demolished by
Mike Etherington's magnificent online
dictionary), British food has a
dreadful reputation all over the world. Yet people who try it, whatever their nationality, often find they enjoy it. If it's
properly made, that is. Enter
Helen Watson's impeccable and ethnically correct
recipes. And those who can't be bothered to cook can always plump for the many ready-made
goodies (and some real stinkers) now offered by internet mail order firms. The most promising has got to be, with over 2,500 goodies, the
FBC Brit Shop. Unfortunately it's based in Japan and will only start delivering in September. The best of the rest is probably yummy
British Delights. My mother's English so I'm obviously biased, but aren't a lot of people missing out on the unique gastronomic charms of the good old United K?
Oh yes![
FBC link pilfered from the Boing Boing larder.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 4:25 PM PST - 63 comments
Save pinball!
"It's an American icon," said Stern, ever the salesman. "Pinball is cool because it is retro. It's a Volkswagen bug, a PT Cruiser, khaki pants."
posted by justgary at 3:56 PM PST - 23 comments
Oubapo America
is a project to identify and explore constraints in Comics. It is the American cousin of the French
Oubapo project which shares the same goals.
Example: "Draw a comic that is 26 panels long where each panel features in some way the corresponding letter of the alphabet". If this sounds familiar, you may be thinking of
Oulipo.
posted by vacapinta at 12:31 AM PST - 6 comments
August 2
Perhaps the most wicked celebrity profile yet
from wickedly funny celebrity journalist Lynn Hirschberg. In profiling the selling of former Backstreet girlfriend and would-be-edgy-rock-star
Amanda Latona, Hirschberg portrays the breakthrough artist as a malleable, fame-chasing airhead and her handlers as just as cynical and corrupt as any caricature of record execs ever created. (NYT link)
"The lyric to this song is so Amanda, don't you think? It's very uncompromising." He pauses. "Some artists walk in and they won't budge. Amanda is open to direction."
posted by transona5 at 9:09 PM PST - 27 comments
“London, from one end to the other, teems and steams with
eels, alive and stewed; turn where you will, hot eels are everywhere smoking away, with many a fragrant condiment at hand to make what is in itself palatable yet more savoury; and this too at so low a rate, that for one halfpenny a man of the million may fill his stomach with six or seven long pieces, and wash them down with a cupful of the glutinous liquor in which they have been stewed.”
posted by todd at 6:35 PM PST - 22 comments
autechre's new CD/DVD gantz_graf
deserves a larger audience than it will most likely receive. not only a brilliant piece of what can be labeled "idm" music, a stunning confluence of hypermodern audio and video artistry.
posted by iceblink at 5:13 PM PST - 33 comments
What's in a name?
Apparently not much.
One son was named Loser, the other Winner.
One became a cop and eventually was promoted to detective - shield number 2762.
The other fell into the life of a small-time crook, racking up at least 31 arrests before being sent away for a two-year stretch in state prison - inmate number 00R2807
{found on OpinionJournal}
posted by internal at 2:46 PM PST - 34 comments
Finally, a Reason to Watch Court TV?
An Olympics skating vote rigging Russian mafia fraud trial--what fun! Hope this happens, and I hope in happens in New York's Federal Southern District, because, well, what fun to bring down a stupid sport (And remove it from television); discredit the French, Russians... I want seats to this one! Or Perhaps E! will provide the coverage?
posted by ParisParamus at 2:28 PM PST - 14 comments
Robotron: 2084.
Presented is an interview with the creator of the fantastic game from the mid 80s; regarding the design of enemies in the game, he has this to say: "Some of the most interesting and deadly aspects of the enemies were bugs caused by improperly terminated boundary conditions in the algorithms. Often these bugs produced behavior far more interesting and psychotic then anything I conceived of." There are many more interviews of classic game authors in the book which is the source for this interview, James Hague's
Halcyon Days. (Link thanks to
Glish.)
posted by moz at 1:32 PM PST - 32 comments
No perp walk for Enron and Halliburton?
Asked to explain why no arrests had been made for these two companies, Larry D. Thompson said, "Some cases are more complex than others."
Does it matter what the penalties are for corporate crime? Seems all you need are the right political connections and an adequately complex scheme to defraud investors and employees. Is the White House protecting corporations with their interpretation of whistle blowers? Aren't preventive measures more appropriate than punishments for these crimes? Does wealth truly create a double standard for prosecution under our legal system?
posted by nofundy at 10:30 AM PST - 33 comments
Pressplay
to start offering unlimited downloads of their online music database. While it still only (leagally) allows users to burn 120 songs to disc, there are rumors of allowing permanent d/l of songs, too. Is this a sign of the music industry finally starting to do what they should have done from the start, which was embrace the medium and capitalize on its benefits rather than try to stifle it? Regardless of whether or not pressplay suceeds with this tactic, is there anything legal online music services can do to compete with free p2p networks? Discuss.
posted by Hackworth at 9:40 AM PST - 25 comments
Metafilterinkarationicizes!
