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Flash with no name - think you've seen every bizarre Japanese flash? Good chance you haven't seen this one yet. I am at a loss for a title. This is not safe for work. This is not safe for children or small animals. Do not take with medication. Mock the message, not the messenger.
posted by madamjujujive at 9:44 PM PST - 29 comments

Left Gets Nod from Right on Copyright Law - A darling of the conservative movement, federal Judge Richard Posner criticizes the Sonny Bono Act and attacks the Patent and Trademark Office for granting "very questionable" business method patents at a lecture organized by the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution. (via How Appealing)
posted by ajr at 7:26 PM PST - 11 comments

Spot the hoaxes!
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 7:23 PM PST - 15 comments

Bill Maher back on cable? AP is reporting that Bill Maher will host a late-night talk show on HBO starting Feb. 21. The hour-long news and comedy program, which has yet to be titled, will air once a week for 20 episodes. I personally think ABC were a bunch of pussies for cancelling him, and I think the new show will rock. What do you think?
posted by RylandDotNet at 7:12 PM PST - 26 comments

al queda and pakistan an excellent interview supporting an excellent frontline presentation on al queda - is the US winning or losing the war on terrorism?
posted by specialk420 at 7:09 PM PST - 20 comments

Still getting those Nigerian scam spams? Brad Christensen is too -- but he seems to be enjoying them. (And he's not the only one, either.)
posted by ook at 4:58 PM PST - 26 comments

Stringing broadband connections through the city sewer system is a dirty smelly job but something has to do it! Check out the companies and the sewer-bots that are doing this dirty work.
posted by thedailygrowl at 3:30 PM PST - 9 comments

High School Girls Basketball team destroys opponent 115-2. Is sportsmanship about to go the way of the dodo? More and more teams are pushing for winning (and winning by a lot) more than just playing well. Is it the coach's fault? Could it be that the players are just too good and they couldn't 'help' crushing their opponent by over 100 points? (I say that, of course, in jest)
posted by gwong at 2:41 PM PST - 61 comments

Today is The Great American Smokeout. If you can't bring yourself to quit, though, then you can quit quitting smoking!
posted by thatweirdguy2 at 1:04 PM PST - 58 comments

Karl Frank Kleinpaste is on trial defending himself for tax evasion claiming that he lives in the 'Democratic Republic of Pennsylvania' and is therefore not duty bound to pay federal income tax. Some think that this will not go very well for him while others encourage the masses to do the same.
posted by Raichle at 12:23 PM PST - 28 comments

FCC commissioner Michael Copps seeks indecency definition overhaul.
The current definition of indecency to me should be capturing for enforcement purposes some of these programs and it is not. We are only having a paucity of enforcement actions against programming that is palpably and demonstrably indecent.
Is it really time to redefine indecency, or to reexamine why exactly it is we are defining indecency to begin with?
posted by mikrophon at 12:05 PM PST - 36 comments

Bastard Pop is one of the more interesting developments in popular music in the last few years, but copyright laws preclude its distribution in stores. To hear it, you'll need to fire up your P2P or scour the internet. If you're not satisfied with the offerings, all you need is your home computer to make your own songs. Ever wonder what happens if you cross Joy Division with Missy Elliott?
posted by mert at 12:02 PM PST - 31 comments

Mix It Up Day is an effort from the people at Tolerance.org to get teens to sit with other social groups at lunch in the cafeteria today. Coming from a racially diverse "inner city" Midwest high school, I've seen how teens will naturally segregate themselves, so this seems like an interesting proposal. Kids who participated seemed excited about the opportunity, but will they keep "mixing it up" tomorrow, next week, as they become adults?
posted by katieinshoes at 11:08 AM PST - 23 comments

Is state government finally doing something right? Who knows? this seems legit enough. Apparently, if you register you can get cyber security alerts delivered to your mailbox. Can I register if I'm from say, Nebraska? Furthermore, how real is the threat to Florida's cyber infrastructure anyways?
posted by Captain Supermarket at 10:46 AM PST - 11 comments

Need a quick pick-me-up? Electroshock therapy, police-style! Video of an abusive prisoner being incapacitated with a non-lethal, handheld, electrical device. Instant mood transformation is achieved. (1.5m of quicktime) More videos available here. There's also a video (13m of mpeg) of volunteers being zapped, not available on the page above. (Much laughter on that last one, because, you know... pain is funny.) Probably not for the squeamish. via mister pants
posted by crunchland at 10:34 AM PST - 6 comments

