MetaFilter

Starting with Super Bowl 2002, the ONDCP launched a media campain linking drugs to terror, pregnancy, shooting your friend with your dad's gun, and running over a girl on her bike (Cost to taxpayer: $3.4 million). Soon after, the ads were refuted and parodied. Now the ONDCP says they'll end the ads in June, but not before they make some token Earth Day link and a weak argument against legalization.
posted by MarkO at 11:18 PM PST - 32 comments

90,000 rare manuscripts on the history of India's Parsi community have been discovered at the Dastoor Meherjirana Library at Navsari, and will be preserved by the Parzor Foundation. The Parsis are Zoroastrians who were driven from Persia by the Muslim invasion 1400 years ago. But today, the Parsi population is fading, largely due to the orthodox refusal to recognize intermarriage. Some Parsis, like the Association of Inter-Married Zoroastrians, are trying to change this. Ironically, the vultures who consume the Zoroastrian dead in Bombay are also declining, forcing the less orthodox to switch to solar panels.
posted by homunculus at 9:58 PM PST - 6 comments

Children are being held at Camp X-Ray admits the US, as reported by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
posted by Blue Stone at 9:03 PM PST - 28 comments

Please read what Trotsky thought of fascism from his pamphlet "FASCISM -- What It Is and How To Fight It". I'm much more interested in the "What It Is". This article from the Guerrilla News Network got me thinking about it. Trotsky does a lot of the definition here. The foreward by George Lavan Weissman contains such gems as:

The germ of fascism is endemic in capitalism; a crisis can raise it to epidemic proportions unless drastic countermeasures are applied.

and from elsewhere:

In order that the social crisis may bring about the proletarian revolution, it is necessary that, besides other conditions, a decisive shift of the petty bourgeois classes occurs in the direction of the proletariat. This gives the proletariat a chance to put itself at the head of the nation as its leader.

Oh MAN. I'm more fearful than normal about where the US is headed. And to throw some water on the flames, yes, I know that there isn't any systemic violence against the masses, but think of how the fear that's created by the administration takes the place of violence in cowing the populace.
posted by taumeson at 8:09 PM PST - 43 comments

Barber or hairdresser?(Or perhaps you prefer it uncut?)
posted by jeremias at 5:26 PM PST - 14 comments

The White Stripes will be appearing on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, for the entire week, starting tonight. The band is promoting their new album called Elephant.
posted by Beholder at 1:27 PM PST - 47 comments

For 2004, Bush's Aides Plan Late Sprint for Re-election. Interesting piece on the Bush administration's re-election strategy. The GOP convention marking the formal launch of Bush's campaign will be Sept. 2 — the latest nominating convention in the party's history — in New York. "Mr. Bush's advisers said they chose the date so the event would flow into the commemorations of the third anniversary of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. The back-to-back events would complete the framework for a general election campaign that is being built around national security and Mr. Bush's role in combatting terrorism..." [more inside]
posted by Dirjy at 12:59 PM PST - 74 comments

Clutter: A wondrous little application, Clutter grabs album info from a currently playing MP3 track, sends it off to Amazon, and comes back with an image of the CD cover. Once done, these images can be moved about the desktop at will; a double click plays the record in its entirety. And it's free. God bless the independent developer! [OS X and iTunes compatible only, unfortunately.]
posted by aladfar at 12:52 PM PST - 13 comments

Boohbah! According to this thread it's TV turn-off week, but just imagine some aliens kidnapped a Teletubby, pumped it full of ecstasy, acid and marijuana, forced it to play Rez for eight hours straight and then sent it to bed and somehow watched its dreams. I can personally assure you the result would be absolutely nowhere near as demented as Boohbah, a new children's TV show from Anne Wood, creator of the afforementioned Teletubbies. Boohbah's quite possibly the most surreal thing I've ever seen, which had me in turns laughing out loud and almost in tears at the sheer beauty of the whole thing. It'll probably be crossing the Atlantic soon, and I'm beginning to suspect that kids' TV is a hell of a lot better than the stuff made for adults.
posted by hnnrs at 12:20 PM PST - 35 comments

Bush vs. Science. George Bush's religion-based, restrictive policies on stem cell research continues to stunt medical research that could help millions of Americans. He is hindering research that could help treat and possibly cure Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, spinal cord injuries, and heart disease. We are told that America is supposed to unite behind our troops. Shouldn't we be united behind our scientists, who are fighting battles against crippling, cruel diseases that bring suffering and death to millions of Americans?
posted by crookdimwit at 11:31 AM PST - 62 comments

I heard it through the grapevine that Will Vinton has been "let go" from Will Vinton Studios.

