H. Sarbakhshian is perhaps the only photo-blogger now in Iraqi kurdistan. He is one of the latest well-known Iranian journalists who has turned to blogging. (In Persian)
posted by hoder at 11:02 PM PST - 9 comments

The 2003 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is coming March 14-16. You can either participate in person by going to Stamford, Connecticut for the weekend, or play at home on your own time. If you're a confirmed or aspiring cruciverbalist, you should check this out -- the puzzles are great and the competition is light-hearted. (Will Shortz (right), director of the tournament and editor of the New York Times crossword puzzle, was recently interviewed on 60 Minutes.)
posted by precipice at 10:56 PM PST - 4 comments

Dev Articles is the latest in a line of thieves who steal from free publications such as A List Apart, Digital-Web and Boxes and Arrows to pilfer content and make a buck off of other folks' generous efforts. What is wrong with these folks? Dev Articles at least credits the authors (without letting them know... even that their stolen photo is up) but not the publication that provided the edits, formatting and forum to make the article real. And they make the advertising buck. This month alone Nick Finck has had to stop Morpheous from their theft of 7 of his articles (and they claimed authorship!) What is wrong with people?
posted by christina at 8:56 PM PST - 43 comments

This is either the best political campaign ever, or the worst.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 8:23 PM PST - 33 comments

Richard Rorty was written a longish, but accessible essay detailing the progression of the Western idea of "truth". He states that truth, in the redemptive sense, was first interpreted through religion, then philosophy and now literature. The intellectuals are no longer asking what is true, but seeking new ways of understanding the world around us and our place in it. To question truth, one employs logic and belief, but to find new modes of understanding one uses the imagination. "The great virtue of our new-found literary culture is that it tells young intellectuals that the only source of redemption is the human imagination, and that this fact should occasion pride rather than despair."
posted by elwoodwiles at 7:24 PM PST - 14 comments

Feral children have fascinated linguists, psychologists, anthropologists, and filmmakers for over a century. Read about the Wild Boy of Aveyron, Kamala and Amala (raised by wolves), and Genie (chained and locked in a closet until she was 13) and you'll discover how fragile humanity can be when "nature" overruns "nurture."
posted by jonp72 at 3:46 PM PST - 18 comments

Words of the Year 2002 Awards American Dialect Society Word of the Year : "WMD - weapons of mass destruction". Most Unnecessary: "wombanization" . Most Outrageous: "neuticles" . Most Useful (by unanimous decision): "google".....1991 Word of the Year: "mother of all."
posted by Voyageman at 1:55 PM PST - 33 comments

Last Civil War Widows Do Lunch. Gertrude Janeway, the Union War widow, passed away Friday at 93. Live tonight on ABC, Alberta Martin will receive the grand prize -- one million confederate dollars and a 2003 Dodge Durango. [Just kidding.]
posted by britain at 1:26 PM PST - 12 comments

Kill this side and then the others. Like its cousin the estimable Engrish.com, FlubTitles.com catalogs the horrible abuses of language that show up in English subtitles for Asian movies. Created by Asian film review site CityOnFire and movie seller HKFlix, it's all a plot to sell more DVDs, but there're some real gems hidden in the captions..."All fanciness are posted outside."
posted by me3dia at 1:15 PM PST - 11 comments

Al Hirschfeld passed away today at 99. He was probably one of, if not the, most famous caricaturists in history, drawing an enormous range of stars, from Chaplin and Bergen to Seinfeld and Benny. The Line King was a '96 documentary about his work and the stars he drew in an 70+ year career as an illustrator. Very sad to think that the popular pasttime of counting the Ninas in the drawings has ended.
posted by PeteyStock at 12:29 PM PST - 13 comments

Media covers massive D.C. (and world) Anti-War protests, discounts numbers - Backflash: NPR and the NYT later issued apologies for their drastic undercounting of the Oct. 26 D.C. Anti-War protest - later admitted to be between 100,000 and 200,000 in size "...It was not as large as the organizers of the protest had predicted. They had said there would be 100,000 people here. I'd say there are fewer than 10,000"(NPR's Nancy Marshall) Last saturday's D.C. AntiWar protest received far more media coverage but a similar discounting of the numbers. IndyMedia (above link) provided numbers more in line with D.C. Police statements. Many media outlets ran the same AP news feed. [NYT, NPR , CNN, ABC, AP] and claimed..."Thousands" or "tens of thousands" of protesters. But in the words of those who witnessed it (as I did - 2.5 times size of Oct. 26 protest, from what I saw): 'D.C. police chief Charles Ramsey said, "It's one of the biggest ones we've had, certainly in recent times." U.S. Capitol Police chief Terrance Gainer said, "I know everyone is skittish about saying a number, but this was big. An impressive number." A C-SPAN cameraman I spoke to spent the entire protest on the roof of a cargo truck just to the side of the stage. He told me that he had covered dozens of protests in his time, and that the crowd on Saturday was the biggest he had ever seen.' (story) and organizers claimed 500,000 marched in DC meanwhile, a new poll shows support for a war on Iraq is slipping in the US and also dropping at the UN
posted by troutfishing at 11:49 AM PST - 105 comments

You will never have to watch another awards show again.
posted by maudlin at 10:42 AM PST - 10 comments

"There are some secrets that do not permit themselves to be revealed." Every January 19, for the past 54 years, a mysterious man dressed in black has crept into a cemetery in Baltimore to place three red roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac on the grave of Edgar Allan Poe.
posted by biscotti at 8:39 AM PST - 33 comments

In his own words ... On this holiday celebrating the achievements of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., his words continue to have meaning for both blacks and whites, conservatives and liberals. Most people are familiar with his I Have a Dream Speech but also noteworthy are The Purpose of Education, The Negro and the Constitution, his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, his Letter from Birmingham Jail -- which some have argued should be added to the canon of Scripture -- and his final I See the Promised Land remarks delivered the day before his death.
posted by marcusb at 7:54 AM PST - 3 comments

closet confederate?
george bush junior revives tradition, abandoned by bush senior, honoring confederate leader. anyone suprised about this one? via talkingpointsmemo
posted by specialk420 at 7:44 AM PST - 90 comments

The "Blind Watchmaker" ain't so blind after all. An article in this week's Journal of Theoretical Biology claims that simple chemistry makes the evolution of complex organisms with nervous systems inevitable. Is random Darwinism being replaced by a more sophisticated notion of "directed evolution"? Could this confirm the "intelligent design" theory of Creation? This may have profound consequences for our understanding of how life has come to be on this planet (and others).
posted by Bletch at 7:32 AM PST - 40 comments

Two segregated film crews, one black and one white, used the perspective of race to create a documentary centered on the dragging death of a black man by three whites five years ago in Jasper, Texas. The New York filmmakers behind the "Two Towns of Jasper" found the differences in perspective before filming began and the divide only grew more distinct during the two-year project. Premieres January 22nd on PBS and has already won multiple film awards.
posted by suprfli at 5:00 AM PST - 13 comments

1932, Wyoming: Douglas Herrick and his brother Ralph go hunting and discover the Jackalope. The legend spreads across the globe. 2003, Wyoming: Douglas Herrick dies. Jackalopes all over the world mourn. (last link NYT, and courtesy of Tom Tomorrow)
posted by Katemonkey at 3:59 AM PST - 13 comments