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Venezuela's Chavez deposed with the military claiming control for now. The end of a sometimes cringe-inducingly entertaining era. What next? Civilian constitutional rule restored by lunchtime, or not? Will the strike end, allowing oil exports to resume?
posted by dhartung at 10:51 PM PST - 11 comments

U.S. Representative James Traficant (D-Ohio) has been found guilty on all 10 charges he faced, including kickbacks, fraud, bribery, and racketeering. The Congressman, known for his hatred of the IRS(God bless him) and his love of pork barrel projects, has lit up the Congress with his bombastic behavior since he was elected in 1984. Controversy has never been far from Traficant, he still claims that the trial is due to the bizarre, humorous, and grotesque story of his mob-funded election to Sheriff of Youngstown. He claims that he will run as an independent in the newly formed 17th District in the next congressional election. Will he be out of jail? Does he have a chance? What is Congress going to do with him? Fascinating background information courtesy of investigative journalist Dan Moldea's website
posted by insomnyuk at 9:39 PM PST - 11 comments

Getting the Girl. The NY Times Magazine ran a great article awhile back on the emotional and societal consequences of being able to choose the sex of your baby. In the US, the ratio for the overall population is 0.96 males for every 1 female. But it has been changing over time and there's some controversy as to why this is.
posted by euphorb at 8:35 PM PST - 10 comments

Ain't It Cool: Hollywood's Redheaded Stepchild Speaks Out is the title of Harry Knowles' recently published book. Written with Paul Cullum and Mark Ebner, the book is a biting, dead-on critique of the film industry. "If smart audiences can't find the smart movies that are out there, then it's only because they have been systematically alientated from movies over a hard-fought twenty years. Films didn't get stupid all on their own; they were beaten and bloodied into submission in the mistaken belief that it would generate greater profits."
posted by Mo Nickels at 8:05 PM PST - 38 comments

Finally! It may be 20 years too late, but I bet I can finally get my picture taken with the General Lee! Cooter's is spreading!
posted by allpaws at 5:36 PM PST - 6 comments

Time to stop the war on terrorism says Jonah Goldberg of the National Review.
posted by dagny at 3:33 PM PST - 28 comments

Subway Passengers: Underground Portraits From Ten Cities António Jorge Gonçalves rides the subway and sketches whoever happens to sit in front of him, from New York to Lisbon to Tokyo. I find his drawings interesting because there's nothing studied or selective about them. You feel you've already seen these people. Mathowie recently linked to another Portuguese artist's drawings - Jorge Colombo, who designed O Independente with me, the newspaper I founded and edited in 1987. It's a small consolation for a small country like mine that urban sketches by fellow citizens are, as of now, practically a staple here on MetaFilter...[Flash required; download may be slow for dial-ups at busy times and, whatever you do, don't hit your browser's Back button - use only the one provided.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:23 PM PST - 9 comments

Gateway asks, "Like this song? Download it for free from Gateway.com. Burn it on to a CD" Gateway is launching an ad campaign against the CBDTPA bill. They are supporting users to download and burn legal mp3's. Maybe now it is time for the RIAA to wake up and see that they can't stop technology. Watch the ad with Gateway CEO Ted Waitt here.
posted by futureproof at 3:17 PM PST - 12 comments

Google opens SOAP interface. I'm not sure what's coolest about this. That Google can be used in all kinds of applications, or that it's free up to 1000 hits a day so the independent developers will get a good crack at it, or that's it the first step of Level 2 of the www arriving in a cascading recombinance of web services and scripting glue.
posted by mattw at 3:00 PM PST - 13 comments

Crimethinc is a new publisher that’s getting a bit of mainstream press mostly on the basis of a book called Evasion, which is a nonfiction account of a latter day Huck Finn cum Hayduke. (Any store that uses an Evan Dorkin comic to illustrate a point gets my dollars.)
posted by raaka at 2:38 PM PST - 2 comments

bastard.
posted by jcterminal at 2:31 PM PST - 67 comments

Here's something you don't see every day.. The north Texas radio station KVIL 103.7FM has a traffic copter which has flown nearly every weekday without fail for years. It's a regular sight in the sky for Dallas commuters. This morning, it became traffic. Engine failure led to an emergency landing on a city street. Avoiding power lines and oncoming traffic, the pilot lost the tail rotor assembly but otherwise landed his copter intact. A near catastrophe was averted by a very capable, steely-eyed missile man of a pilot. The three reporters in the copter with the pilot suffered only minor injuries. A very lucky day. It coulda been a lot worse.
posted by ZachsMind at 2:28 PM PST - 12 comments

Eww, what's that smell? It's kind of sad, really, a poor little creature, velella, also known as "by-the-wind sailor" that spends its life cruising the wavetops, is unceremoniously stranded all along the west coast beaches, due to a shift in the spring winds. It happens in my town, Dillon Beach, every couple of years but they're really thick this year.
posted by Lynsey at 2:12 PM PST - 18 comments

Truth in advertising is such a rare thing. I particularly like the reply to the VP of Engineering from Polk Audio. You can only wonder if it was a real email or somebody just trying to yank his chain.
posted by johnmunsch at 1:47 PM PST - 9 comments

