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Alternate Reality Advertising? I noticed this peculiar advert on this morning's commute. Seems it's part of an immersive ad campaign. Since when do gamers have enough money to buy luxury rides?
posted by gnutron at 10:14 PM PST - 13 comments

Skynet is a go - step one is complete. Cyc (pronounced psych) is an AI with a new twist. "Cyc's creator says it has developed a human trait no other AI system has managed to imitate: common sense." - New Scientist (via)
posted by tvjunkie at 8:51 PM PST - 26 comments

How to Beat a Speeding Ticket, for those feeling rebellious. Work the system to your advantage.
posted by zardoz at 8:29 PM PST - 58 comments

Research at Purdue University yields answers to one of the world's largest unsolved mysteries.
posted by Ron at 8:10 PM PST - 12 comments

Prime Minister Paul Martin addresses the sponsorship scandal with a televised speech to the Canadian people. The Opposition is calling for Liberal blood. Here's some political fun from North of the Border. Will the Gomery Inquiry reveal the Liberals as a crooked party or did they just get caught for something every party does? This is stuff I though only happened to other countries...boy, was I wrong!
posted by LunaticFringe at 8:03 PM PST - 43 comments

While blaming Democrats still seems to be the rule, cracks appear to be forming in the far right's support of the Republican party. Some advocate a boycott on donations. Others want the party to take its cues from the new Pope. But, with some already paying the price for going to far out of the mainstream, is it feasible to think that a demand to be 'more conservative' or 'more Christian' will be heard?
posted by UseyurBrain at 6:58 PM PST - 14 comments

All roads lead to Apache. From Bert (.mp3) to Nas (.mp3), surf (.mp3) to electronica (.mp3), the audio genealogy of one influential tune. (via Soul-Sides)
posted by numlok at 6:25 PM PST - 26 comments

Early Readers or Proselytizing? ...Her father apparently agrees. "There is so much history here for Christians to enjoy," he says. "It's hard to believe that Egypt is a Muslim nation." Dr. Ibrahim asks his daughter what she thinks of Christianity. Sana replies, "I want to know why Allah let my mother die."--From Escape From Egypt, one of the Accelerated Reader series of books put out by Renaissance Learning, Inc., and in many many public schools around the country. A review of Escape From Egypt says this: ... In addition, to promoting Protestant Christianity, Morgan advocates home schooling. The story addresses the strengths of "home schooling" as opposed to public school instruction. ...Escape from Egypt is an addition to a multicultural curriculum as long as the reader understands the religious biases of the author and publisher. The publisher: Bethany House, whose purpose is to help Christians apply biblical truth in all areas of life--whether through a well-told story, a challenging devotional, or the message of an illustrated children's book.
Public elementary school students across the country are getting rewards and prizes for reading this book on their own, without teacher supervision or involvement and taking Renaissance Learning's reading comprehension quiz on a computer, again without any teacher involvement. +
posted by amberglow at 6:22 PM PST - 12 comments

Recording a movie in a theater is now likely to get you more time in jail than if you are found guilty of involuntary mansaughter.
posted by Mr_Zero at 5:05 PM PST - 47 comments

Ear candling is touted for removing earwax build-up, clearing sinuses, and even dislodging alien implants. This New Age version of Q-Tips has been around for centuries, yet the controversy over ear candling remains a burning issue. There are those who believe in its virtues while others warn that it's all bupkiss, and that's no dope.
posted by debralee at 4:50 PM PST - 40 comments

One key games. Retro Remakes, a reverse-engineer gaming siteand One Switch, an accessibility site, have launched a competition for the best game that can be played with a single key. There's still time to enter, and some entries have already been posted to the forums.
posted by Sparx at 3:19 PM PST - 11 comments

U.S. Concentration Camps: FEMA and the REX 84 Program. There over 800 prison camps in the United States, all fully operational and ready to receive prisoners. They are all staffed and even surrounded by full-time guards, but they are all empty. These camps are to be operated by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) should Martial Law need to be implemented in the United States and all it would take is a presidential signature on a proclamation and the attorney general's signature on a warrant to which a list of names is attached.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 2:31 PM PST - 76 comments

