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CSMonitor's Jill Carroll update As there isn't really much news about Jill Carroll, this blog has become mainly about the issues surrounding the Carroll abduction. What is Islam's perspective on foreigners? How does rampant kidnapping effect journalists? The last 'update' is about a poster of Carroll hung from Rome's city hall. Which makes me think two things: there isn't much news about Carroll's situation; why in the hell hasn't a US city hung a poster of Carroll?
posted by raaka at 11:00 PM PST - 7 comments

Motown history traded for Super Bowl parking. (mostly audio) The Motown Center in Detroit was torn down a few weeks ago and turned into Super Bowl parking. Although not the main recording studios, and long abandoned, it still contained many Motown documents and memorabilia, most of which were lost in the razing. Covered by local bloggers: dETROITfUNK (1, 2) , Detroit Blog (1, 2, 3, 4), and Kempa, plus local tv.
posted by caddis at 8:08 PM PST - 46 comments

Prehistoric art in the American Southwest.
posted by snsranch at 7:57 PM PST - 9 comments

ThreadBared.com is the Go Fug Yourself of vintage sewing, knitting, crocheting, and crafting patterns. Some highlights: Lord of the Bellbottoms; behold the Golliwog; That Linebacker Look; Return to Traditional Values; You Should See His Ball Peen Hammer; Never EVER make fun of a man who is both wearing cableknit mittens and holding a shotgun.
posted by Gator at 7:14 PM PST - 7 comments

Newsfilter : Farid Mortazavi, graphics editor to the Iranian newspaper Hamshahri, puts out a call for revisionist Holocaust cartoons. Israeli settlers may plan to riot. Well, continue rioting, anyway.
posted by suckerpunch at 6:50 PM PST - 61 comments

Giant Rabbit. Capable of balancing a dozen short stacks on its head.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 6:36 PM PST - 49 comments

Specious Beasts: the unsuccessful fauna of the American West.
posted by feathermeat at 5:57 PM PST - 15 comments

That scientist NASA tried to silence? He finally did the radio interview last week.
posted by alms at 5:38 PM PST - 16 comments

We think we know what we want, but sometimes we're totally wrong. A woman spends a year dating anyone who asks her out, and finds The One. On the way, she dates a homeless man, 10 taxi drivers, two lesbians and a mime. How much do we really know about what we want until we find it?
posted by onlyconnect at 3:40 PM PST - 98 comments

As a public service, tagged mapping can be used for much more than finding pizza parlors and Craigslist rental entries. Here it gets used to plot criminal activity, like bike thefts and other crimes in West Philadelphia and the larger Philadelphia area, as well as Chicago.
posted by Rothko at 3:09 PM PST - 11 comments

MusicFilter: Rosanne Cash has in many ways followed in her father, Johnny Cash's footsteps as an independent artist critical of the industry and radio marketing. Black Cadillac, her first album since the death of her mother, father, and step-mother in 2003 was released in the shadow of the better known biopic Walk the Line. Reviews that are not obsessed with the movie tie-in appear to be generally positive: Canoe (orig Winnepeg Sun), Rolling Stone, and Metacritic.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 1:34 PM PST - 15 comments

Nutjobs all over America have reported seeing aliens silently wafting over their trailerparks in big ass triangular spaceships. Could the truth to these sightings be a little closer to home?
posted by zeoslap at 1:29 PM PST - 50 comments

Have you read all these books? Hell, no. Yes, and many more. The answer is yes. No, these are the ones I have to read by the end of the month. Nay, I have written them. No, only four of them. No, and I never intend to live in a house where I can't find a book I haven't read. Not one-tenth of them. No, but I know why I bought each one. Probably not.
posted by mistersix at 1:10 PM PST - 42 comments

