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Spotlight on Military News and International Affairs (SOMNIA) A news aggregator since when there weren't many news aggregators. SOMNIA is a great geopolitical gift from the Canadian Forces College. From the Guardian to the Christian Science Monitor, from the Washington Times to the Washington Post, many military and geopolitical news articles aggregated on a daily basis, segregated into Canadian News, Canadian Commentary, International News and International commentary I myself have been a fan since before the war on Kosovo. Enjoy!
posted by furtive at 11:27 PM PST - 5 comments

Myron Krueger began his pioneering work in interactive art in 1969. He was one of the first to explore the aesthetics of interactivity with his "responsive environments." While preparing a talk that included a reminiscence of Krueger demoing Videoplace in the 80s, I was surprised he'd not yet merited even a stub in the Wikipedia. While that may eventually motivate me to register and start the page, for now, I will just share some links. [more inside, including videos]
posted by KS at 11:15 PM PST - 2 comments

Need a lift? Google Labs presents RideFinder. Amazing. Oh yeah, and remember that 1 GB quota on Gmail? It's gone. They're bumping it up to 2 GB as we speak, but they are indicating they will continue to bump it up as needed. If you have a Gmail account, log out and check out the wacky graph and counter on the login page.
posted by keswick at 11:14 PM PST - 39 comments

Today by far is my favorite holiday. It's the one day that webmasters get to be creative and do things that normally wouldn't fit with their sites general themes. For example, Google attempts a high tech way of quenching peoples thirsts, Wikipedia sells out to Britannica, a RFC is written on Morality, and much much more!
posted by Urgo at 10:24 PM PST - 44 comments

How did I get here, Sarah?
posted by Tlogmer at 9:50 PM PST - 25 comments

Words that sound dirty but aren't. I'm a big fan of the white-breasted nuthatch. You?
posted by diastematic at 9:07 PM PST - 58 comments

Palestinian Rap is au courant. Nasri Zacharia, aka Iron Sheik raps about the Neo-Cons -- Watch the "Neo-Con Luv" music video, (mp3). Other mp3s: About Baghdad, and his remix, Conversation with Edward Said.
posted by derangedlarid at 8:47 PM PST - 10 comments

What is a Foob? When it comes to juvenile insults, I remember dork, doofus, geek, etc. But this is a new one on me.
posted by livingsanctuary at 5:32 PM PST - 24 comments

Die Wunderkammer. Fancy buying a stuffed miniature Collie, or a fossil poo? How about "a miniature perfume library with, among others, the scents of human breast milk, chocolate, swampwater and sex"? This Australian store has all these and more. If you're not Down Under then browse through the Web Wunderkammer, an online wonder-cabinet which archives more modern but equally weird things such as a Jesus Leaf, robot jellyfish and square-dancing chipmunks. Or you could always check out eBay. (a follow-up of sorts on this thread).
posted by wessatong at 4:31 PM PST - 11 comments

ACLU seeks Sanchez perjury investigation. As a followup to yesterday's post, the ACLU has sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Gonzales, requesting an investigation of Gen. Ricardo Sanchez for perjury before Congress. Sanchez is accused of lying about approving guidelines for the use of abusive interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib prison. Now, many of you might think that Gonzales might refuse this request and be done with it. However, the ACLU has the right to request a writ of mandamus, which would compel Gonzales to initiate an investigation. If Sanchez is investigated, will he be pressured to reveal the identity of those in the Pentagon / Bush administration (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Cheney, Cambone?!) who knew about and possibly ordered these policies?
posted by insomnia_lj at 3:33 PM PST - 28 comments

The 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers. What, no Kottke?
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 2:31 PM PST - 53 comments

The little bug eats the bigger bug, and "[i]t's bad news for beekeepers, farmers and anybody who likes to eat." An invading parasite imperils the American honeybee -- and your fruit basket. In only six months "40 percent to 60 percent of the bees nationwide have perished". And "that, in turn, hampers production of about one third of the human diet, including almonds, apples, strawberries, cherries, blueberries, sunflowers, melons and cranberries."
posted by orthogonality at 2:20 PM PST - 22 comments

White Shark Released from Monterey Bay Aquarium after six months in captivity. In the last week, aquarists noted several incidents of what they considered to be active hunting of other exhibit animals, and they became substantially more concerned about the well-being of the other fishes. She was not released because of any injury or health problem. At the time of her release, she was 6'-4" long and weighed 162 pounds.
posted by rodo at 1:41 PM PST - 19 comments

