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Acquitted of rape on basis of "sexsomnia" defense. Ontario resident Jan Luedecke said his unbidden penetration wasn't rape because he was asleep at the time. A judge agreed that "sexsomnia" is an illness. The websites which purport it to be a legitimate illness don't necessarily inspire confidence, and, unsurprisingly, some people are less than inspired. Meanwhile, the victim is appealing the ruling.
posted by poweredbybeard at 9:34 PM PST - 106 comments

truthdig --drilling beneath the headlines. A new webmagazine, offering expert in-depth coverage of current affairs as well as a variety of thoughtful, provocative content assembled from a progressive point of view. The site is built around major “digs,” led by authorities in their fields, who will drill down into contemporary topics and assemble packages of content... Robert Scheer is editor in chief (you may know him from the SF Chronicle). The current featured "dig" is on religion and homosexuality.
posted by amberglow at 8:43 PM PST - 12 comments

Pharmaceuticals have many tricks up their sleeves.
posted by reverenddrjice at 6:27 PM PST - 21 comments

Mortal Kombat vs Street Fighter 2 has too much dialog, but once it get's going, it totaly kicks ass.
posted by willnot at 6:20 PM PST - 44 comments

Deaths from international terrorism compared with road crash deaths in OECD countries (Abstract). In a study published in the Journal Injury Prevention, researchers found that people in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries are 390 times more likely to die in car crashes than in terrorist attacks. The conclusion of the Brief Report (PDF): "Policy makers need to be aware of this when allocating resources to preventing these two avoidable causes of mortality."
posted by mmahaffie at 5:33 PM PST - 40 comments

Le Cornichon seems to be Quebec's version of The Onion with a strong political bent. There are many excellent political cartoons covering the sponsorship scandal, Kyoto, and other issues.

Movie posters of your favourite politician: Jeancula, The Godfather, Stephen Harper, Jack Layton as Canada Man, and Paul Martin starring in Pirate of Canada, Paul Almighty and The Aviator. And it's always cool to see a vamped Duceppe.

British and American mefites need not feel left out, Bush and Blair make multiple appearances.

CBC has a fine collection of newspaper cartoons about the current election. (unfortunately they are in a flash wrapper that Firefox has trouble getting through).
posted by angrybeaver at 5:21 PM PST - 11 comments

Tom Fox, a Quaker peaceworker, abducted in Iraq with three others. He understood the risks, accepted them, and now must "stand firm against the kidnapper as... against the soldier". His friends and supporters are calling for the hostages to be released, making it clear that they "[do] not advocate the use of violent force" to save lives.
posted by dsword at 5:02 PM PST - 29 comments

Wayfaring.com -- Share your personalized Google maps of your favorite watering holes, hiking trails, or roadside attractions, using numerous customization features. Still in its early stages, you can follow its growing pains on the development blog or post bug reports in the forums.
posted by Gator at 4:42 PM PST - 4 comments

Dear Valued Hybrid Customer... I can't tell if this is a joke or something. As rhetoric, it's well done. As a reasoned argument it falls apart if you actually know anything at all about hybrids.
posted by Ken McE at 4:05 PM PST - 86 comments

LibertyFilter is an aggregator of freedom-focused bloggers, with some original content of its own as well. Great way to keep up on current happenings (good and bad) regarding our rights. Note, however, not much actual filtering seems to occur.
posted by knave at 3:19 PM PST - 9 comments

Mark writes ditties for you. Including such songs as THINK! BEFORE MARKING YOUR EMAILS HIGH PRIORITY and others.
posted by xmutex at 2:43 PM PST - 23 comments

Gov't will no longer report on M3 money supply, nor count Columbia River salmon Without explanation, the the Federal Reserve Board will, in March 2006, be stopping publication of its "M3" money supply information. Funding for the lab responsible for counting salmon on the Columbia River has also been eliminated.
posted by hank at 2:40 PM PST - 31 comments

Homecoming - anti-war movie from National Amusements featuring the ungrateful dead. This will possibly invoke some controversy.
posted by ab'd al'Hazred at 1:52 PM PST - 21 comments

The Charts of Clarence Larkin A mechanical engineer by training, Clarence Larkin later found his true calling as a pastor and an author of influential books on religion. He is best remembered, however, for his detailed charts on topics such as: The Underworld, The Failure of Man, The Threefold Nature of Man, and an incredibly detailed The Book of Revelations from his book on Revelations.
posted by vacapinta at 1:24 PM PST - 6 comments

The year in lists. Best albums, Top 100 DJs, 100 Notable Books, the list goes on. Lists from 2004 also.
posted by caddis at 1:07 PM PST - 26 comments

Conan O'Brien runs the one Walker, Texas Ranger clip that he never dared run before...
posted by jonson at 12:45 PM PST - 142 comments

