Folk Music. Stefan Wirz and Hideki Watanabe pay homage to their favorites. Check out Hideki's Muscle Shoals page for another slice of his Americana pie. Or click on a name--Eric Von Schmidt, say--on Stefan's completist, slow loading page and wallow in pictures and stories... Then there's the Richard & Mimi Fariña website. Jan Hoiberg's Band site is another. I love labors of love.

And don't forget the Bauls of Bengal or the secrets of John Wesley Harding revealed!

And note, newsfilterians, you can now order Mickey Jone's home movies from the '66 tour, too. I'm going to see the Bobster tomorrow, so I've been thinking of these things.
posted by y2karl at 9:19 PM PST - 18 comments

U.S. Has No Right to Invade Iraq, Canada Says
posted by oissubke at 7:50 PM PST - 48 comments

In spite of his promise that human rights would take precedence over concerns of state sovereignty, Kofi Annan's philosophy of neutrality and nonviolence in the face of genocide and dictators, costs over 7,000 lives at Srebrenica, and 800,000 in Rwanda alone.
posted by semmi at 6:46 PM PST - 18 comments

The eXile's Gary Brecher, as offensive and amusing as usual, pondering the future of war: "The only enjoyable wars will be the mismatches, when the machine armies are unleashed on the savages. We've seen some of them lately: the NATO air forces working out on Serbia, the US and British planes playing with the Iraqis like a couple of kittens with a half-dead mouse. They're the wars people will enjoy, because the targets are so easy, so undefended, that there are lots of good gun-camera shots. But these wars have a little weakness: they never solve the problem."
posted by GriffX at 5:17 PM PST - 16 comments

The Street Harassment Project sounds like a pretty good thing. Street harassment has been a crusade for my girlfriend for some time now, and it looks like she's not alone.
posted by The Michael The at 2:31 PM PST - 154 comments

"The Antipsychiatry Coalition is a nonprofit volunteer group consisting of people who feel we have been harmed by psychiatry - and of our supporters. We created this website to warn you of the harm routinely inflicted on those who receive psychiatric 'treatment' and to promote the democratic ideal of liberty for all law-abiding people that has been abandoned in the U.S.A., Canada, and other supposedly democratic nations." Hours of reading, but their report to President Bush is a good summary.
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:14 PM PST - 44 comments

The power of Western culture illustrated with the story of Miss World 2001. Agbani Darego of Nigeria is single-handedly responsible for a radical change in the feminine beauty ideal in her native country: voluptuous women are out, thin girls are in. A stunning illustration of the cultural power of the West, and a good example to think about what it means - for the better and for the worse - to those under its spell.
posted by ugly_n_sticky at 1:55 PM PST - 14 comments

Want to sue some Terrorists? Put a Public Notice in your Classifieds! Seems like some folks have decided that while they are suing the terrorists, bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and the whole Taliban posse, they'll put public notices in their local classified sections asking bin Laden and crew to get in touch with their lawyers. What an idea.
posted by djspicerack at 1:43 PM PST - 7 comments

"Blaze di fire mek we bun dem!!!! (Bun dem!!!!)" - ["chi chi man",TOK]

What's a boy to do, when your 'family' is openly threatened on the radio with assault & murder by nominated artistes ?
Protest at the 'Outrage'!
posted by dash_slot- at 1:10 PM PST - 12 comments

Blue man runs for Senate Stan Jones, the Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate in Montana suffers from argyria, a condition in which the skin becomes stained a permanent shade of blue. How do you come down with it? You drink lots of colloidal silver. Jones started mixing his own shortly before Y2K to help boost his immune system in the antibiotic-short apocolypse he was sure was coming. No word if he is now engaged in weird behavior involving metal tubes.
posted by agaffin at 12:44 PM PST - 27 comments

A Sad Day. Sometimes it seems like all the people I admire die before their time. It's a long list: Dan Eldon, Ned Gillette, Ciriello, Galen Rowell, Alex Lowe, Dan Osman, (plus many others), and now: Goran Kropp, died a few days ago. "The Crazy Swede" became famous for riding a bicycle from Stockholm to Everest, climbing it solo and without oxygen, and riding back. This story is told in Ultimate High:My Everest Odyssey.
posted by ig at 12:25 PM PST - 7 comments

Eat flaming death, minicomputer mongrels! That quote was made famous through the old comic book CPU Wars. The comic chronicled the battles between two companies: IPM (Impossible to Program Machines); HEC (Human Engineered Computers); and the people involved. It is now archived, in its entirety, on the web.
posted by moz at 12:17 PM PST - 6 comments

Kat's Window on Thailand Kat's slice-of-life articles on what it is really like to live in Thailand. (Kat writes her weekly column for the Bangkok Post.)
posted by konolia at 11:54 AM PST - 3 comments

Chicago moves toward reparations: When vying for city contracts, companies must search their records and disclose whether they've profited from slavery.
posted by aladfar at 11:32 AM PST - 49 comments

Shots Fired at the UN - So much for heightened security.
posted by mikhail at 10:50 AM PST - 32 comments

if you're in California you're undoubtedly aware of the bitter intrastate rivalry. if you're not here, now you can get caught up: Slowcal vs. NOcal
posted by donkeysuck at 9:59 AM PST - 30 comments

A restaurant's advertisement runs during a special on gay weddings, which causes a christian conservative group to mention said restaurant in a story on their web site, which might alienate some of the restaurant's patrons. So the restaurant tells the AP that the advertisement was not meant for that programming, and that the restaurant only supports "non-controversial" programming, which brings the ire of an even bigger minority group. Applebee's just can't seem to win when it comes to courting the non-mainstream market.
posted by benjh at 9:58 AM PST - 24 comments

