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Your cat? Yeah...perhaps. Maybe. Mine? Certainly not! This Internet thing - it lies, right? The money you spend on litty litter: how many important paperbacks would it buy?
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 11:21 PM PST - 16 comments

Cigarette filters don't want to go away. A sigh of releaf from the smokers except our lovid earth. Not as harmless as the Everlasting Gobstopper, eh.
The word biodegradable doesn't warrant interest from the companies making cigarettes. The gov should be able to protect us...maybe they sponsor the grassroot with all the money made.
posted by lightweight at 10:04 PM PST - 15 comments

Scotty the Blue Bunny - add some color to your next party or family get together with Scotty. "There's something to be said about a seven foot pastel rabbit hurling insults at a party-worn Sunday evening crowd..." via Presurfer
posted by madamjujujive at 9:31 PM PST - 10 comments

Yams, yams, yams. Immortalized by Michelle Shocked's song about the Yamboree Queen. (Which I always thought was a joke, stupid me.) It turns out that most yams are really Sweet Potatoes although yam-sweetpotatoes are also different from regular sweet pototes. The confusion is much more widespread than my own Wabash Valley inflicted confusion between mangos and green bell peppers. Yam sweet-potatoes are a good source of fiber, beta carotene and vitamin C if prepared fresh. True Mexican wild yam was used as a raw material for birth control pills and is still claimed to useful for medicinal purposes.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 7:45 PM PST - 16 comments

Need more stress? Tired of flying under the Golden Gate Bridge with Flight Simulator? Is the thrill gone with your favorite hack 'em up role playing game? Give up coffee, cigarettes, and heroin for new thrills by simulating "the government's dullest bureaucracy." You too can be an air traffic controller! from Wired
posted by ?! at 5:56 PM PST - 5 comments

Tom Ridge wants you to be ready. Kind of like Airtoons for the Homeland. I particularly like how Texas is the location of the radiation threat.
posted by MattS at 5:47 PM PST - 26 comments

There must be a better word for weird. Okay, so we've discussed this before (here, here, and here) but none of these posts really touch upon the thing I find most brilliant about Homestar Runner: its one of the most amusing, kid-safe, and utterly random humor sites I've ever encountered on the net [more inside and Flash is required for everything].
posted by WolfDaddy at 5:44 PM PST - 44 comments

Protato. India has developed a genetically modified potato that contains 30% more protein than your standard spud. The hope is to use the 'protato' to combat malnutrition. Needless to say, there are those who dissent from the GM spud being touted as a cure-all for world hunger.
posted by CoolHandPuke at 5:11 PM PST - 32 comments

Underlying the US drive to war is a thirst to open up new opportunities for surplus capital "In a series of packed lectures in Oxford, Professor David Harvey, one of the world's most distinguished geographers, has provided what may be the first comprehensive explanation of the US government's determination to go to war. His analysis suggests that it has little to do with Iraq, less to do with weapons of mass destruction and nothing to do with helping the oppressed. "
posted by thedailygrowl at 4:50 PM PST - 34 comments

Ethics, Shmethics! You Stole Someone's Umbrella, You Pompously Rationalizing Fink! Has anyone else taken Randy Cohen's ethics quiz and violently disagreed with his sneaky, say-nothing, keep-quiet approach? Silence (and therefore lying by omission) is a touchy subject, rabinically debated since records began... but still! [So I flunked 5... But they were all ethically unimpeachable, unimpeachable, you hear?! But, yeah, for now I'll sneakily keep quiet and say nothing about those I took exception to, the better to gauge anyone else's outrages...]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 4:42 PM PST - 71 comments

The Gaul of Chirac. With near total support for his positions in France, Chirac, thought-police style, set up as an obligation for the emerging half of the continent the unanimity at home that Liberation, the left-wing newspaper said over the weekend, "has something suffocating about it."
posted by The Jesse Helms at 2:18 PM PST - 48 comments

A Google boondoggle? Does Google deserve your nomination for Big Brother of the Year? Nine points from the previously mentioned folks at Google Watch. (via the Disinformation Newsletter)
posted by boost ventilator at 12:47 PM PST - 27 comments

A refreshing read With all the bad news and fear in the air lately, I found this article to be hopeful. I hope that merits a post.
posted by sparky at 12:28 PM PST - 34 comments

