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The SAT's are being revamped. (NY Times link)
posted by BlueTrain at 11:37 PM PST - 14 comments

Minneapolis declares war on Krispy Kreme. Maybe it's about time something like this happened. After all, considering how ever-growing food conglomerates like Starbucks and McDonald's always seem to be getting attacked from all sides, it's sort of surprising Krispy Kreme has had so little trouble expanding.
posted by mrbula at 10:33 PM PST - 36 comments

This is a Magazine Very cool art (some line-art nudity). [via Webgraphics]
posted by kirkaracha at 10:29 PM PST - 11 comments

Thanks to a breakthrough in medical technology allowing HIV-infected semen to be purified of the virus, thousands of men will now be able to father children whose high-school graduations they'll never live to see. Is there no limit to human vanity?
posted by tiny pea at 9:46 PM PST - 19 comments

Is Bill Clinton the next Oprah? (nytimes, reg. required) Bill Clinton is looking into the possibility of hosting a daytime talk show. Regardless of you personal and/or political feelings towards Clinton, how do you feel about someone who was the leader of the U.S. becoming a talk show host. For those of you not in the U.S., do you think the general population in your country would view one of their leaders doing this differently than Americans will? (LA Times story)
posted by m@L at 9:40 PM PST - 19 comments

Forum letter #2: It took a while to sink in, but yes, I had just been offered 2 tickets to see Episode 2 exactly 2 weeks early!! And I'd be seeing it on the huge Westown Ultrascreen in Waukesha, WI. This was quite possibly the best gift I have been given… Ohhh baby baby, that Force of yours just makes me feel so dirty!
posted by dchase at 8:44 PM PST - 2 comments

Fly The Copter You think it's easy flying a radio-controlled helicopter into somebody's head. My hi-score is 418. See if you can beat it.
posted by sahrens428 at 8:31 PM PST - 20 comments

yet another victory for school boards against terrorism... an 11 year old girl is suspended for three days after drawing stick figures of her teachers with arrows in their heads after receiving a D on a vocabulary test. ie, more of this zero, tolerance crap. good thing my teachers never looked in my folders... i'd surely be in Arkham Asylum by now if they had...
posted by sixtwenty3dc at 6:30 PM PST - 16 comments

melaniegriffith.com Have you visited lately? What do all the other movie stars think? Are they jealous?
posted by bhmwks at 5:57 PM PST - 25 comments

Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the General Government. --Thomas Jefferson
posted by rushmc at 5:29 PM PST - 25 comments

Powell Announces Mideast Conference Could this, a world-wide conference, finally resolve the mess in ;the Middle East?
posted by Postroad at 4:21 PM PST - 14 comments

Do you visit Fark? If so, you'll probably get a kick out of Something Awful's latest site parody.
posted by kingmissile at 3:01 PM PST - 12 comments

Lehrer's On the Line
Satirical Haiku Jam
First Annual. (stream)
posted by andrewraff at 2:28 PM PST - 2 comments

Terror Suspect Puts Court to the Test In a virulent, 50-minute speech in open court, Moussaoui -- the man government prosecutors say was meant to be the 20th hijacker on Sept. 11 -- fired his court-appointed defense team, accusing them of working with the U.S. government to secure his execution. He also informed U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema that he plans to mount his own defense. Funny.
posted by Niahmas at 2:12 PM PST - 6 comments

Anti-Idiotarian Coalition/United Blogging Nation? It seems all this talk of UN bias has has some bloggers so frustrated and angry that they feel it's time to band together as a political force, and the beginnings of a movement are taking shape. Legal actions, media attention, and even a full fledged political party are all ideas that have been bandied about. They already have a couple of legal eagles and prominent blogging figures offering services/resources. All they need now are t-shirts. Oh wait, they have those too. One Nation, under Blog...
posted by mikhail at 1:49 PM PST - 15 comments

Peru goes GNU. And I quote: "You may have heard about this if you watch the free software news, but I just want to repeat it for anyone who hasn't. The Peruvian government has introduced legislation requiring government offices to use free software; Microsoft is unhappy; and a member of the Peruvian Congress has written a response which I highly recommend reading, in which he explains in strong terms why it's out of the question for the government of a democratic nation to use proprietary software."
posted by BGM at 11:43 AM PST - 21 comments

Did you know that May is National Artisan Gelato Month? The Food Reference Website is an endless source of Facts and Trivia about eating and food. For instance, do you know the story behind how Dr Percy Spencer actually came to invent the microwave oven? Or that Nostradamus wrote a popular cookbook?
posted by anastasiav at 11:23 AM PST - 2 comments

Mooooooo.... I'm a cow So it's not quite Friday, but this makes me wish it were.
Requires Flash and a sound card for full enjoyment).
posted by stormy at 11:13 AM PST - 7 comments

1,200 Brazilians bare it all in the name of art This is part of a series of public photo sessions photographer Spencer Tunick has been doing around the world on the same theme - masses of naked bodies on open, public spaces representing, in the author's view, "a celebration of life", though some say it is more fitting of the concentration camp shoots of WWII. What's more amazing is the sheer amount of volunteers willing to be photographed, and the fact that almost all of these are men. There must be some interesting sociological observations in here...
posted by betobeto at 10:55 AM PST - 15 comments

The picture that Britney doesn't want you to see.
posted by neilkod at 9:55 AM PST - 63 comments

Freeze sperm, leave the men behind. In this article, a NASA researcher explains how a flight to the nearest star would take place within our lifetimes, but require at least a couple generations. The generation that leaves (which could be entirely female to save on weight and maximize potential for offspring) would die, and giving birth to the next crew. Taking a trip like this would increase our knowledge of space many-fold, but would you be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for mankind? Is a trip like this a bad idea?
posted by mathowie at 9:18 AM PST - 58 comments

BlindDateBlog started it's run yesterday. Ten men and ten women battle it out to be the finalists in the male/female (not-so-)blind date. Can you pic out the MeFites? Can you pic the winners?
posted by silusGROK at 7:58 AM PST - 23 comments

Chicken or Egg? Well .... neither, apparently.

