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September 11th panel working to overcome conspiracy theories.
posted by thedailygrowl at 11:48 PM PST - 33 comments

City-Data has a lot of statistics on about every city, town and village in the US. While there is nothing new about this service, I enjoyed being able to compare cities and towns of interest. What inspired me to post it here though, are the pages of random pictures submitted to the site from all over the country. Basically, you get a diverse collage of how people see their own locals. Here's a nice example.
posted by Recockulous at 8:52 PM PST - 9 comments

My Secret LIfe as a Prostitute - A diary about my hidden life as an independent escort, erotic provider, prostitute, whore, call girl, hooker ... whatever you wish to call me. Updated practically daily. A truly fascinating read, probably NSFW, but no pictures save for the artistic one at the top and very little in the way of nasty sex-type words.
posted by ashbury at 8:03 PM PST - 39 comments

Aid world rethinks role in Iraq -- As aid agencies continue to evaluate their work in Iraq, many are coming to the uncomfortable conclusion that their decision to deploy was driven more by politics than local needs.
posted by amberglow at 7:38 PM PST - 2 comments

Not Just Whistling Dixie: Is The South, Like The Past, A Different Country? An article by Jacob Levenson in the Columbia Journalism Review retraces the obligatory, almost stereotypical steps of the innocent, enlightened Yank lost and confused in the South. Is it the usual shtick or is there something genuinely befuddled and even "foreign" to it?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 7:27 PM PST - 77 comments

This is what we do to looters (3Mb windows media video) This clip comes from Frontline, showing a US tank crew confronting some Iraqis taking some wood. I'll give a quick preview: it's probably not the best way for Americans to build US-Iraq relations. [via rc3]
posted by mathowie at 5:38 PM PST - 121 comments

A New Typeface for Yale The Yale typeface is available to Yale employees, students, and authorized contractors for use in Yale publications and communications. It may not be used for personal or business purposes, and it may not be distributed to non-Yale personnel.
posted by ColdChef at 5:33 PM PST - 38 comments

What Happened to Joe Frank?
posted by ghastlyfop at 4:13 PM PST - 25 comments

The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy.
posted by hama7 at 2:23 PM PST - 3 comments

The Wal-Mart Myth (or, why higher wages mean higher profits.)
posted by Blue Stone at 1:08 PM PST - 28 comments

The maps of perception.
2nd link: java applet.
posted by Gyan at 11:11 AM PST - 6 comments

For those that use SpamAssassin, you may have noticed a degrading service since January 2004. As usual, Google has the Answer - it seems a spammer paid $200 an overly helpful geek on Google Answers to detail exactly how SpamAssassin works... I wonder if said geek ever got the money?
posted by wibbler at 11:10 AM PST - 27 comments

"With his blue ox, Emily Dickenson, Walt Whitman traveled across young America . . . and helped the nation grow into the angry powerhouse it is today." End of the year (2000), pressure from Mr. Farlow to take the class seriously and pick a real poet, Honors Student has 15 cups of coffee and cranks out a masterpiece . . . Not Walt Whitman. Anyone have any information on teacher, student, or their subsequent careers? (via Blogdex)
posted by palancik at 8:10 AM PST - 34 comments

Victorian Light and Magic Thomas Weynants' Early Visual Media site describes and illustrates a range of nineteenth century technologies for producing and projecting images and illusions, including phantasmagoria, Pepper's ghost, optical toys such as anamorphoses, steroscopes and stereo photographs, imaging techniques such as the physiontrace, and genres such as diableries (visions of hell) . (Links in site labelled 'nudes' or 'risque' NSFW in a Victorian risque kind of way.)
posted by carter at 7:15 AM PST - 9 comments

Holding Pattern is a screensaver for Mac OS X that generates photo-realistic simulations of the view from a flying airplane window.
posted by Mwongozi at 6:16 AM PST - 17 comments

Hey Crackhead: An engineer rants. Via random($foo).
posted by timeistight at 4:20 AM PST - 34 comments

Ugandan Discussions. Forty years of covers from the British satirical magazine Private Eye, indexed by date and subject. Highlights include Lyndon Johnson (from 1965), Ariel Sharon (from 1982), the Diana car crash and September 11. But above all it's fascinating to see how the magazine's style of satire has changed over the years.
posted by verstegan at 2:10 AM PST - 4 comments

24 Hour Comics dot com: April 24 was 24-Hour Comics Day. Similar to weekend novels, people are supposed to gather and work on a comic and try to complete it, start to finish, within 24-hours (though there are some variations). Championed (or invented?) by Scott McCloud (previously discussed here), you can celebrate either by trying to do one on your own, or reading some written by others, including Neil Gaiman and Kevin Eastman.
posted by synecdoche at 12:14 AM PST - 4 comments