Microsoft pulls support for gay rights. Under pressure from a local conservative church, Microsoft - long honored for their progressive stance on GBLT rights - quietly pulled its support for a Washington State law that would have made discrimination based on sexual orientation illegal. Today, the Washington State Senate killed the bill by a vote of 24-25.
posted by falconred at 1:37 PM PST - 91 comments

Britain's new opposition party?! Despite outraising and outspending all other parties, Britain's conservative Tory party is falling in the polls to P.M. Tony Blair's "New Labour" party. This collapse seems likely to increase; just days after conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch indicated his love of cheap labour, his paper "The Sun" is endorsing Blair. What isn't being pointed out, though, is that the Liberal Democrats are gaining former Labour voters just as fast as Labour is gaining conservative voters. A British public opinion site indicates that 43% of its visitors support LibDem policies, while the Guardian's unofficial "poll-u-like" shows 45% support for the LibDems, even though The Guardian has encouraged its readers to "hold their nose" and vote for Blair. Given that prior election polls in Britain have been off by as much as 19%, could there be a major shift here?
posted by insomnia_lj at 12:40 PM PST - 32 comments

Did the new Pope swing the Presidential election last year? After brown-nosing the Vatican on the grounds of being pro-life President Bush convinced then-Cardinal Ratzinger to work on the American Catholic Church on his behalf. Ratzinger's response? This memo where Ratzi claimed that anyone (especially a Catholic politician - like Kerry) who campaigned and voted pro-choice was not only on the side of evil but was unworthy of receiving Communion and Americans probably shouldn't vote for him. According to Salon, this was perhaps what was behind Bush's 6 point increase in Catholic support from 2000, and the difference in the 2004 election.
posted by tsarfan at 12:23 PM PST - 48 comments

Dewanatron : a family of electronic instruments ‘which hazard unpredictable behaviors and self playing tendencies.’ See, for example, the Alphatron, the Dual-Primate Console, and the Courtesy Modulator. Besides his work as an instrument- and furniture-maker, the Dewanatrons’ co-creator, Brian Dewan, is a musician and singer who has collaborated with They Might Be Giants, among others. He is also a visual artist, who has created numerous filmstrips, and who was responsible for the ‘flying victrola’ design for the the Neutral Milk Hotel album ‘In The Aeroplane Over the Sea.’
posted by misteraitch at 12:12 PM PST - 9 comments

Art by Showchicken Also showcases his work on Flickr and on Fotolog.
posted by quasistoic at 11:10 AM PST - 5 comments

How to Survive a Zombie Attack. Here goes nothing: If you've ever wanted to have a full plan of surviving an impending Zombie attack, via k5.
posted by virga at 10:51 AM PST - 24 comments

We Come In Peace. "The following letters were written by employees of Playtime, an adult toy store in Edison, New Jersey, to accompany thirty-six vibrators sent as gifts to Iraqi women last October." Here's the original Operation Vibration website, what a wonderful thing!
posted by gsb at 9:04 AM PST - 39 comments

Melissa Kaplan's site is not just about green iguanas. Anapsid.org provides information on behavior, health, prey and feeding, captivity issues, and more regarding Cyclura (blue) iguanas, chelonians, amphibians, crocodilians, lizards, snakes, and even invertebrates and arachnids.
posted by breezeway at 9:02 AM PST - 5 comments

Sen. Rick Santorum, (R-Pa) introduced a bill in the Senate last week that would prohibit federal meteorologists from competing with companies such as AccuWeather and The Weather Channel which offer their own forecasts through paid services and free ad-supported Web sites. He says that as he reads the bill, a vast amount of federal weather data would be forced offline. "I believe I've paid for that data once. ... I don't want to have to pay for it again," said Scott Bradner, a technical consultant at Harvard University. The bill has been referred to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
posted by spock at 9:00 AM PST - 86 comments