"One little chap thought that you got orange juice from milk, because the milkman delivered orange juice to his door ".

Anyone else have amusingly misguided, yet (slightly) logical assumptions as a kid?.

posted by MintSauce at 7:56 AM PST - 107 comments

Just fun here. Pick your favorite Arcade game and comment on why it is your favorite. Just a little distraction from all the doom and gloom. Mine is Robotron, so much so that a few years ago I actually bought one. It was first released in 1982 and it claimed many quarters from me. Very exciting game that really tested your hand/eye coordination. So, let's hear it for your favorite blast from the past
posted by a3matrix at 7:53 AM PST - 45 comments

don't forget the snacks!...mmm, shrimp chips :)
posted by kliuless at 7:47 AM PST - 16 comments

There is no news today
The Israelis are the masters of changing the subject, and they have managed (not entirely without his own enthusiastic participation) to turn Arafat into the issue, rather than the occupation and all its machinery of oppression, dispossession, starvation and destruction.

The Arab-American writer and activist, Ali Abunimah, is frustrated and disheartened...but not hopeless. Abunimah's intelligent and reasoned writing gives a solid context to the past few days' events, from the cancellation of the Jenin fact-finding mission by a seemingly duplicitious Kofi Annan, to the distraction of Yasser Arafat's release.
posted by mapalm at 7:27 AM PST - 20 comments

Is the Massaoui trial undermining the U.S. judicial system? "[W]hen an alleged terrorist and self-professed enemy of the state seeks to use a trial to broadcast his message, incite his confederates, and to possibly pass coded messages to America's enemies, the assumption that a free, open trial is best for this democracy is called into question." How far must we Americans go to ensure that (even self-professed) enemies of the state enjoy the same freedoms as the rest of us?
posted by mkultra at 6:49 AM PST - 13 comments

If a crappy software licensing agreement falls in the forest, and no is there to see it, do you still have to abide by UCITA? It's a bit facile, and probably not legally effective for a hundred reasons; but it is a fun idea which gives us another way to look at a controversial feature of modern computing.
posted by machaus at 6:24 AM PST - 3 comments

"Computer technology was supposed to replace paper. But that hasn't happened. Every country in the Western world uses more paper today, on a per-capita basis, than it did ten years ago... This is generally taken as evidence of how hard it is to eradicate old, wasteful habits and of how stubbornly resistant we are to the efficiencies offered by computerization. A number of cognitive psychologists and ergonomics experts, however, don't agree. Paper has persisted, they argue, for very good reasons: when it comes to performing certain kinds of cognitive tasks, paper has many advantages over computers." Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, on The Social Life of Paper.
posted by tranquileye at 5:18 AM PST - 14 comments

The Try Group's site uses a simple Flash "game" to deliver their central idea: that children should be encouraged to look at the world in different ways. There's a little more info at the developer's site.
Neat concept, and also just fun to poke around in for a little while.
posted by Su at 5:16 AM PST - 6 comments

Missing since January 2001, and no one knew it? In January 2001, Rilya Wilson was handed over to people who claimed to work for the Florida Department of Children and Families. Department officials say that they do not have custody of the child. In fact, they don't know where she is, or who has her. The child's caseworker's been fired for falsifying documents in another case, and had been slacking in this one. Rilya's grandmother's attempts at following up were apparently stonewalled. No one knows where little Rilya is, but there are some suspicions that she may be the child known as "Precious Doe," a little girl found murdered in Kansas City. How does something like this happen? More importantly, what could be an appropriate consequence for Florida DCF authorities who lost a five year old child and didn't seem to care?
posted by Dreama at 4:53 AM PST - 12 comments

Communist kitsch is not yet dead.
posted by CatherineB at 3:06 AM PST - 9 comments

Robot Rats!
Excellent, now i can take over the WORLD!!
Please add, Predator like optics and Universal Soilder healing abilities - I expect to see them on thinkGeek by the end of the month, thank you.
Although a little cruel, scientist have managed to put implants in rats brains, effectivley given them god like controls of the little vermin.
posted by monkeyJuice at 2:37 AM PST - 16 comments

against capitalism..against war a tad late but allows you to immerse in the world of anti-globalisation campaigners.
posted by johnnyboy at 1:48 AM PST - 5 comments

Newspapers: Where Would Breakfast Be Without Them? Yeah, online is fine for dipping, checking and scanning but nothing goes with properly brewed coffee like the aroma of fresh print on paper, preferably piled high in thick broadsheet-size stacks. The Wall Street Journal's Tunku Varadajaran makes the case for us newspaper junkies. What's your daily fix?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 1:20 AM PST - 30 comments

After yesterday's sandwich-related thread, you're certainly looking for a tasty beverage to wash down your lunch. Unfortunately, you'll be hard-pressed to locate something potable at The Beverage Network, among whose featured beverages are Java Cola, White Soda (that's carbonated milk), and Pickle Juice.
posted by Danelope at 12:43 AM PST - 18 comments