Jump Jim Crow, through the hoops of one Robert Christgau's erudition as he surveys the literature extant in In Search of Jim Crow: Why Postmodern Minstrelsy Studies Matter, through multiple readings of Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop, Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World and and Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. Consider, too, The Minstrel Cycle from Reading The Commitments and other various and sundry attempts to peek inside the minstrel mask—all multiple readings reading blackface minstrels from the pejorative to the explorative, subversive to oppressive, past to future, unfolding tesseractly, if not exactly, with singing, dancing and extraordinary elocutions. Buy your tickets and step within for The Meller Drammer of Minstrelsy in The Minstrel Show 2.0…
posted by y2karl at 12:55 PM PST - 17 comments

The Valve, "a literary organ", is a new group blog devoted to literary studies and modelled on little magazines gone by.
posted by kenko at 12:31 PM PST - 3 comments

The TV Squad! A new TV blog from the people who do Engadget. I'm amazed at how fast they get stuff posted.
posted by braun_richard at 11:36 AM PST - 14 comments

Rape, Torture, and Lies An ongoing Canadian saga has a sad new twist today: photojournalist Ziba Zahra Kazemi was likely brutally tortured and raped before her death in Iran in 2003. Arrested after a demonstration, the official Iranian line has been that her death was an accident due to injuries from a fall. The ER doctor who treated her has now spoken out, after being granted refugee status in Canada. Wikipedia has an excellent outline of the entire story.
posted by livii at 9:52 AM PST - 65 comments

A lecutre musical (QT video) by Columbia University spontaneous performance artists PRANGSTGRÜP (warning: flash site). Lots of great stuff in their videos section.
posted by panoptican at 9:41 AM PST - 15 comments

Sin City: From the Comics to the Screen - Film Rotation offers up a side-by-side comparison of stills from the movie's trailer to panels from Frank Miller's comics.
posted by Robot Johnny at 9:08 AM PST - 59 comments

Mitch Hedberg is said to have died of an apparent heroin overdose (Howard Stern confirms). Mitch was a fantastic comedian, and it's sad to think that he won't get the attention he deserved because he shares a death day with someone else. You can hear clips from his CDs Mitch All Together and Strategic Grill Locations on Amazon. (Previous MeFi thread on Mr. Hedberg)
posted by revgeorge at 8:55 AM PST - 127 comments

Warren Buffett's letters to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway make for some entertaining reading and are studied in B schools around the country. The 2004 letter [pdf] was recently released.
posted by ChasFile at 8:33 AM PST - 11 comments

Bionic Implants: Brain chip reads paralyzed man’s thoughts, enables him to control devices like a computer or television.
Stanford physicists and eye doctors to design a "Bionic Eye.”
posted by dfowler at 8:13 AM PST - 20 comments

The Single Man's Guide to TV Dinners
Teetering on the fine line between parody and sincerity, Ray guides us through the perilous world of TV dinners.

The box cover boasts "Extra Helpings of Beef Enchilada..". As I mentioned earlier, the dinner only contains one beef enchilada. What is an "Extra Helping"?

The cheese-to-meat-to-vegetable ratio is appropriate. After eating a few slices, you won't be left with a strange aftertaste.
posted by chrismear at 8:12 AM PST - 33 comments

Terry Schiavo has died.
posted by bshort at 7:11 AM PST - 187 comments

Okay, the numbers are in. Now that die hard fans of the UK edition have vented, I'm curious to know what those who have not yet had the pleasure of Ricky Gervais' company make of the American version of The Office. Comments?
posted by IndigoJones at 6:29 AM PST - 54 comments

The Cheerful Transgressive Ever since 1971, when Larry Clark published Tulsa, an austere series chronicling his meth-shooting pals in sixties Oklahoma, Clark has made it his mission to document teenagers at their most deviant, their most vulnerable, their most sexually unhinged (possibly NSFW). And now “Larry Clark” the first American retrospective of Clark’s work, currently on display at the International Center of Photography, demonstrates the richness with which he’s mined this single subject (NSFW). More inside.
posted by matteo at 6:24 AM PST - 48 comments

Fitness to Practice is a collection of songs written and performed by Amateur Transplants, two practicing doctors from the UK. The album consists of original songs as well as witty parodies of songs originally performed by among others Tom Lehrer and The Jam (mp3 links). The lyrics contain a lot of medical in-jokes, but the humour is broad enough to appeal to everyone.
posted by bap98189 at 6:01 AM PST - 9 comments

Analysis of the Personality of Adolf Hitler by Cornell University in 1943 has been released online. The analysis was comissioned by the predecessor to the CIA and declassified several years ago, according to The New York Times. This official analysis should be of interest to those who have been doing amateur analyses for years.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 5:56 AM PST - 20 comments

With girya or kettlebell training you can hack the fat off without the dishonor of diet and aerobics.
posted by the cuban at 3:48 AM PST - 19 comments