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It just keeps unravelling...Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: “What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made". I suppose now we have extra proof of the bumbling and fumbling of GWB, but now it's almost overkill.
posted by Kickstart70 at 9:24 PM PST - 56 comments

Tracks of Swimming Dinosaur found in Wyoming The tracks of a previously unknown, two-legged swimming dinosaur have been identified along the shoreline of an ancient inland sea that covered Wyoming 165 million years ago, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder graduate student.
posted by hostile7 at 9:22 PM PST - 15 comments

The Parents Television Council has released their list of the top 10 worst shows for family viewing. The Fox network led the way with six of the ten shows, Family Guy, American Dad, The War at Home, The O.C., That 70s Show and Arrested Devlopment. The PTC also released a top-nine list of shows that are family friendly (they claim they couldn't find a 10th show to complete the list), leading the way is Three Wishes and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. They also accuse Fox of being deceptive with their marketing of their Sunday night lineup, and using cartoons to pedal the "filth" to children.
posted by SirOmega at 8:22 PM PST - 57 comments

"Sleuths Crack Tracking Code Discovered in Color Printers". Does this creep anyone else out? Some more pictures of the code. It gets scarier: "But Seth Schoen, the EFF technologist who led the organization's research, said he had seen the coding on documents produced by printers that were at least 10 years old." So who knows how long this has actually been going on?
posted by vodkadin at 7:27 PM PST - 49 comments

Climate Mash (Flash, silly). A project of Clear The Air.
posted by homunculus at 7:19 PM PST - 9 comments

"But nine seasons on, South Park is a bona fide cultural phenomenon that has risen above its own raunch to become an up-to-the-minute social commentary on some of the most controversial issues of the day." A NY Times piece on SP as a significant cultural signpost.
posted by JPowers at 6:38 PM PST - 60 comments

Looks like George W Bush's Hague Invasion Act might need amending to become a Madrid Invasion Act, following a Spanish court order for the arrest of three US soldiers in response to the "Palestine Hotel" incident. [newsfilter].
posted by wilful at 6:32 PM PST - 20 comments

Those crazy Scientologists are at it again. This time, a New Zealand website owner has been ordered to relinquish his clever domain name, scienTOMogy.info under threat of legal action. The site, an ugly-looking collection of links to other Scientology-debunking websites, serves as a clearinghouse for information about one of the church's most notorious members, Tom Cruise. CoS claims the domain is similar enough to their official website address to be confusing to Internet users.
posted by wakko at 4:23 PM PST - 42 comments

Aardman Animations Showreel featuring old commercials, new commercials, and shorts. Elsewhere: Creature Comforts (plus behind-the-scenes stuff). [via]
posted by kirkaracha at 4:04 PM PST - 6 comments

Transparent Billboards Kasia Kesicka, at the Academy of Fine and Applied Arts in Poznan, creates a commentary on public space in various cities in Poland for his MFA final project in Photography. The result, mirroring the transparent laptop trick, is stunning and poignant {flash}
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 1:55 PM PST - 36 comments

Arrest warrant issued for Tom Delay. A Texas court issued a warrant today for former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's arrest, and set an initial $10,000 bail as a routine step before his first court appearance following indictments for money laundering and crimimal conspiracy. Lawyers for Tom Delay scrambled yesterday in negotiations with Texas authorities in an attempt to have Mr. Delay avoid the indignity of public arrest and handcuffing.
posted by three blind mice at 1:29 PM PST - 79 comments

"Yo Butt Aint Made For That!" Unintentionally hilarious sermon given by sassy black preacher who blames lesbianism for his sons inability to get a date for the prom. Rev. Willie F. Wilson of Union Temple Baptist Church is well known for being a polarizing figure. However, it appears that rampant lesbianism has not impaired Hamani Wilson’s dating life.
posted by skjønn at 12:36 PM PST - 70 comments

The Psychology of Tyranny - A 1971 Stanford University experiment seemed to prove that power corrupts, and absolute power corrects absolutely - and perhaps recent world and national events would bear that out. But is it really power that's the problem? A recent study [more from researchers, here] from the Universities of St Andrews and Exeter suggests that it isn't power - but the failure of those who are anti-tyranny to themselves exercise appropriate power and to work together - that is more to blame for tyranny's results. If true, what needs to change to push back against tyranny in the world today? [first post, btw]
posted by muckalucka at 11:59 AM PST - 22 comments

Some nifty 3D models for test-driving the Universal 3D capabilities of Adobe Reader 7.
posted by nthdegx at 11:54 AM PST - 13 comments

Firefox 100 Million Downloads
posted by webmeta at 11:36 AM PST - 56 comments

Apple announces Aperture: their answer to the professional photograph editing market. I wonder what the folks at Adobe think about this? I know I'm just aching for something, _anything_ to compete with Adobe — as its customer service went down the tubes a few years back.
posted by silusGROK at 11:05 AM PST - 86 comments

Whistle-Blower or Troublemaker, Bunny Greenhouse Isn't Backing Down Another trouble maker can't keep her mouth shut !Bunny Greenhouse was once the perfect bureaucrat, an insider, the top procurement official at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Then the 61-year-old Greenhouse lost her $137,000-a-year post after questioning the plump contracts awarded to Halliburton in the run-up to the war in Iraq. It has made her easy to love for some, easy to loathe for others, but it has not made her easy to know.
posted by Postroad at 10:31 AM PST - 23 comments

Creationist author Michael Behe: "Astrology is a scientific theory". If, that is, you use his definition of theory. Behe, you may recall, is the grand high poobah of "intelligent design", the theory that states that somebody (who totally doesn't have to be God) created designed all life on Earth. It seems the latest iteration of the Scopes Monkey Trial isn't going so well for Mr. Behe. Even the courtroom audience is laughing at him.
posted by darukaru at 10:09 AM PST - 62 comments

