September 17, 2004

The 50 weirdest Guinness World Records

The 50 weirdest Guinness World Records
posted by bob sarabia at 11:37 PM PST - 21 comments

Ray Caesar

"I was born in London, England on October 26 1958, the youngest of four and much to my parent's surprise, I was born a dog." The rich inner life of artist Ray Caesar. {keep clicking to see details of prints}
posted by dobbs at 9:37 PM PST - 14 comments

Goodbye Romania

Warning - by visiting this site, you will destroy it. Each visit will remove one pixel from these photographs. However, we will tell you a story. It's a story about Romania, which is to say, it's a story about change.
posted by willnot at 8:37 PM PST - 17 comments

Nasty car wreck caught on live TV.

A dangerous intersection in Tampa... then, disaster strikes, on live TV. [note: Windows Media, high bandwidth, graphic]
posted by crunchland at 8:06 PM PST - 55 comments

Should a doctor be able to refuse to help patients?

Conscience Clauses and Health Care --"Yes, we need to respect individual freedom of religion. But at what point does it cross the line of not providing essential medical care? At what point is it malpractice?" she asked. "If someone's beliefs interfere with practicing their profession, perhaps they should do something else." The Protection of Conscience Project feels differently: Protection of Conscience Laws are needed because powerful interests are inclined to force health care workers and others to participate, directly or indirectly, in morally controversial procedures, while NARAL says: ... Many of these clauses go far beyond respecting individuals' beliefs to the point of harming women by not providing them with full information or access to medical treatment. Medicine, not ideology, should determine medical decisions.
posted by amberglow at 7:33 PM PST - 69 comments

Sign the dotted line!

Military recruiting getting slow? Here's one solution. Scary.
posted by jeremy at 7:28 PM PST - 14 comments

Horsehead Pillow

Godfather Horsehead Pillow.
posted by brownpau at 3:36 PM PST - 14 comments

Rock n' Roll

This is Rock and Roll [3mb wmv via boingboing]
posted by cmicali at 3:30 PM PST - 15 comments

Votergasm

How to contact your elected officials. A civics lesson for sexy people, from the good people at Votergasm. (NSFW, in the Victoria's Secret kind of way.)
posted by PrinceValium at 2:52 PM PST - 6 comments

Pay to play...

Tomorrow is National Public Lands Day, a day where you are invited into the national parks to build trails, plant trees and help improve YOUR parks. These national parks normally charge a fee for regular use. It is a growing trend to charge the populace to use their own public lands. Some people are for them (PDF), and others are against them.
posted by BrodieShadeTree at 2:50 PM PST - 24 comments

Finally Answered: Star Trek vs. Star Wars

Geek Nirvana: Star Trek's Federation vs Star Wars' Empire By the Numbers

Because we know the debate rages on......

Now if we could only resolve Kirk vs. Picard for once and all.
via Linux Notes
posted by fenriq at 2:38 PM PST - 45 comments

Canada's True Hero.

Canada's True Hero The author Douglas Coupland has a book coming out in 2005 about fellow Canadian Terry Fox. Until then, read this interesting, but heart-warming article.
posted by grefo at 2:27 PM PST - 11 comments

Why You Should Ignore The Gallup Poll This Morning - And Maybe All Of Theirs

Why You Should Ignore The Gallup Poll This Morning - And Maybe All Of Theirs If you support the Dems, you might want to pass this on!
"This morning we awoke to the startling news that despite a flurry of different polls this week all showing a tied race, the venerable Gallup Poll, as reported widely in the media (USA Today and CNN) today, showed George W. Bush with a huge 55%-42% lead over John Kerry amongst likely voters. The same Gallup Poll showed an 8-point lead for Bush amongst registered voters (52%-44%). Before you get discouraged by these results, you should be more upset that Gallup gets major media outlets to tout these polls and present a false, disappointing account of the actual state of the race. Why?"...
posted by Postroad at 2:05 PM PST - 58 comments

I'll bid on you til there's nothing left but crumbs! Then I'll bid on the crumbs

Friday Ebay Feedback Madness
posted by Frasermoo at 11:31 AM PST - 53 comments

Ecological burial

Capsula Mundi is an Italian project to promote ecological burial. Alternatively, those who prefer the sea can become reefs. A Swedish company has come up with a freezing method. [Via Aeiou and MoFi.]
posted by homunculus at 11:19 AM PST - 10 comments

Connolly 100 updated

100 key books “Cyril Connolly chose 100 key books from England, France and America first published between 1880 and 1950 to represent ‘The Modern Movement’.”

