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This handwritten digital clock is the best use of flash I've seen in a long time. Maybe ever.
posted by sklero at 10:19 PM PST - 31 comments

Journal of a new COBRA recruit. "I report to COBRA boot camp out in Utah in the middle of June. The recruiter guy said that everyone around there thinks it's where some crazy old Mormon lives with all his wives. I'm not supposed to say anything about it to anyone. I'm supposed to tell Mom and Dad that I'm going off to work for the phone company."
posted by owillis at 8:48 PM PST - 22 comments

Forget Robert Redford! Whispering is for babies, librarians and over-the-hill actors: these horses sing!
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 8:06 PM PST - 9 comments

Looking Back Suddenly it hits. You realize you are three, four, five decades old, and you become sentimental, nostalgic, remembering only what you want to remember. Care to share some of your memories of the 90s, 80s, 70s, 60s, (50s?) (40s?).
posted by Voyageman at 5:39 PM PST - 35 comments

Willie Horton returns
posted by Beholder at 5:27 PM PST - 9 comments

"You will not be able to save or create new documents", the MS Office XP (Re-)Activation Wizard said to me this afternoon. You can imagine my horror, when I sat down to print off my housemate's coursework, only to discover that the floppy drive I'd reattached so that I could get to her document had spurred Office XP into an unwelcome data embargo. Be warned, MeFites: Significant hardware changes piss Microsoft off! This is especially dangerous for those of us who... er... can't seem to find our original store-bought fully licensed Office CDs.
Even though it's been lurking a while, I'd never heard of it. Is this a justifiable (ha!) anti-piracy technique or another excellent reason not to hand in Uni assignments on time? ("I'm sorry sir; Microsoft ate my homework") Either way, I won't be able to check my email in Outlook for a while.
Until then, thank God for openoffice.org.
posted by armoured-ant at 4:04 PM PST - 64 comments

Howard Stern - movie producer He is is going to remake Porky's and Rock 'N' Roll High School. "If I say to an audience, particularly my audience, this is 'Howard Stern Presents,' it means something to them," Stern said. "It means that it's going to be crazy. It means that it's going to be different, and they know I'm not going to be giving them any schlock."
posted by BarneyFifesBullet at 3:11 PM PST - 17 comments

The Political Graveyard -- It all started innocently enough.....I was reading a piece by a professor of media and journalism studies who wondered: Was Paul Wellstone murdered?" and cited an unusual number of democrats who had died in plane crashes. Was it true, I wondered? -- My search led me to The Political Graveyard, with it's endless categorizations of the details in the deaths of US politicians. Deaths by religious affiliation, politicians killed by poison or gunfights, opium overdoses or car crashes. But was it true? Yes, the site seemed to confirm the deaths (for the last 3 decades or so) of a statistically anomalous number of national democratic politicians (sitting or running for office) in plane crashes....but the site just grabbed me and wouldn't let me leave: Charles Tillinghast James (1805-1862): died while making his own cannon, Richard Ellis (1781-1846): died when his clothes suddenly caught fire, Thomas Caute Reynolds (1821-1887): killed himself by leaping down an elevator shaft, Sidney Theodore Roebuck (1901-1982): died from RAT poison, and MY FAVORITE, Elmer Severson (1922-1999), who died from spinal cord injuries he lost a "tussle with a cow"
posted by troutfishing at 3:01 PM PST - 21 comments

The gamebutton arcade is the perfect (super small, javascript-on-a-button code fu) thing for wasting time on a friday afternoon.
posted by mathowie at 2:54 PM PST - 5 comments

I'm sure this isn't news to anybody, but Judge Colleen has decided that the Seattlement stands as originally crafted. Of course, the States can always appeal. Has Microsoft won? Has the consumer lost? Discuss.
posted by Maxor at 2:43 PM PST - 17 comments

This CNN article reminded me of something I've been wanting to share with my fellow MeFiers for a long time now: the Storm King Art Center. There really aren't enough places in the world where you can view dozens of monumental abstract sculptures on 500 acres of rolling hills and beautiful wooded groves. For those interested in a 3D look (albeit via an obscure plug-in) try these views of a few Storm King sculptures. So, has anyone else ever been there? Better yet, anyone care to share any other unusual "museums" you've discovered?
posted by Ptrin at 12:56 PM PST - 25 comments

To lessen the clutter on their dashboard, a German auto manufacturer has put in a data screen and command input device that allows the driver to control 700 different aspects of their driving experience (including Navigation, Communication, Car Data, and Settings). More interestingly, there's an undocumented feature in the high-tech control system -- Press the right buttons in the right order and the car will launch you from a stop after revving the engine to 5,000 rpm... at least it will if you're in Europe, where performing the trick more than 15 times voids the car's warranty. Cars sold here in the US will only rev to 1,500 rpm. Supposedly, this is the first example of an Automotive Easter Egg.
posted by crunchland at 12:47 PM PST - 17 comments

The Political Oddsmaker gives you the odds of a particular candidate winning their election. You can get odds for each of the major U.S. races (Senate, House, and Governors for this election). It claims a 98% success rate in picking the winner since 1996 (more inside.)
posted by pitchblende at 12:31 PM PST - 15 comments

