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posted by crunchland at 11:48 PM PST - 12 comments

As a brief distraction from all the death and destruction, let's head over to the museum of hoaxes, where we'll find the top 100 April Fool's day pranks of all time. Good luck with your own respective hoaxing.
posted by jonz at 10:25 PM PST - 5 comments

Tired of WarBlogs? (NSFW) Most blogs are people whining about their life, computers or the war. Not sexblogs. I'm not involved with this site, but I noticed them when they linked to me.
posted by nyxxxx at 10:08 PM PST - 10 comments

Dave Bidini, of the Rheostatics, lists fifty songs that remind him of Toronto. In the spirit of this thread, if your city had a soundtrack, what would it be? [via Boing Boing]
posted by arto at 9:30 PM PST - 26 comments

Perhaps This Public Image/Persona Thing Has Gone Just A Little Too Far: Luís Campos Lopes, the manager of the Portuguese football team Vitoria de Setúbal has just been sacked for "projecting a negative image of the club". [Link in Portuguese, but please read on.] The reason? Just watch the photo-sequence in the main link. Luís Lopes had trouble putting on his Setúbal vest during a crucial game with Benfica! I.e. the powerful sports media in Portugal and Brazil have had a riot with the photographs and the poor widdle proprietors were embarrassed. So? He may not be a brilliant manager - but isn't this blatant lookism? Isn't "image" becoming much too big for its boots, as it were, in professional sports? [Here is the only English language reference I could find. Please scroll down to "Luís Campos".]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:20 PM PST - 26 comments

Mr. Noodle's Brother Mr. Noodle a.k.a. Michael Jeter passed away over the weekend. Those of us with young children glued to Elmo's World will know him on sight. With everything going on in Iraq, we don't need any more bad news, but the loss of this actor has really effected me. Silly Noodle...you'll be missed.
posted by lasthrsman at 9:17 PM PST - 10 comments

Save the Pacific Tree Octopus! There have been many debates about loss of habitat for localized species, but a little known fight is underway to help save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus. "An intelligent and inquisitive being...the tree octopus explores its arboreal world by both touch and sight." Won't you help?!
posted by Salmonberry at 8:16 PM PST - 19 comments

Remember everyone tomorrow, April 1st, is Make Fun of Dick and Lynne Cheney day, (because Neal Pollack said so). If you run any kind of website or publication and have the power to mock, belittle or poke fun at the second family, it's your patriotic duty to do so.
posted by alana at 8:15 PM PST - 18 comments

Milk is bad for you? Is nothing sacred? When I was growing up, milk was about the purest, cleanest and healthiest thing you could drink (except maybe for the warm carton that we were give at school every day). Now, it seems, we have been killing ourselves slowly by drinking the wrong kind of milk. The authorities and some vested interests are not convinced, but there certainly seems to be quite a bit of evidence to support the theories.
posted by dg at 7:19 PM PST - 25 comments

Nuclear War Survival Skills: Journey back sixteen years to a simpler time, when the impending apocalypse was a much less complicated affair. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Assay at 5:14 PM PST - 9 comments

Beautiful gallery of ice sculptures. Well, not "scupltures" in the traditional sense of blocks of ice carved into horses and such, but rather abstract shapes, with fixed lighting. Really attractive. via BoingBoing
posted by jonson at 3:40 PM PST - 12 comments

...implants a device in his body that delivers agonizing pain at the push of a button, and over the course of many days attempts to wear him down through a disturbingly simple process of psychological warfare. He is seated in a chair with four bright lights shining in his face, and the captor attempts through painful coercion to make him say that there are, in fact, five lights. Every time he refuses to say there are five lights, he is drilled with pain. In essence, he is expected to deny the reality described by his own eyes, and surrender the will of his mind to the definition of reality offered by his captor. Four Lights, a thesis [2]
posted by holloway at 2:35 PM PST - 39 comments

Human Filter. "U.S. troops killed seven Iraqi women and children at a checkpoint Monday when the Iraqis' van would not stop as ordered, a military official said."
posted by four panels at 2:04 PM PST - 95 comments

Foreigners are plotting to revisit an ancient menace upon New York, and indeed the whole country! I would have thought this sort of terror was something that could have been left in the past.
posted by GriffX at 1:42 PM PST - 5 comments

Secret Police strike again. What country is this, again?
posted by donkeyschlong at 1:23 PM PST - 63 comments

Happy birthday, Kasimir Malevich! The Guggenheim has curated an exhibition (currently in Berlin and coming to New York in May) to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the birth of this Russian avant-garde painter who, among other things, was a major influence on El Lissitzky and worked alongside Liubov Popova. The story of how the show itself came to be -- featuring many works never before seen in the West -- makes for rather dramatic reading, to boot. (NYTimes link; reg. req.) [more inside]
posted by scody at 1:20 PM PST - 8 comments