"Undeclared Global Weather War" : you're now living in a bad James Bond flick Yeah, I know: a Hoagland morass.'Cept there's that damn pending weather mod bill in Congress, the anomalous "tuning fork" patterns that seem to guide recent hurricanes ( see main link, esp. Ophelia footage ) , the USAF document, "Weather as a Force Multiplier", the '97 quote by Secretary of defense William Cohen..... Is somebody lobbing Hurricanes at the US ? Weather sure has been weird, I'll say that. Could it be......TeslaFinger™ ?
posted by troutfishing at 9:58 AM PST - 53 comments

Madison Man is no longer John Doe. If you read the article noting every occurrence of the word "Madison" and how each differs from the others you'll see why I find this nifty. (I think they'll eventually decide it was suicide.)
posted by davy at 9:49 AM PST - 17 comments

If you liked the Kleptones and other posts about mashups, you might have caught "raiding the 20th century" in early 2004. Well, DJ Food has completely updated it for 2005 and now clocks in at a full 59 minutes of monster mashup mix madness. Download the mp3 here and enjoy the eclectic sonic landscape.
posted by mathowie at 9:43 AM PST - 14 comments

The proposed Trinity River Calatrava Bridge in Dallas. As part of an urban renewal and ecological renewal project called the Trinity River Corridor Project, the city of Dallas has contracted with famed architect Santiago Calatrava to design a landmark bridge. The massive project, in addtion to the three signature bridges, is supposed to create right downtown two lakes, a forest, wetlands, outdoor recreation and overall economic renewal to Downtown Dallas. Of course, this massive renewal project depends large part on public funding. Some discussion exists whether large scale public works projects should be undertaken on the public dime. (Previous discussion of Calatrava)
posted by dios at 9:27 AM PST - 15 comments

What a Tangled Web We Weave ...
posted by nofundy at 9:01 AM PST - 6 comments

Remember our good pal from NowThatsFuckedUp.com, the one who was trading war photos from soldiers for access to his amateur porn site? Well, looks like he's traded the whole shebang for a stint in the Polk County Jail for some 300+ counts of obscenity charges. Held on $151,000 bail, he (or his hood friends outside da joint) have set up a new site - http://www.freechris.org - with significantly less homegrown pr0n and corpse shots, and significantly more whining for donations to dude's legal defense fund, starting at $2.
Personally, and in pure technical terminology, I find the whole thing to be really "icky," yet, maybe it's a good thing that people can see the reality of war SOMEWHERE, since the fine folks of the fourth estate don't seem too interested in the word "reality", unless it's followed by the word "television." Either way, there are free speech issues at play here as well it seems. As Voltaire so wiselely stated: "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to be a douchebag."
posted by stenseng at 8:43 AM PST - 40 comments

Werner Von Wallenrod's Fun Page of Novelty Rap Records [Warning: animated jellybeans & embedded audio] • Includes reviews of albums by: Joe Piscopo, Rich Little, Rappin' Granny, Rappin' Principal, Rappin' Rambo, Joe Pesci, 2 Live Jews, Rodney Dangerfield, Arsenio Hall aka 'Chunky A', The '85 Chicago Bears, Mel Brooks, Elvira & more.
posted by hall of robots at 7:57 AM PST - 18 comments

hoops & boobies (ever so slightly NSFW)(large-ish download)
posted by tarantula at 7:43 AM PST - 15 comments

Secret information concerning the Black American Troops. We must prevent the rise of any pronounced degree of intimacy between French officers and black officers. We may be courteous and amiable with these last, but we cannot deal with them on the same plane as with the white American officers without deeply wounding the latter. In August 1918, the French liaison officer at the American Expeditionary Force Headquarters gave his fellow officers a primer in US-style racial segregation, urging the military and civil authorities to implement similar procedures on French soil, as the local populations were felt by US authorities to be much too friendly towards American Black troops (PDF, page 13) (see also the first chapter of Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light). This memorandum, however, was never distributed and other similar leaflets were eventually destroyed by the French government. One soldier of the 93rd Division wrote his mother: These French people don't bother with no color line business. They treat us so good that the only time I ever know I'm colored is when I look in the glass.
posted by elgilito at 6:49 AM PST - 18 comments

Grandmas protest the war in Iraq and get the cuffs Funny, great story. We tried to ring the bell at the booth, but no one answered," Wile said. "I saw a head poke up from behind the counter every once in a while and then duck back down. I don't know what they were afraid of. Maybe they don't know how to deal with a bunch of grannies."
posted by mountainmambo at 5:36 AM PST - 84 comments

Sixty years ago today, artist N.C. Wyeth died when the car he was driving was hit by a train. He illustrated a long shelf of children's classics, including Robinson Crusoe, Last of the Mohicans, and of course Treasure Island. Wyeth was also the patriarch of an artistic family, including his son Andrew and grandson Jamie. He honed his craft at Howard Pyle's school of illustration. You can take a virtual tour of his studio, and see the original paintings at the Brandywine River Museum.
posted by marxchivist at 4:53 AM PST - 12 comments

Come on, the inventors of The Spazz had to realize they weren't choosing the best name for a wheelchair. And such thoughtful marketing: "Have you been dreaming of that unique custom wheelchair that would not cost you an arm and a leg?" [more inside]
posted by allen.spaulding at 4:48 AM PST - 37 comments

Think your bum don't stink?
posted by SharQ at 2:57 AM PST - 41 comments