By analyising the frequency of pairs of letters in 45,402 different words it is possible to generate new words which, although, don't have any meaning are reasonably syntatically correct.
Enjoy the random word generator.
posted by remlapm at 9:04 AM PST - 33 comments
Go : The future of computing
"In recent years, computer experts, particularly those specializing in artificial intelligence, have felt fascination - and frustration - with an ancient Asian game called Go. To date, no computer has been able to achieve a skill level beyond that of the casual player."
posted by jragon at 8:35 AM PST - 29 comments
Is
EMU good for the economy? Or is
EMU a good place to learn about the economy? I personally think
EMU is good for the soul.
posted by statusquo at 7:35 AM PST - 16 comments
What is an Emu?
A source
of Food?
An Australian Airline with a since of
humor?
A source of an oil with
many uses?
Yes, yes and yes. But perhaps more importantly, as today is Friday, you might want to skip the above links and see what happens when you cross an Emu, Flash and the
Arcade classic Moon Lander:
Here's some Friday Flash goodness, the
Emu*Lander "because Emus can't fly."
[Ignore the rabbit meme, land the EMU.]
posted by DBAPaul at 3:39 AM PST - 9 comments
August 1
"Suckers.
They're all watching the wrong cards. They're watching the borax. They're watching the fuel cell and its clean tailpipe. They should be watching the hydrogen. That's the payoff card."
Car and Driver takes issue with the
Hydrogen on Demand system used in Chrysler's
Natrium concept and billed by the
media as a possible solution to the
problem of producing, storing, and transporting hydrogen.
posted by tirade at 2:19 PM PST - 7 comments
Tangent.cx
is now online.
Endquote first came up with a concept for automating self-linking within his own blog. Now he's expanded the idea so that you can build a network of content-driven-sites that auto-link their content with your own. The niftiest part, to me, is his new link pop-up menus, so that one word can link to articles from multiple sites.
posted by nomisxid at 1:40 PM PST - 12 comments
Mob kills men after traffic accident
. This story is a little disturbing; it's been on CNN etc., but here in Chicago it's the hourly top story. A van driven by two middle-aged men moving furniture jumped a curb and pinned three girls against a step. In retaliation, a crowd of a dozen or more yanked the men from their van and beat them with fists and even bricks. Both died. The police have fanned out looking for witnesses and evidence, with a few arrests, but no charges as of yet. [more inside]
posted by dhartung at 1:21 PM PST - 75 comments
Say Cheese!
The LAPD has installed motion sensing spy cameras in back alleys to catch graffiti artists, trash dumpers, and, well, anyone they want, including I'm sure, corrupt police offers delivering beatdowns. "Stop! This is the LAPD," the recording says. "We have just taken your photograph. We will use this photograph to prosecute you. Leave now."
posted by xmutex at 12:43 PM PST - 16 comments
The Thylacine Museum
is a true labour of love. Everything you could possibly want to know about the thylacine (AKA "Tasmanian tiger" or "Tasmanian wolf"). Able to open its mouth
incredibly wide, sit upright on its hind legs
like a kangaroo, and a foremost example of convergent evolution (extremely similar to placental mammals like wolves, yet marsupial), the thylacine was a fascinating animal. Hunted to extinction in less than a hundred years (
or not), a
cloning project is underway to try and resurrect it. This site has everything:
videos, Java-riffic
skull diagrams, pictures of
mummified thylacines who died over 4,000 years ago, and pictures of
Benjamin, the last captive thylacine who died in 1936.
posted by biscotti at 12:22 PM PST - 24 comments
The Coming Democratic Dominance
"...ever since the collapse of the Reagan conservative majority, which enjoyed its final triumph in November 1994, American politics has been turning slowly, but inexorably, toward a new Democratic majority. It was evident in Al Gore's popular-vote victory in 2000 (made more significant by the overhang of the Bill Clinton scandals and Gore's ineptitude as a campaigner) and in Bush's and the Republicans' sinking fortunes in the first two-thirds of 2001. It was obscured by the patriotic rush of support for Bush after September 11, which to some extent carried over to the Republican Party as a whole. But it has resurfaced in recent months as Americans have turned their attention back to the economy and domestic policy and away from the war on terrorism. Far from being a temporary distraction from a long-term shift toward the GOP, popular anger at the business scandals and the plummeting Dow heralds the resumption of a long-term shift toward the Democrats. " (via
george)
posted by owillis at 11:23 AM PST - 44 comments
"How Much Starbucks is Too Much?"