He complained to [Kingsley] Amis in 1943...that "all women are stupid beings" and remarked in 1983 that he'd recently accompanied Monica [Jones] to a hospital "staffed ENTIRELY by wogs, cheerful and incompetent." ...His views on politics and class seemed to be pithily captured in a ditty he shared again with Amis. "I want to see them starving,/The so-called working class,/Their wages yearly halving,/Their women stewing grass..." For recreation he apparently found time for pornography, preferably with a hint of sado-masochism".
John Banville on Philip Larkin.
posted by matteo at 12:49 PM PST - 30 comments

Newsfilter: Canada's New Cabinet. Featuring thrills (former Liberal David Emerson crosses the floor to serve as International Trade Minister, and affect the balance of power), spills (Michael Fortier, who is not an MP, will be appointed to the Senate to serve as Public Works and Government Services Minister on the condition that he resign to run for Parliament in the next general election, upsetting some) and chills (everybody's favourite whipping boy, Stockwell Day as Minister of Public Safety). (as a bonus - and for those ignoramuses that care not for the intricacies of Canadian politics - pay some mind to the newly redesigned globeandmail.com, especially the prominence of public commentary on every article - it's the embodiment of newsfilter!)
posted by loquax at 11:53 AM PST - 85 comments

Apparently Gus & Pam enjoy the Star Wars films.
posted by jonson at 10:57 AM PST - 109 comments

NIcodemus, Kansas is the only remaining western community established by African Americans after the Civil War. The promise of freedom and land in the state of John Brown. Though prosperous in the 1880's, it began to fade. Its post office closed in 1953. It is now home to only 27 residents, with an average age of 80, but the "Promise Land" has hope. Wake Nicodemus, wake.
posted by ozomatli at 9:48 AM PST - 23 comments

iQuit [embedded flash movie]. Smoke Screen 2 is a Health Canada funded project that gives young Canadian immigrants and refugees the chance to make their own health awareness videos, since they're often marginalised by mainstream media. Rather than just being a fun little anti-smoking project though, the resulting videos are being shown on national primetime TV. Last year's project, Smoke Screen: Made By Girls, caused controversy when one of the videos was banned by the CBC.
posted by nylon at 8:16 AM PST - 11 comments

Leonard Peltier...three decades of freedom denied. Thirty years ago today—February 6, 1976—the Canadian government arrested Leonard Peltier...later extraditing him to the U.S. for trial (sic). Some Peltier FAQ. Another informative site. How the other side sees it. Peltier and the American Indian Movement (AIM). Sign the online petition. As Dylan sang about Hurricane: "To see him obviously framed couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land where justice is a game."
posted by mickeyz at 7:25 AM PST - 40 comments

Evidence of a slippery slope continued: Newsweek reports that White House counsel Steve Bradbury believes President Bush can order killings on US soil as part of the Terrorist-Surveillance Program^TM. Meanwhile, while Attorney General Gonzales "lashes out" at the media and insists that the TSP^TM is "not a dragnet that sucks in all conversation and uses computer searches to pick out calls of interest," the Washington Post reports it's precisely that -- "computer-controlled systems collect and sift basic information about hundreds of thousands of faxes, e-mails and telephone calls into and out of the United States before selecting the ones for scrutiny by human eyes and ears" -- and has led to very few leads. (See also discussion of Arlen Specter and the legality of the TSP^TM here.)
posted by digaman at 6:56 AM PST - 137 comments

Jerome Bettis is a hometown hero. After "leading" (OK, he doesn't play much anymore) his Pittsburgh Steelers to Super Bowl XL in his native Detroit, the locals came out to celebrate the future Hall of Famer. Last week was declared "Jerome Bettis Week" in Detroit and Bettis was awarded the key to the city. The last person to receive such an honor from the city? Saddam Hussein in 1980.
posted by b_thinky at 5:04 AM PST - 29 comments

Google delists bmw.de. Google employee Matt Cutts reports on the removal of BMW's German web site from Google's index as a punishment for using webspam techniques to increase its search engine ranking. Webmasters and search engine optimizers discuss the issue at WebmasterWorld (no subscription necessary, just follow the link on the page) with a predictable mix of attaboys and dismay at Google's power.
posted by grouse at 2:59 AM PST - 32 comments