"European governments are allowing Islamic fundamentalists to trample on the rights of Muslim women under the guise of respecting different cultures, campaigners said Monday, citing instances of forced marriage, domestic violence and genital mutilation. The activists, including outspoken Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali, called on European countries to do more to combat human-rights abuses in Muslim immigrant communities, particularly those directed against women." [+]
posted by jenleigh at 8:53 AM PST - 72 comments

"The Global Gag Rule Impact Project is a collaborative research effort ... the project's objective is to document the effects of the Global Gag Rule on the availability of life-saving family planning services, as well as efforts to address other major threats to public health, including HIV/AIDS and maternal deaths due to unsafe abortion." This interactive database allows you to explore the impact that the Mexico City Policy has had on healthcare worldwide.
posted by OmieWise at 8:17 AM PST - 2 comments

You can't say vagina in one Minnesota high school. A button bought at a production of the Vagina Monologues brings some students into conflict with the school.
posted by valis at 8:08 AM PST - 101 comments

Hitchcock's infamous shower scene from Psycho overlayed with the '98 remake by Gus Van Sant: .mov (via Waxy)
posted by dirtylittlemonkey at 7:58 AM PST - 22 comments

Competition gave rise to the robber fly, to trap-weaving tree ants, an ‘homosexual’ fungus, robot jockeys, logic-checking software, and to custom-made brass knuckles.
posted by dfowler at 7:23 AM PST - 14 comments

Lexicon: An RPG - The basic idea is that each player takes on the role of a scholar, from before scholarly pursuits became professionalized (or possibly after they ceased to be). You are cranky, opinionated, prejudiced and eccentric. You are also collaborating with a number of your peers -- the other players -- on the construction of an encyclopedia describing some historical period (possibly of a fantastic world).
posted by robocop is bleeding at 7:12 AM PST - 45 comments

Google is watching you.... "My Search History lets you easily view and manage your search history from any computer." Given the continuing concerns about Google's respect for privacy, is this a good thing?
posted by jefgodesky at 6:50 AM PST - 43 comments

I recalled a few of the Flickrazzi's who post the "how-to's" of their daily lives. For example, 7-how-7 works for a production company that produces blow-up dolls for the entertainment film and commercial industry (via BoingBoing today), underbunny works as a mortician, rickenbacker documents his life in fast food, and then there's a variety of active duty military folk who are documenting the mundane "over there", like ob1left, nevadog, At Ease, Doc Torres, enlisted cowboy, Nukeit1, JeffG, Luodanli, and the homsar. But if blogging at work can be bad, than I'm sure taking photos at work and sharing them with the interweb HAS to be worse.
posted by rzklkng at 6:36 AM PST - 35 comments

WWASP stung by alleged victims, goverment and watchdog organizations. The WorldWide Association of Specialty Schools, a program that manages a series of domestic and overseas behavior modification schools for "troubled teens" is under intense scrutiny right now by a lawmaker in Calfornia who just filed legislation requesting more oversight, officials in New York investigating various claims against their Ivy Ridge Academy (PDF) & Utah looking into Majestic Ranch, recently having an offer turned down to purchase property for a school in Boonville, Missouri, and having to file a lawsuit against the International Survivors Action Committee, a watchdog organization closely monitoring WWASP and its large network of educational consultants, recruiting companies, transport services, real estate ventures, and lots of Limited Liability shell companies.
posted by bkdelong at 5:33 AM PST - 11 comments

No time for Idle Hands :25 original paintings and drawings commemorating 19th-Century Women of the Plains & Prairies. (via)
posted by dhruva at 5:11 AM PST - 2 comments

Teenage Mum. A public information film for the gaming generation (embedded Quicktime movie). [via Edge]
posted by davehat at 2:50 AM PST - 14 comments

Who was Henry George? Now that those of us in the US are between tax day and Tax Freedom Day® I thought it would be useful to highlight an interesting alternative that for some reason never gets debated, the land value tax. As a quasi lefty libertarian I think the LVT is a near-perfect refinement that substantially mitigates the moral inconsistencies/failure modes of traditional neolibertarianism. Remember, to prove legal title to your land you must trace it back to the person who stole it!
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 1:49 AM PST - 18 comments