This article concerning the power of suggestion will be even more fascinating than my post yesterday about the brand new Wilco album. Psychologists have presented a paper documenting the previously underestimated capacity of the brain to manufacture memories based on planted suggestions. Interestingly, one of the experiments seems to have been inspired by the infamous democRATS political ad (discussed here) of the 2000 presidential campaign.
posted by 4easypayments at 11:40 AM PST - 31 comments

ATTENTION ALL GROWNUPS. "Your "inner child" has long been waiting for a chance to usurp control of your body and force it to perform certain actions. The time is now at hand. Read and follow the instructions below."
posted by Fat Elvis at 11:13 AM PST - 15 comments

The Great Hedge of India was over 1500 miles long in the mid-1800s, manned by 12,000 guards (for tax purposes), and totally forgotten until an Englishman spent three years tracking its history. A fascinating travel / history / detective story.
posted by LeLiLo at 11:03 AM PST - 16 comments

Personal history for sale! Further evidence that the line between the physical and internet worlds are melting. What aspect of our lives are not for sale?
posted by Birichini at 11:01 AM PST - 20 comments

There are those who play Ping-pong and those who live Ping-Pong. As for me, it was the first game I was ever able to beat my Pops at. But no matter how good you think you are, there is always someone ready to wax your ass. Printer-friendly version just for you y2karl!
posted by vito90 at 10:41 AM PST - 13 comments

Goes down easy... Lots of companies use sex to sell their products, but few as boldly as Flirt vodka. [via digital graphite via NSLog();]
posted by kirkaracha at 10:26 AM PST - 11 comments

French Muslims Influence Government Policy on Iraq This piece from an on-line Arab source helps us to understand the French reluctance to want a war with Iraq. And you thought it was only about French oil interests, but non.
posted by Postroad at 10:22 AM PST - 62 comments

ESPN Motion It's been years in the making, but I can finally say that the Internet has finally met TV, through the medium of sports. ESPN and MSN have introduced ESPN Motion. Along with their site redesign, the once static front page is now a video. Right? You think. Usually this stuff doesn't work, but it doesn't require streaming or waiting (I must concede though that I am on a *very* fast internet connection). Basically you have to register for espn.com and then download a 500 KB file and run the installation. After a few minutes, it works fine. I think the program keeps the video updated in a cache on your hdd but it would require more research.
Note: you are required to have Windows 98 or higher, a fast internet connection, and Windows Media Player.
posted by meanie at 10:12 AM PST - 12 comments

Peter Yarrow's daughter confronts the new police state. Notes from the peace rally in NYC last weekend. Is the next generation ready to stand up for its rights?
posted by anser at 9:15 AM PST - 62 comments

Reverse Speech. Seems like a load of hooey to me, but there are some pretty freaky things being said when you listen to it backwards. (via iconomy's wonderful web site)
posted by ashbury at 9:03 AM PST - 20 comments

vs. Spy is Back in the States: As a follow up to this thread, vs. Spy's semi-reckless trip around the world has ended. He got as far as Bogota. Was anyone else following this? Was this brave, utterly foolhardy, or somewhere in between?
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 8:25 AM PST - 4 comments

Online reputations. Anything to scoff at? Yeah, yeah. I found it at /. But what importance do we place on online reputations? This could mean anything (This could include your own personal web reputation all the way up to a corporation's "web-presence"). Just how important in affecting the world at large is the "Online Reputation" versus the viral spread of "small talk"?
posted by crasspastor at 2:37 AM PST - 25 comments

"Yes, I am looking for the Farm Bureau but I am not able to find it."
A disc jockey in Fresno, CA (where my own radio career ended 25 years ago: self-interest disclosure) who says "I don't vote. I don't care", pulls a stunt on an embattled state legislator with a Hustler sex doll (NSFW unless you work for Hustler) and it becomes a First Amendment Issue TM when officers of the California Highway Patrol order pictures of the stunt deleted from a digital camera.

Here's the radio station's spin on the story, complete with a glowing endorsement (but no direct link) for their photo recovery software.

The Legislator in question has not mentioned any of this on HIS website, but he is sponsoring an essay contest for 9th-12th-graders on the subject: "There Ought to Be a Law". (scroll down)

Blame Obscure Store for getting me started.
posted by wendell at 2:27 AM PST - 8 comments

More senseless killing, boys and girls: an Arson in a South Korean subway. "With 135 people injured, many seriously, and at least 90 people listed as missing, officials say they expect the death toll to rise much higher." This will, no doubt, help in stabilizing the region.
posted by antimarx at 2:19 AM PST - 10 comments