Dammit, boys, what on earth is it going to take for you to stop barebacking, and to stop practicing unsafe sex in general?? Obviously not an HIV scare, so howzabout the report that syphilis is on the rise, thanks to the efforts of gay men? The problem's so bad that gAyOL has started staffing some of its chat rooms with safe-sex counselors. Look guys, I already lost the generation ahead of me--they're all dead because they loved the booty so much. I don't want to lose the one that follows me, too. So please, please, please don't be silly, put a rubber on that willy!
posted by WolfDaddy at 12:29 PM PST - 71 comments

Diego Garcia islanders battle to return 'Exiled islanders from the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia are launching a legal action in a London court, seeking to return to their "paradise" home and get compensation from Britain for being deported. '
30 years ago, 2000 islanders were moved from Diego Garcia (in the British Indian Ocean Territory, formerly part of Mauritius) to make room for a military base. Two years ago, the High Court ruled that the deportation had been illegal.
Related :- Chagos Islanders: 30 years of suffering; Exiled Chagos Islander recounts tale of woe.
posted by plep at 12:21 PM PST - 4 comments

Google Compute is a distributed computing project involving users of the google toolbar. It's a light application which uses idle processor cycles to analyse data for "carefully selected charitable projects, with the guiding principle being to help humanity and advance scientific knowledge".
posted by walrus at 11:48 AM PST - 5 comments

Friday Fun!! Got a question for the Axis of Chicken Hawks? "The Official Simulation Act of 2002 created the Dept. of Official Simulation (DoOS) and tasked it with minimizing time wasted on media availability by certain U.S. Government officials who have been designated as essential to national security. DoOS makes available for press conferences and interviews simulated officials virtually identical to the originals with regard to talking points, lucidity and veracity" Try it! The answers are hilarious!! (thanks to busybusybusy)
posted by nofundy at 11:36 AM PST - 8 comments

Recreational mathematics and fractal graphics continue to stimulate the mind and foster student interest in mathematics. Some favorite authors & books in this area include: Martin Gardner's books (like The Colossal Book of Mathematics and The Night is Large), Cliff Pickover's books (like The Mathematics of Oz and The Zen of Magic Squares), Calvin Clawson's Mathematical Mysteries, Ian Stewart's books and puzzles, and Ivars Peterson's writings (like Islands of Truth). What are your favorite books and web sites in this area for stretching the mind and eye?
posted by Morphic at 8:50 AM PST - 25 comments

"Racist" teacher reinstated A follow up to this earlier mefi discussion. A copy of the e-mail enclosed. I'm curious as to if after reading the actual e-mail in question, anyone changes their opinion from the previous thread.
posted by Ynoxas at 8:27 AM PST - 88 comments

Gallery of neat Flash experiments--soon to include source code. I like this one, and the portrait of his dad is creepy. Also on the site, a gallery of free images.
posted by Fabulon7 at 8:19 AM PST - 12 comments

Time was, American society had at least a loose pecking order, with the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts, et al, setting standards for snobbery and WASP-y elitism. Now, says David Brooks, “we’ve democratized elitism in this country,” with everyone finding their own niche in which to be a snob. [more inside…]
posted by arco at 7:59 AM PST - 19 comments

Queen's intervention leads to acquittal in Regina v. Burrell.
Princess diana's butler, Paul Burrell - her 'rock' - is acquitted of theft from Princess Diana after Queen Elizabeth admits her knowledge of his 'caretaking' of Diana's property. This case has always smacked of a class divide - surely we shouldn't let the hoi-polloi be so close to their uppers and betters? Surely Diana wouldn't really let a mere butler have her precious momentos? Is this farce one more nail in the British Monarchy's coffin? Or, as the popular weakness of the movement towards the abolition of the uk monarchy attests, will the Windsors ride this out, as they did the opposition they encountered after the death of 'The Queen of Hearts'? [More republican links here]
posted by dash_slot- at 6:42 AM PST - 33 comments

A Liberal Argument for Iraqi Regime Change from Salman Rushdie Such a pleasure to read a well-written op-ed piece for a change.
posted by tommyspoon at 4:40 AM PST - 47 comments

Scrollbar racing Only for the truely bored. Here's more to waste your time.
posted by ginz at 3:21 AM PST - 15 comments

The joke has become reality.
Albanian and Russian observers sent to monitor American elections... [via Cursor]
posted by talos at 3:13 AM PST - 49 comments

The Turner Prize nominations are out. Britain's culture minster Kim Howells calls it "cold, mechanical conceptual bullshit". indeed a couple of years ago, Chris Ofili's pictures using dried elephant dung won? (He's the guy who caused a fuss with Rudy Giuliani.) So the annual debate in the british media has begun - "yes, but is it art?"
posted by brettski at 2:20 AM PST - 17 comments

Donald Roller Wilson - explore the entertaining gallery of this artist called "...a Gothic storyteller with the phenomenal technique and precision of an old master." Some say he takes his silliness seriously. Meet his menagerie of lavishly costumed monkeys, dogs and cats. Collector and fan Robin Williams describes his art as "Hieronymus Bosch meets P.T Barnum, Faulkner meets Dr. Seuss, and Leakey meets Freud. " site requires flash. registration is optional.
posted by madamjujujive at 1:18 AM PST - 7 comments

The Google Glossary Game: Poking Friday Fun At The Bots! Credited to B from the Google Glossary Public Labs, as shown here, it uses the hilarious growing pains and machine-made imperfections of the Google Glossary and here's how it works... [Rules inside.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 1:16 AM PST - 23 comments