This article predicts that our favourite caffeine pushers could double the number of outlets in the US without saturating the market. Pretty graphs, but has anyone told this guy about Starbucks' more
sinister plans?
warning, second link = Onion story
posted by nprigoda at 11:12 AM PST - 31 comments
What about Blinky?
(Link to PDF) CA Governor's candidate Bill Simon is taking an interesting approach in his campaign to appeal to a generation... a generation of Simpson fans. In this PDF, he compares incumbent Grey Davis to Mr. Burns... and how Blinky brought down Mr. Burns' campaign.
posted by darian at 9:47 AM PST - 13 comments
Log onto an unsecured wireless LAN, go to jail.
This frightening story involves a computer security expert doing a bit of
war driving. The fact that he didn't access any of their files, and that they shut down the network instead of simply reading the manual on basic WEP security didn't stop them from claiming $5,000 in damages and bringing charges, with possible fines up to $250k and up to 5 years jail time.
posted by mathowie at 9:07 AM PST - 12 comments
Corporate Welfare and Social Welfare.
Which is the most egregious? A bill in Congress to address welfare got comments from GWB during a political fund raiser in SC. Does this statement make any sense to you?
"In the way they're kind of writing it right now out of the Senate Finance Committee, some people could spend their entire five years on welfare - there's a five-year work requirement - going to college. Now, that's not my view of helping people become independent, and it's certainly not my view of understanding the importance of work and helping people achieve the dignity necessary so they can live a free life, free from government control." -GWB-
I always thought education WAS the key to escaping poverty but the "education President" obviously disagrees. I'd really appreciate your comments on the bill and this article.
posted by nofundy at 8:28 AM PST - 61 comments
Diary for a New America:
Because a toilet seat is a terrible thing to waste. Poison drummer Rikki Rockett says the "days of useless acts of hotel destruction are over." Now he's leaving his artistic mark in hotel loos nationwide. See for yourself in the gallery.
posted by acornface at 8:12 AM PST - 12 comments
Depths of depravity.
No, it's not a new adults only activity or a grunge band. It's the Palestinians. Is it just me or are US spokespeople having a tougher time forming accurate and coherent sentences.
posted by shagoth at 7:36 AM PST - 38 comments
Bush may not need authorization to launch attack against Iraq
(NYTimes, reg req).
Senator Trent Lott, the Republican minority leader, told reporters today that he did not think the administration needed Congressional approval for a major assault. He said that authority had been granted last fall in a resolution supporting military action against Al Qaeda.
"I suspect that Al Qaeda elements are in Iraq," Mr. Lott said. "The resolution we passed, we made it very clear the president has the authority to pursue the Al Qaeda wherever they may be found, in whatever country, which could very well include Iraq."
Hello?
Article I, Section 8, Clause 11?
War Powers Act Section 5b? I know they gave GWB the right to go after Al-Qaeda, but this is ridiculous. Should we deport one of our prisoners from Guantanamo to the next country that we want to make some changes in? Sheesh. You want to go to war? Fine by me - but do it Constitutionally.
posted by rshah21 at 7:11 AM PST - 28 comments
Race/Music: Corrine Corrina, Bo Chatmon, and the Excluded Middle.
Bo Carter is not the household name that, say, Robert Johnson is but he first recorded and most likely wrote one of the standards of the 20th Century. The essay linked deals with him, his song and the push me-pull you of race and culture in America. It's a post graduate thesis rife with postmodernist terminology--yet full of ideas and insights, not all of which I necessarily endorse or agree with--but which I've found thought provoking.
(Details Within)
posted by y2karl at 6:39 AM PST - 15 comments
Kidnapped for Kicks!
"Brock Enright, a 25-year-old artist, has created a business where people pay him thousands of dollars a time to be violently abducted." Brings a new meaning to escapism...
posted by hmgovt at 6:32 AM PST - 12 comments
Philip Glass, Late Twentieth-Century Music And Your PC, Sort Of...
Andante's
Carte Blanche is a new multimedia magazine dedicated to contemporary music. Its first guest-editor is Philip Glass and he's assembled an interestingly unscholarly, offbeat and pleasantly accessible issue. At least for those of us who generally pay contemporary music (too) little attention. I wonder why this is, as it's invariably challenging or enlightening when we do. Who knows? Perhaps Carte Blanche may convince some of us pop-obsessed philistines to change our ways... [
Composer John Adams, writer Susan Sontag, choreographer Mark Morris and British director Jonathan Miller will follow in what promises to be an unmissable online proposition.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 12:35 AM PST - 12 comments