A 401(k) is not a Pension! In a pension plan, your employer invests some money and gives you some of it when you retire. In a 401(k), they, um, don't. Congress seems a little confused on this issue, however. It turns out that the 401k might be more boondoggle than boon to average people planning to retire before they die.
posted by ilsa at 1:19 PM PST - 21 comments

The International Criminal Court is now a reality after a group of 10 countries signed the treaty at a ceremony at the U.N. today, bringing the number of signatories to 66. According to Kofi Annan "the missing link in the international justice system is now in place," but without the participation of the U.S., Russia or China, how effective can it be?
posted by homunculus at 12:49 PM PST - 7 comments

TheraDate "We stack the deck in your favor—like no one ever has—to help you find the right life partner....TheraDateSM requires its members to currently be in psychotherapy for at least two months or discharged from therapy for no longer than two years."

A new service whereby shrinks play matchmaker for their clients. Blurs the therapist/patient relationship a bit, it would seem. With so many more people in NYC seeing shrinks since 9/11, business should be booming. There's also an article about it in the current issue of the New York Observer. When the going gets weird...
posted by martk at 11:07 AM PST - 15 comments

Room-a-zoom-zoom! These cartoons were bad in a good way! When I was a wee lad, I loved cartoons like Blue Falcon/Dynomutt and Hong Kong Phooey. My gotta-watch cartoon was The Superfriends, which had some of the most unintentionally-hilarious dialogue ever. And can anyone for get The World of Sid and Marty Krofft? Anyone else get nostalgic over shows like this?
posted by mrmanley at 11:02 AM PST - 17 comments

Some say the Taj Mahal pre-dates Shahjahan by several centuries and was originally built as a Hindu or Vedic temple complex. Fascinating theory or a crackpot...more inside >
posted by bittennails at 10:47 AM PST - 10 comments

New Missile Defense angle: blow everything out of the sky with nuclear interceptors Anybody else impressed by Rumsfeld 's insight?
posted by magullo at 10:46 AM PST - 39 comments

Something tells the The Masters isn't off to a very good start.
posted by emptybowl at 9:12 AM PST - 37 comments

Quark Star Observations of two stars, one unusually small and the other unusually cold, have led astronomers to think they are seeing evidence of a new form of matter and a new kind of star, one possibly made of elementary particles known as quarks and denser than any cosmic object other than a black hole. (NYT link: yada yada) Here's a related link on neutron stars and quark matter. I rather like the phrase strange quark matter... Anybody else hear about this?
posted by y2karl at 9:03 AM PST - 8 comments

Sales of cuddly stuffed Japanese Prime Minister dolls on the decline. Mobile phone strap sales also down. There used be hundreds of customers lining up outside the building last summer... Would you buy "packets of cookies" with Bush's face on them? (via f*edgaijin)
posted by curiousg at 8:45 AM PST - 8 comments

Move over, Jared... there's going to be a hot new way to lose weight. Scientists have "found the chemical pathways that muscle cells use to build strength and endurance," making it possible to have a fitness pill.
posted by Kevin Sanders at 6:29 AM PST - 9 comments

Herbalife to be bought for $685M. Does anyone else find this disturbing given the information revealed in this previous thread?
posted by bkdelong at 6:08 AM PST - 17 comments

"Heck with the tiger. What about the plane in the driveway." Maybe this plane was piloted by an invisible network of terrorists aiming to disrupt LA traffic.
posted by fpatrick at 6:02 AM PST - 8 comments

"There's a tiger in the back yard!" The surburban Houston 8-year-old told her mom's boyfriend, who didn't believe her...at first...

(the linked story also provides a link to video of local news coverage)
posted by alumshubby at 5:08 AM PST - 21 comments

FDA stops nicotine lollipop, lip balm sales As a follow up to This Thread, kiss your pops good bye... CNN Says The Food and Drug Administration warned three pharmacies Wednesday to stop selling nicotine lollipops and nicotine lip balm on the Internet, calling the products "illegal." They said said the lollipops and lip balm are "unapproved drugs" that need, but do not have, FDA approval. And the pops are "candy-like products present a risk of accidental use by children."
posted by Blake at 4:39 AM PST - 6 comments

British court to rule on extermination of the working class (more inside...)
posted by bifter at 3:35 AM PST - 13 comments

Electric Pompeii. A distant church bell tolls, Tumbleweed blows, a lone wolf howls. Snapshots of websites preserved exactly as they were at the moment when the final redundancy notices were handed out...
posted by Spoon at 2:56 AM PST - 6 comments

The Adrenaline Vault gives itself a facelift. This computer and videogaming site has always been there for me, unlike others I could name, and they did it without subscriptions or most other types of gaming site hoo-hah. I raise a toast to a bunch of people that love games as much as hard work. That's how you survive a ".com collapse" (those CPL sponsors probably don't hurt 'em). Congratulations.
posted by WolfDaddy at 12:16 AM PST - 7 comments

So the rich get richer? Or just another bleeding heart. EU and US selling poor down the river
Oxfam report accuses west of double standards on trade
The European Union and the United States are robbing the world's poor of billions of dollars each year in export earnings by preaching free trade while protecting their own markets, development campaigners claim today.
posted by onegoodmove at 12:09 AM PST - 16 comments