This site asks: “How does the list look now, in the first decade of the 21st Century?” “an additional list of key books is needed for 1950 to 2000. What should be included and why? Does Connolly's selection criteria need adjusting [just England (when so many of the books are from Ireland), France and America!] and if so how should this be done, remembering that Connolly was very precise in delineating the list as Key books, not best books?”
posted by Grod at 9:43 AM PST - 18 comments

I found some of your life

I found some of your life. You are unknown to me. Your camera's memory card was in a taxi; I have it now. I am going to post one of your pictures each day. I will also narrate as if I were you. Maybe you will come here and reclaim this piece of your life. (via the Morning News)
posted by Ufez Jones at 8:23 AM PST - 95 comments

No schadenfreude in death

A decision has been made to attack Fallujah after the first Tuesday in November, after the election: The violent political albatross of a secret Iraq with canceled elections.
posted by four panels at 7:52 AM PST - 76 comments

The new browser war

Firefox 1.0 Preview Release is now available. The Spread Firefox site hopes to see a million downloads, and they've already passed the halfway mark. The advantages of Firefox have been previously discussed on MeFi, but this version includes an interesting new feature - Live Bookmarks, which allow you to view RSS news and blog headlines in the bookmarks toolbar or bookmarks menu. Obsessively checking MetaFilter is now easier than ever.
posted by Stuart_R at 7:36 AM PST - 51 comments

landline, schmandline.

Hold the phone. You probably already know that many Americans are ditching their land lines in favor of cell phones:
It is part of a generational shift to wireless, says Leap's chief executive, Harvey White. "Our demographic is younger, and when people start a household today they simply never bother to get a land line."
But were you aware that pollsters don't call cell phones? Media saturation, changes in communications technology, and missed demographics (americans abroad, for example) seem to make polls increasingly irrelevant. (first link via e-v.com)
posted by whatnot at 7:24 AM PST - 21 comments

You're living for nothing now, I hope you're keeping some kind of record.

70 things you may or may not know about Leonard Cohen (a nice accompaniment to this mefi thread of yore) [via]
posted by shoepal at 7:07 AM PST - 15 comments

Avertising Cover, Bisect, Cinderella, and so on...

Dear MEFI, I just love Alphabetilately, and I think you will too! Yours sincerely, taz.
posted by taz at 7:01 AM PST - 19 comments

Who Shot JRun?

Furbrella [single JPEG link post]
posted by Pretty_Generic at 6:04 AM PST - 9 comments

The Interesting Yezidis

Devil Worship: The Sacred Books and Traditions of the Yezidiz, by Isya Joseph, 1919. 'This is one of the only public domain sources of information on the religious beliefs of the Yezidi, a small group originally from the northern region of Iraq. Although they speak Kurdish, they are a distinct population from the Kurds. The Yezidi are notable because they have been described as devil-worshippers, which has naturally led to constant persecution by the dominant Islamic culture of the region ... They have many unique beliefs, such as that the first Yezidi were created by Adam by parthenogenesis separately from Eve ... ' New on sacred-texts.com.
posted by plep at 5:44 AM PST - 4 comments

Soldiers say they are being threatened with Iraq duty

Another good one for "the troops". Iraq is being used to blackmail soldiers to re-enlist, or else...
posted by acrobat at 2:12 AM PST - 37 comments

You've got Gmail!

Gmail checking through Trillian (plugin) "You've Got Gmail" is a Gmail notifier plugin for Trillian Pro. I thought this was a pretty nifty plugin for all the gmailers out there - go see!
posted by erratic frog at 12:27 AM PST - 4 comments

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