Best known for the California Grapes commercials, the creator of Claymation™ has been rather unceremoniously kicked out of the animation studio he started.

Isn't this like kicking out Walt Disney or Jim Henson (when they were both alive, obviously)? What's the value of a studio without the talent it was named after?
posted by jpburns at 11:17 AM PST - 12 comments

Should the Beatles have released the White Album as a single album? The Beatles producer, George Martin, thought so. Other music critics have come up with their own single-album versions. And now there's an applet where you can make your own version of the abridged White Album.
posted by jonp72 at 11:17 AM PST - 36 comments

I like it when Chinese pigs say "hu-lu hu-lu," it's so exotic. Stupid American pigs just say oink. Also, horses in Thailand say "hee hee (with high tone)"!! How cool is it that, first, they even HAVE horses in Thailand, and second, that they sound like Betty Boop?
posted by luser at 11:13 AM PST - 5 comments

After nearly five years of silence Valve is starting to talk about Half-Life 2. More to come at E3 in Los Angeles. What ever happened to Team Fortress 2? (Vaporware?)
posted by McBain at 10:49 AM PST - 35 comments

Snoring causes headaches..... according to recent research. I post this as I recall from a previous thread that some interest was generated from a post on migraine. I drove my GP mental then, trying to tell her how to do her job based on some contributions to mefi. Now I will be starting all over again.
posted by Fat Buddha at 10:47 AM PST - 8 comments

$300 million in advertising= 300,000 lost subscribers. MSN's butterfly ad campaign has led to a loss of 300,000 subscribers. Why? Terrible creative(remember the butterfly man?)? Price competition? Saturated consumer market? Environmental outrage at the use of decals and graffiti? Discuss.
posted by SandeepKrishnamurthy at 8:29 AM PST - 40 comments

All your Iraq are belong to us 50% will lie. 50% will call names.
posted by Postroad at 8:21 AM PST - 29 comments

Happy Earth Day. We probably need an all-encompassing post. So post your links here. Find local events here and here (hint: they're not all taking place today, many are this upcoming weekend). Do something for the future generations.
posted by Ufez Jones at 7:52 AM PST - 18 comments

The New Chosen. After reading about six Congressmen living in unbelievably cheap housing owned by a religious organization called "The Fellowship Foundation" (or "The Fellowship" or "The Foundation") (via Fark), I became curious about the group. They sponsor the National Prayer Breakfast, but they'd rather you didn't know that - they go to great pains to give the impression that it's an official government function. (President Bush's remarks from 2002, and Rev. Rob Schenck's take on missing the same breakfast.) In March, Harper's Magazine ran Jeffrey Sharlet's first-person account on being a Fellowship neonate, in which he describes the group's organizational structure (which takes its clues from terrorists, Hitler, and the Mafia). In 2002 the Los Angeles Times published an examination of the Foundation's political activities (hosted at toobeautiful.org, which recounts an interesting episode in which three Congressmen, all Fellowship members, take the opportunity to proselytize to a foreign head of state while on official government business. [more inside]
posted by UKnowForKids at 5:53 AM PST - 35 comments

Russian History. 'Few nations have as colorful and vivid a history as Russia. At times torn between the East and the West, sometimes buffering the two, Russia has always been a pot of enormous ethnic diversity which refuses to melt. The result has been a mixture of socialism and capitalism, of east and west, Christianity and Islam with a bit of social experimentation thrown in. '
A Chronology of Russian History; the Russian Assembly of Nobility; the History of Moscow; the Khazars; the History of Jews in Russia; Treasures of the Tsars; Soviet and Russian Technology; Soviet Archives Exhibit.
posted by plep at 2:20 AM PST - 8 comments

Battle of the "Gypsy"s. There was Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly and Bette Midler. There was even the possibility of Barbra Streisand as Madonna's mother. And now comes Bernadette Peters in the Sam Mendes production of the show theater guru Frank Rich called his favorite musical. This surely begs the question: who's the swellest, greatest, world-on-a-platiest Mama Rose ever? And who are your top five desert island Mama Roses? (Note: participation weighs significantly on your sexuality...contribute at your own risk.)
posted by adrober at 12:27 AM PST - 17 comments