Enforcing silence: American media are unsurprisingly preparing to publish details of Vancouver's Pickton case despite a Canadian publication ban. Are media blackouts censorship, necessary for justice, or both? Or are they just doomed to fail when you can just, you know, do stuff like this?
posted by transient at 10:11 AM PST - 22 comments

Can someone syndicate this man? Cartoons on the back of business cards. Beats the lame ones you often find in say, The New Yorker. Courtesy of Capital Influx.
posted by Dukebloo at 9:35 AM PST - 26 comments

Is "a 25-cent bullet" the solution to men who abuse women? (Via Obscurestore) NY State legislator Wanda Hudak claims social services are overloaded by women of "low moral character" and the men who abuse them. This seems to be a week for blunt ideas about abusive relationships: in the NYTimes Magazine (reg req) Deborah Sontag challenges the "doctrinaire thinking about the nature of domestic violence" which posits men as uncontrollable ogres and women as meek victims. Thoughts?
posted by serafinapekkala at 8:54 AM PST - 40 comments

All Fall Down: Remember the famous explosion sequence in Antonioni's Zabriskie Point? Fiona Villela says: "Flying toward the viewer, these many shards of shiny bits and pieces that once served a utilitarian purpose when part of a greater object here exist in and of themselves in a purely dazzling spectacle. This is the only way Antonioni can see the beauty of American capitalism, as a rainbow of shattered objects lost in space and time. ". What is the (undeniable) pleasure of watching big structures, that took years to build, destroyed in a few seconds? And has September 11 taken the fun out of implosion voyeurism? [Via memepool; original post by yoyology; Real required.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:53 AM PST - 18 comments

Online database of abusive priests. Disturbing to browse through especially since the list probably contains only a fraction of the perpetrators.
posted by Degaz at 8:50 AM PST - 5 comments

Outdoor Sculptures from Australia. This is a great collection of evocative outdoor sculptures from Australia. The setting is not bad, too. Outdoor art is very well supported in my city (sorry- no images). Is it a big deal where you live?
posted by SandeepKrishnamurthy at 7:46 AM PST - 5 comments

Now, in response to yesterdays shocking data that Americans are an unworldly, culturally ignorant batch, we bring you a much needed ethnographic survey. Take time to learn about The Semen Warriors of New Guinea. Not since the Yanomamo, have anthropologists found a group so vital to our quest of understanding the limits and details of human nature.
posted by dgaicun at 7:13 AM PST - 96 comments

"Bobby Fisher's Pathetic Endgame." An interesting account of Bobby Fisher's decline from greatness to absolutelycrazyness. I used to really like Searching for Bobby Fisher when I was younger, but for some reason I always thought he had disappeared or something mysterious. The truth makes me sad. (Via Plastic.com)
posted by hughbot at 7:03 AM PST - 12 comments

Black Friday. The meaning of which brings either joy, bewilderment or disgust. Several retailers have sent DMCA notices to several deal hunting sites forcing them to remove any ads or information that reveal any specials that will be offered. WTF!? What other inane uses will the DMCA be used for?
posted by the biscuit man at 6:33 AM PST - 17 comments

Someone's magnificent obsession: an exhaustive list of movies which have contained jugglers, or scenes involving juggling. There are many, many more than you could have possibly imagined, if you're the type who actually spends times imagining such things. There are also lists of movies which contain bagpipes, accordians, librarians, and math.
posted by iconomy at 5:11 AM PST - 20 comments

A married couple are walking from South Africa to the tip of Argentina, with a quick boat ride over the Bering Strait. Their 65Mm (that's megametre) route follows that which early man used to spread across the world's continents.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 4:21 AM PST - 23 comments

"Twexus does contain 15800 images today". Twexus is an enigmatic, engaging little database-driven photoart site that rewards you with new site features as your page views increase. I can't seem to tear free from the hypnotic effect of the "symmetry" page that concerns itself with my opinion on each proffered image. sorry, gotta go... must... return... to... twexus...
posted by taz at 2:34 AM PST - 15 comments

Paging Dr. Frankenstein A team of geneticists has announced that it is going to create an artificial lifeform. The project raises philosophical, ethical and practical questions. For instance, if a man-made organism proved able to survive and reproduce only under a narrow range of laboratory conditions, could it really be considered life? More broadly, do scientists have any moral right to create new organisms? (From the Washington Post. First-time users may be asked to provide demographic information.)
posted by Man-Thing at 1:34 AM PST - 37 comments

Vaudeville Slang. A boffo glossary of the language of American Vaudeville. Visit the main site for tons of links to famous performers and theatres. For more hokum, you can visit here to watch and hear some actual Vaudeville acts. No applesauce!
posted by Joey Michaels at 1:19 AM PST - 5 comments