Shopping Bliss "Selected police officers were tasked to wear mascot costumes as they patrol the shopping malls in the capital to make their presence less obtrusive and more friendly." - welcome to mall security, LSD style.
posted by jdaura at 6:59 PM PST - 18 comments

Federal V.I.P. Penn Gillette almost gets his "crank grabbed." Not quite as concerning as the pregnant woman who got her breasts groped by security at the airport but it's an interesting read.
posted by suprfli at 5:18 PM PST - 36 comments

Messaging ogling Google lobby [clip] "At Google's headquarters off Highway 101 in Mountain View, visitors sit in the lobby, transfixed by the words scrolling by on the wall:" [/endclip] [clip] So anyway... I thought to actually *message* the viewers with - I hope you Google-ites get a good kick out of searches! - no quotes. [/endclip] Results? Do it, Me-Fi! The link is to the full post at Topica.
posted by Grand Wahzoo at 4:16 PM PST - 21 comments

Is Gavin Menzies the Stephen Wolfram of history? That's the question today's New York Times (login: dr_mabuse, pw: mabuse) suggests in a Menzies profile. Menzies has a new book out, 1421, which claims that the Chinese discovered America seven decades before Columbus did. Some people have made similarly precise claims about this planet's developments. Others have seen their amateur claims initially mocked and later proven to be correct. Is Menzies onto something or is he a crank? And how do we place the passionate amateur within the realm of scholarly pursuits?
posted by ed at 3:43 PM PST - 17 comments

The case of the five vanishing terrorists from Canada. "We don't know if they ever entered the U.S.," Mr. Cogswell said. "And in fact we've never linked these guys to terrorists. Most of what we have here is an unknown, and even with these individuals we don't know if they are true names with those photographs."
posted by The Jesse Helms at 2:22 PM PST - 4 comments

It's thoughtful, not angry or insulting. It appears to make sense and it doesn't upset me. Is this really how they think of themselves? Required reading for the liberal opposition: A Republican's View of George Bush, Compassionate Conservative. (NYTimes, free registration required)
posted by alms at 12:51 PM PST - 30 comments

Sweetcode has some sweet code: learning language by watching movies; describing images for searching by doodles; automated haiku searching; etc. New entries are sometimes far apart so use the mailing list.
disclaimer: they listed something of mine a couple of months ago (not one of their best finds) and it has been mentioned here once as an attribution, so i considered posting just the sub-links. but why give you a fish?
posted by andrew cooke at 12:34 PM PST - 7 comments

StumbleUpon is a browser plugin-in that "uses member ratings to form collective human opinions on website quality." The plugin-in then uses these ratings to recommend websites, much like Amazon.com recommends books.
posted by theWoodpecker at 12:05 PM PST - 10 comments

Did You Catch That? Linguistics expert Deborah Tannen looks at perceptions and realities surrounding the speed at which we intercommunicate (washingtonpost.com).
posted by LinusMines at 9:15 AM PST - 23 comments

Forget about the US. Walmart is the real empire.
posted by Beholder at 7:23 AM PST - 52 comments