Aeon Flux, animated Series. This may kill all your time today. With the release of the new Aeon Flux Movie, they are releasing some of their animated shorts on their Overdrive application. Unfortunately, I can't provide a direct link to it, since it goes through a flash interface. You can get their by clicking on the 'movie' link on top. Requires IE, Flash, and probably windows only.
posted by countzen at 12:36 PM PST - 50 comments

NewsFilter: UFO (missle) exhaust seen by pilot Have the aliens landed, and are shooting at planes with unidentified flying objects? Or is it the 'terrorists'?
Don't worry citizens: FBI agents and Homeland Security officials spent the weekend investigating the report of a possible missile fired at an American Airlines.
posted by rough ashlar at 10:14 AM PST - 26 comments

"I sat down to it with my bottle of wine, a bowl of rice, salt and pepper at hand. I had thought about this and planned it for a long time, and now I was going to do it. I was going to do it, furthermore -- I had promised and told myself -- with a completely casual, open, and objective mind. But I was soon to discover that I had bluffed and deceived myself a little in pretending so detached an attitude." The problems of researching what you and I actually taste like. [Previous threads]. [Via]
posted by Ogre Lawless at 10:14 AM PST - 43 comments

Gulf of Tonkin Intelligence 'Deliberately Skewed'

The National Security Agency has released hundreds of pages of long-secret documents on the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident that played a critical role near the beginning of the Vietnam War. ... The most provocative document is a 2001 article [PDF] in which an agency historian argued that the agency's intelligence officers "deliberately skewed" the evidence passed on to policymakers on the crucial question of whether North Vietnamese ships attacked U.S. destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964. Based on the mistaken belief that such an attack had occurred, President Lyndon Johnson ordered air strikes on North Vietnam, and Congress passed a broad resolution authorizing military action.

[more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 9:59 AM PST - 22 comments

What is a "fair wage" for contractors working in Iraq? Halliburton subsidiary KBR pays subcontracted employees far more than they could earn at home, in exchange for living far from friends and family in a dangerous work environment. KBR insists their contractors adhere to all local labor laws in the country where they operate. But when that country doesn't yet have an effective or legitimate government of its own, and the workers are brought from a country with a 68% poverty rate, is that enough?
posted by justkevin at 9:21 AM PST - 41 comments

Friday Finger Frenzy How fast can you type the alphabet? 9.083 seconds here...
posted by skjønn at 8:49 AM PST - 77 comments

"311, I am ready to fight." Tough times for Scott Stapp. via.
posted by klangklangston at 8:25 AM PST - 65 comments

Why SETI's search for intelligent extraterrestrial life is different from the work of proponents of Intelligent Design. An interesting bit of argumentation regarding the distinction between the simple signals searched for by SETI and the complex signals used in arguments for ID.
posted by voltairemodern at 7:41 AM PST - 55 comments

Arianna Calling! Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, we learned from reading the New England Transcendentalists, yet Arianna is often put down, bad mouthed, for having moved from the Right to the Left...Yes. she is very wealthy. Yes, she seems always in a spotlight. But there is much substance to this woman, as is indicated in this piece, found via Arts&Letters.
posted by Postroad at 6:25 AM PST - 26 comments

"I'm greater than Superman and Batman put together! Before I'm through, I'll have them cringing before the might of Composite Superman!" The mighty Composite Superman is brilliant artifact from the Silver Age of comics. A variation on the theme recently resurfaced in print and on television! Just goes to show that you can't keep a gimmick supervillain down. He's even got his own blog! (via Scans_Daily)
posted by grabbingsand at 6:16 AM PST - 43 comments

The "a" in '[a href=' is for ADVISORY. Given that the social conservatives are eager to spend their waning mandate (and to be fair, hyper-PC liberals too) and extend out the nannystate to Cable TV, satellite, (which isn't entirely a bad thing) and videogames, is it too soon to work about the implications for the internet, and possible requirements and censorship? Blogger Sean Gleason suggests pictorial icons rating each link as to it's content. And of course, you could always make your own.
posted by rzklkng at 5:48 AM PST - 23 comments

Friday Jedi Fun - Kill the droids by deflecting lasers into them.
posted by Stauf at 5:23 AM PST - 22 comments

Is H5N1 flu transitioning to a human-to-human illness? Recent reports of familial clusters suggest that it may be, though there are certainly other possible explanations, such as families living in environments contaminated by virus-laden bird feces. On the other hand, it would seem that epidemiologists are growing increasingly interested in the possibility that these clusters are indicative of human-to-human transmissions. Further, the virus may be inching towards being asymptomatic, which isn't as good as it sounds: if people can carry the virus and transmit it to others without showing symptoms, it will be very difficult to impossible to tell who is a vector and highly difficult to control any emerging epidemic.
posted by chakalakasp at 1:30 AM PST - 23 comments