Another child-bakes-in-car story, but this one is especially heartbreaking: single mother trying to keep her temp job has no child care for her developmentally disabled daughter and leaves her in the car out of desperation. Every summer there's a rash of these cases, with some eliciting more hatred and disgust than others. What gives -- the general decline of parenting/morals/personal responsibility, or should we get serious about child care in the land of "family values"? (Thanks to Jim Romenesko.)
posted by serafinapekkala at 9:44 AM PST - 41 comments

Rumsfeld's Rules [For educational use only] Donald Rumsfeld's Management Rules. Once available via the DOD website; now all copies have been pulled from government servers. This is one of the only copies still online. Read it ... while you STILL can... Soon available for sale in a print edition. Does it contain Hidden War Strategies? Can a US offical make money on the sale of "management techniques" developed and revised while serving as a government agent? Is not everything Rumsfeld produced in his capacity as a government agent owned by the US public? Discuss.
posted by mfoight at 9:25 AM PST - 28 comments

Evolution Robotics has just released the ER1 kit, which allows laptop owners to turn their machine into a robot. Users can point-and-click to link pre-defined behaviours together in order to "train" the robot for specific tasks (such as fetching a beer from the fridge) and can share these tasks with other robot owners by posting them on the company's website
posted by sanitycheck at 9:10 AM PST - 4 comments

Shootings in Montgomery County, Maryland - In the past 15 hours, 5 seemingly random people have been shot and killed, possibly by two men driving around in a White SUV. The county's schools are currently in lockdown.
posted by emptybowl at 9:01 AM PST - 61 comments

Only in Iran, kissing a mid-age actress on an award ceremony could be so politically effective, both actress and the young director are in court now. Hardliners gathered at a mosque and ranted against reformists and western culture. The day after, a high-rank official was arrested because he had let those guys go after the ceremony. What would happen if Oscars was held in Iran?
posted by hoder at 8:35 AM PST - 8 comments

Revealed! Who's REALLY been dipping into your stash!
posted by adamms222 at 8:23 AM PST - 31 comments

On the all-important question of power-the efficacy of power, the morality of power, the desirability of power-Americans and European perspectives are diverging. This article is a good analysis of the divergent Euro-American opinions. Also brings Kant's "Perpetual Peace" into play. Seeing as the former bloodiest continent has been tamed since WWII, to what extent do the Europeans have a point? Where do the flaws exist in their logic-and where/when should hard power be utilized to bring about longer-lasting peace?
posted by tgrundke at 8:16 AM PST - 2 comments

A Gentleman's Battle Sounds like a good idea to ME.... seems a bit more fair than the "World's Strongest Military" versus an army on it's last legs.
posted by Espoo2 at 8:08 AM PST - 45 comments

Osama bin Laden hasn't been mentioned in a presidential speech in seven months.
posted by trioperative at 8:07 AM PST - 22 comments

US Foreign Policy Goals - Condoleeza Rice. Only $29.95 from C-SPAN, well worth it. Will clear up many misconceptions. Unfortunately, thanks to macho chest thumping and grunting by prominent talking heads on camera, the Rice message isn't getting across. (Free transcripts instead of $29.95 tapes might help.) Intelligent criticism of the sea change in foreign policy, from elder statesman George Kennan. What good does it do us to have information available on the web if we can't afford to buy it?
posted by sheauga at 8:02 AM PST - 4 comments

That's whack. CNN Headline News general manager Rolando Santos told the San Francisco Chronicle this week that he's looking to mix "the lingo of our people" -- words like "whack" and "ill" -- into newscasts to attract young people.
posted by pizzasub at 7:19 AM PST - 54 comments

Health care and politics seem to be popular topics on MeFi; here is a story that combines them both. It seems that the Libertarian senate candidate in Montana turned himself blue with a medically questionable remedy. He seems unconcerned; however, this lady is not too happy about her experience with colloidal silver.
posted by TedW at 6:40 AM PST - 22 comments

KPMG Consulting is now BearingPoint "Employees briefly rallied behind the chief executive's surname, Blazer, but that's also the name of a Chevrolet sport-utility vehicle. The name BearingPoint is based on navigational terms that signify 'setting a direction to an end point,' the company said." It seems like this one's going to last a bit longer than Monday did.
posted by dayvin at 6:12 AM PST - 16 comments

The world's funniest joke. The results are in. Here it is. Using science, British researchers have determined the funniest joke in the world.
posted by mert at 6:04 AM PST - 149 comments

Barbra Streisand misquotes Shakespeare. She recited the lines believed to be from the play Julius Caesar, as she urged the party to oppose the Republican stance on Iraq and the erosion of civil liberties under President George W Bush.

This coming after the rumor that her recent letter to House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt was ridden with typos and misspellings. Oi vey!
posted by gwong at 4:48 AM PST - 48 comments

Gambling Online a risky business... It is also big business. There are thousands of casinos out there, and the Vegas heavyweights are now starting to come on-line (though not for American players). The business has got its fair share of sharks and evil operators, but there's an awful lot of internet gamblers out there. A recent bill got through the House of Representatives outlawing on-line gaming in the US (though it probably won't get through the Senate to become law). Are any mefi's out there regular on-line gamblers? What do you think of current developments? The government says nuh-uh, but the players and the casinos say more tables! more slots! more spins!
posted by humuhumu at 3:34 AM PST - 14 comments

The president's real goal in Iraq Assumption is that this is to be an undeclared true beginning of American imperialism, as America takes on role of the policeman of the world. Overwrought or spot on?
posted by Postroad at 3:29 AM PST - 43 comments