World War 1 Memoirs and Diaries, by soldiers, nurses and chaplains. 'With the advent of the world wide web, an opportunity arose for the descendants of many survivors to publish fragments of diary entries for the education and interest of others. '
The diary of Edwin Jones, who fought in Egypt and Mesopotamia.
Via the firstworldwar.com website, which also features poetry and prose (including an overview of British World War 1 satire and how it reflected the class system at the time); propaganda posters; and miscellaneous features on everything from the Christmas truce to the disputed sexuality of T.E. Lawrence.
Related :- an interview with one of the last British WW1 survivors, aged 107 ('I survived the trenches - and would never go back'), and the BBC's 80th anniversary site, which includes five poignant, sometimes tragic, letters from soldiers to family and friends.
posted by plep at 1:14 PM PST - 8 comments

With an increase in the number of cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome at the Toronto Hospital for Sick Children, Canada now poses more of a direct threat to the American way of life than all of the weapons in Iraq combined. As the relationship between these two North American real estate holders continues to deteriorate, are we Canadians to expect border closings and escalated hostility due to this?
posted by jon_kill at 12:54 PM PST - 17 comments

An exhibit of the art of Radebaugh and what the future looked like from the 50's. "The post-World War II optimism that pervaded the nation extended to the not-too-distant future, with its promise of spaceship-traveled skyways whirring in a utopia of streamlined cityscapes. Now, the works of A.C. Radebaugh -- a top illustrator of the day whose works helped define that future-vision -- are being shown in a retrospective at a quirky art gallery obsessed with Americana of the mid-20th century."
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 12:42 PM PST - 1 comments

One hundred years later, the question remains: Did Pearse fly?
posted by Silune at 11:53 AM PST - 3 comments

Need a diversion from you-know-what? Make something out of paper. When you get tired of origami, paper airplanes, and paper balloons, try paper craft. Yamaha has a great site with downloadable papercraft templates, including not only their great motorcycles, but many animals as well. Canon also has a great selection, including a spectacular architecture selection. Not geeky enough? Try these Star Wars templates. Not difficult enough? Try this Mistubishi FTO. Not cute enough? Try these. For those of you that need some connection to the war, here you go. Last but not least, this index contains links to all kinds of great paper projects.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 11:38 AM PST - 8 comments

Celebrity TV journalist Geraldo Rivera kicked out of Iraq: Pentagon I had seen Geraldo drawing the map referred to. Geraldo was not "embedded" and therefore acting as a real reporter. Did he give away key info? My suspicion is No. I had earlier seen retired officers (they all retire and then go on TV) make similar marking to show where our forces were on the way toward Baghdad. I knew in advance where Geraldo would conclude his map in the sand because I had seen it on the "embedded" reports on various cable stations.
posted by Postroad at 11:34 AM PST - 29 comments

Operation: Cover George's butt? As the backpeddling and fingerpointing over "cakewalk" predictions continues, Talking Points Memo notes a recent article in the Charlotte Observer that quotes "senior administration officials" in saying that "dissenting views [about the war plan]' were not fully or energetically communicated to the president.'" Sounds like someones taking out an insurance policy, don't it?
posted by Gilbert at 11:31 AM PST - 16 comments

Cesar Chavez Day With our focus on the war lets not forget what DOES make this country great, its people! I have to confess ignorance of this mans accomplishments until I turned my calendar today. Read,enjoy, learn something about a man who fought injustice with the most powerful weapon...his mind!
posted by hoopyfrood at 10:46 AM PST - 10 comments

Should news be independent The BBC stands accused (from some quarters) of being biased in its coverage of the Gulf war. Of course news reporting will always have a bias - but whose bias should it be?
posted by daveg at 9:31 AM PST - 30 comments

A journalist with principles When Katy Weitz, an anti-war feature writer for UK paper 'The Sun' picked up Thursday's edition and saw the headline, it was a step too far. She went in the following day and without another job to go to, handed in her resignation. It was no longer possible for her to write for a paper whose views she didn't agree with. I once gave up a marketing job because it ran against my principles as well. How far can we stretch ourselves before we have to shrug our shoulders and say ... it's only a job?
posted by feelinglistless at 9:21 AM PST - 23 comments

A Pyrrhic victory in a catastrophic "March of Folly"? - historian Barbara Tuchman asked: why do leaders persist in pursuing catastrophic policies? Regardless of Baath regime executions of Iraqis, the Islamic world will witness mainly "American Atrocities" - and be outraged by gruesome images, on Al Jazeera and elsewhere, of every single child killed by American bombs. Iraqi tactics - of suicide bombing, ambushes, and faked surrenders - will erase the civilian/combatant distinction, leading to more and more incidents like this (to be televised to an appalled Islamic world): and all this merely a foreshadow of what may be urban warfare on a scale seldom seen in the 20th century. Grozny comes to mind. Mainstream US media asserts that the solution for the whole "miscalculation" is just more US troops

But the war is tailor made to provoke tribalistic, Pan-Islamic fury (and corresponding, furiously tribalistic US patriotic support for war). Escalation is in the air: statements by Rumsfeld, Powell, and the US State Dept. indicate an awareness that the current war could spread, drawing in Syria and Iran. Consequences also could include the destabilization or the takeover, of nuclear armed Pakistan, by Islamic militants, and a Nuclear miltarization across a wide region, from Iraq to Japan.

