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"Wow! I have a lot of shows to watch... Will I ever catch up?” Reuters reports on TiVo addiction, and it's tonight's #1 story on Keith Olbermann's Countdown, a news show with less viewers than TiVo has owners. When they put up a transcript, it'll be in here. Still, Keith asked one very good question: "Is it just part of the inevitable pattern of technology that everything starts as a luxury, becomes a necessity and finally becomes something for which we need therapy?" (I was able to do my own transcription because... I got it on my TiVo!)
posted by wendell at 7:41 PM PST - 34 comments

you don't have an excuse not to floss anymore
posted by prescribed life at 5:21 PM PST - 52 comments

Andy Griffith Beats Jessica Lynch Interview for Viewers
Well sure, it was for the Andy Griffith Reunion Show. What was ABC thinking putting Diane Sawyer and Jessica "Selective Amnesia" Lynch up against Andy, Opie and Aunt Bea?
posted by fenriq at 3:10 PM PST - 23 comments

Every single UK chart position from 1952 to 2003. EveryHit.com is a searchable database of every single artist that's charted in the UK Top 40 chart, EVER. It's fully searchable by date, artist, chart position - everything. Want to find out how many times your favourite band charted, and when, and for how long? It's all here. There's also more statistics and all sorts of trivia and records than you could shake a stick at! Win your next pub quiz armed with this information!
posted by metaxa at 3:00 PM PST - 9 comments

Christopher Lee has been cut out of 'Return Of The King'. "Of course I am very shocked, that's all I can say....If you want to know why you would have to ask the company New Line or director Peter Jackson and his associates because I still don't really know why.".

Does anyone know any more about this sayonara to Saruman? 'Asked if he would attend the première, he said: "No, what's the point? What's the point of going? None at all."' I'm kind of shocked. But not quite as much as he is from the sounds of it.
posted by boneybaloney at 2:21 PM PST - 81 comments

Bad Toon Rising - Think you remember what Mickey Mouse looks like? Daffy Duck? Bart Simpson? Ok - grab a scrap of paper and draw that character. Right now. (No peeking!!) Some other people already have, and these are the results.....
posted by anastasiav at 11:41 AM PST - 21 comments

"We were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why." In The Fog of War, a revelatory new documentary about his life and times, a disquieted Robert McNamara implores us to understand why he did the things he did as an Air Force lieutenant colonel who helped plan the firebombing of Japanese cities in World War II, and, later, as a secretary of defense and pivotal decision-maker during Vietnam, which some Americans came to call "McNamara's War." One of the movie's most powerful passages covers McNamara's little-known service in World War II, when he was attached to Gen. Curtis LeMay's 21st Bomber Command stationed on the Pacific island of Guam. LeMay's B-29s showered 67 Japanese cities with incendiary bombs in 1945, softening up the country for the two atomic blasts to come. McNamara was a senior planning officer. Story by "Killing Fields"' Sydney Schanberg in the American Prospect (more inside)
posted by matteo at 10:40 AM PST - 83 comments

Vanished America If you've ever wondered what to do with all of your old vacation photos and slides, wonder no more. A fellow named Charles Cushman bequeathed his collection of over 14,000 slides and photos taken over a period of three decades, from 1938 to 1969, to Indiana Univiersity. IU has decided to create an amazing digital archive of his photos as a history project. The photos are nothing special in themselves. He took countless pictures of things he and his wife saw as they took driving tours across the United States, mostly near their home in Chicago and in the West. They are no different than and no better than anybody else's amateur photos. But, as the director of the project points out, without realizing it, Cushman captured an America already beginning to disappear in the middle of the 20th century, and did so by documenting its disappearance unwittingly over a thirty-year period. I lightly perused the slide show of 120 images and the photos are indeed both banal and compelling all at the same time. A very nicely done site with a lot of rich material. (via The Cartoonist)
posted by briank at 10:19 AM PST - 45 comments

Love Shack!
posted by divrsional at 8:58 AM PST - 29 comments

Time mag lists this year's 'coolest' inventions, in their humble opinion. For archival fun check out their lists for 2001 and 2002.

Fish-skin bikinis?
posted by moonbird at 3:57 AM PST - 18 comments

"Bring 'Em On:" A Certain Four Horsemen Rein Up to Inquire of The Taunt -- or "The Health and Environmental Costs of War on Iraq (PDF)." An independent survey just released by the UK global health charity Medact, finds that "the war on Iraq and its aftermath exacted a heavy toll on combatants and civilians, who paid and continue to pay the price in death, injury and mental and physical ill health. Between 21,700 and 55,000 people died between March 20 and October 20, 2003." According to the BBC, the report says that the "conflict and its aftermath have put the most vulnerable in society - women, children and the elderly - at risk", and "there has been a reported increase in maternal mortality rates, acute malnutrition has almost doubled from 4% to 8% in the last year and there is an increase in water-borne diseases and vaccine-preventable diseases."
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 1:41 AM PST - 32 comments

The Kumeyaay Nation of southern California. 'This Web site is dedicated to the promotion and preservation of the Kumeyaay culture. Kumeyaay.com tells the story from the Kumeyaay perspective, and is the premiere source for Kumeyaay Indian information.' With an interesting history, language and culture section.
posted by plep at 12:52 AM PST - 6 comments