If only this were "South Park: The Movie", where the onset of Armaggeddon can be stopped by an heroic act of sacrifice by Kenny.
posted by troutfishing at 9:19 AM PST - 27 comments

The Code of Hammurabi is generally recognized as the first laws ever written. Hammurabi was the ruler who chiefly established the greatness of Babylon (present day Iraq), the world's first metropolis.
posted by stbalbach at 8:33 AM PST - 14 comments

How on Earth was this image made? Here is an opportunity for you to play image detective. How on Earth was this image made? Is it a painting, or a map? Is it a photograph? If so, was it taken from a high-flying aircraft, or from outer space? Is it a satellite image, or possibly even something else? Click to read the feature article when you’re ready to check your answer. (cheers, lagado)
posted by Ufez Jones at 8:25 AM PST - 16 comments

Science in the kitchen. It's more star trek then home-ec, the cooking of Blumenthal and the legendary Ferran Adria from El Bulli, brings the chemistry set into the kitchen. Egg and bacon ice cream anyone?
posted by ciderwoman at 8:25 AM PST - 6 comments

Friday Monday Fun ('cuz we need it now): Hip, very '70s-flavored t-shirts. Fun stuff (and almost totally WarFilter-Free).
posted by Shane at 7:59 AM PST - 19 comments

"Now America is reappraising the battlefield, delaying the war, maybe a week and rewriting the war plan. The first plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance. Now they are trying to write another plan." Seems patently obvious, no? But tell Iraqi state television that and suddenly you're speaking from "a position of complete ignorance," according to the White House.

Peter Arnett, highly respected, Pulitzer Prize winner and the first journalist to interview Osama Bin Laden on film, wouldn't back down the last time a network caved into craven submission at hands of the American military, and he's been sacked by NBC/MSNBC for again refusing to do so. There's no First Amendment case, obviously, and no real surprise that the military would be exerting pressure to maintain control over information, but does the firing of high-profile Arnett for the repeating the obvious increase anybody's confidence that we're hearing anything resembling the truth?
posted by JollyWanker at 7:42 AM PST - 30 comments

Washington Post gives a warblog round up. The timing of the blogging going mainstream vs. Iraq war couldn't be more ironic and oddly appropriate. Washington Post provides an interesting war blog roundup that includes the usual suspects: Vodka Pundit, Instapundit, Kuro5hin and others. Are there some notable blogs they overlooked?
posted by cpfeifer at 7:36 AM PST - 8 comments

Michael Moore is making a deal with Mel Gibson's Icon Prods. to finance "Fahrenheit 911," a documentary that will trace why the U.S. has become a target for hatred and terrorism. It will also depict alleged dealings between two generations of the Bush and bin Laden clans that led to George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden becoming mortal enemies.
posted by archimago at 7:07 AM PST - 37 comments

Children's Books Online: The Rosetta Project is an incredible online resource for 19th century children's books. From the site: "The Rosetta Project's collections currently contain about 2,000 antique children's books which were published in the 19th and early 20th century. We shall be putting these combined collections on line as funding permits. Our current goal of putting 2,000 volumes on line will create an online library of aproximately 65,000 html pages. However, as we are still collecting books from around the world, we expect the Rosetta Project online library to eventually reach millions of html pages." (via coudal.)
posted by Pinwheel at 7:01 AM PST - 7 comments

Tired of losing the puzzle pieces under the couch? War? What war?
posted by konolia at 6:40 AM PST - 8 comments

It's opening day! (Forget that silly game last night.) Whether you follow the evil empire or the best barnstorming team, today is the start of another season. Old-timers, fantasy players, card collectors, men, women, young, old: all love America's pastime.
posted by ?! at 6:19 AM PST - 19 comments

Just how well do you know The Lord of the Rings? Test your knowledge here, courtesy of the Tolkien Sarcasm Page. Also of interest: the LOTR board game, and a brief synopsis of LOTR for you students who have to write a quick book report but just don't have the time to read the actual books.
posted by UKnowForKids at 5:25 AM PST - 6 comments

"A cowboy who had gone out on a jolly" British soldiers talk about surviving friendly fire, and call for the US pilot who attacked them to be prosecuted for manslaughter.
posted by brettski at 2:57 AM PST - 32 comments

Forget all this new reality claptrap. How about the good old eighties-style claptrap? Why do I remember Manimal so fondly?
[more inside]
posted by zaack at 12:50 AM PST - 8 comments

Osama's niece wants to be a Western pop star. No, really.
posted by magullo at 12:11 AM PST - 15 comments