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Consider Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, military defense attorney, now representing Salim Ahmed Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni who admits he was a driver for Osama bin Laden, a prisoner at Guantanamo since 2002. He was transferred to solitary confinement in December in preparation for trial, but no trial date has been set. He has been told the trial will be fair but that evidence may be withheld from him, and his lawyer must ask the government's permission before revealing any facts of the case. He can seek redress only up the chain of command--in other words, to the people who decided he should be charged in the first place. Swift has filed lawsuit in Federal District Court in Seattle against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and President George W. Bush, arguing not only that Hamdan is an innocent civilian, but that the military tribunal President Bush's administration created to try him is unconstitutional. Also, he says, the tribunal rules violate military law and the Geneva Conventions. If the government is right and Hamdan cannot use this legal avenue, "the logical result" is that Hamdan "could serve a potential life sentence without ever being charged with a crime and without being afforded a chance to prove his innocence," legal filings state. (More Within)
posted by y2karl at 11:57 PM PST - 21 comments

Scientists find rodent monogamy gene. Emory researchers say that a single gene can change promiscuous rodents into faithful partners. Insert a certain gene of the monogamous prairie vole into the brain of the normally slutty meadow vole, and suddenly the meadow vole stops going to bars and hitting on other field mice. Previously, the same scientists' extensive research uncovered a vole sociability gene. In addition to its implications for autism and Asperger's Syndrome, the study could spawn the next reality show hit, "Who Wants a Monogamy Implant?" (Would you do it, if you could?)
posted by onlyconnect at 9:15 PM PST - 21 comments

AnimationMentor. [Flash].
In case you want to learn animation from home.
posted by Gyan at 7:07 PM PST - 9 comments

Fried Society is not a new comic strip, nor has it been updated in quite a long time. But it remains the most insightful use of the medium I've ever seen.
posted by effugas at 7:01 PM PST - 8 comments

The Swift Boat Veterans video you didn't hear about. Shown on CSPAN-2, now available on their website (downloadable video in WMV format), but not widely reported by any major news service. The angriest group of Vietnam vets you might ever see--men who served with and around John Kerry, united in their opposition to his becoming President. Part 1 Part 2
posted by kablam at 6:32 PM PST - 102 comments

Just when you think all government endeavors are going to hell, the National Center for Biotechnology Information comes to the rescue (well, has been coming to the scientist near you since 1988). For free, search everything from dna sequences in organisms where the genome is known to searching known Mendelian inheritances for Homo Sapiens (example here). Also of much use and interest is PudMed with the ability to search and read virtually any established molecular biology paper.
posted by jmd82 at 5:53 PM PST - 4 comments

Pictures are up from the 2004 Power Tool Drag Races (brought to SF by Charlie and Jim), an event in which people retrofit store bought power tools for racing down a track. The Ridden Class re-rigs tools to locomote vehicles. Several action-packed movies (and one boring one) can be found here. Our own CTP (in hat-->) took 2nd!
[Note: the Qbox site lists multiple photo galleries off-site. Some of them have NSFW pictures.]
posted by scarabic at 5:47 PM PST - 7 comments

The City of God (#29 IMDB top 250) is a film about life in Brazilian "favelas" (shantytowns) where poverty, drugs, violence and crime rule the streets. At murder rates of more than 40 per 100,000, one person shot every 30 minutes in the city, Rio ranks as the world's most dangerous places along with Cali, Colombia and Johannesburg, South Africa. Rio has over 600 favelas and the crime and violence is becoming so bad corporations are fleeing the city while the military is under direct assault and the prison system is breaking down. Favela guided tours available or see the movie available now on DVD.
posted by stbalbach at 5:41 PM PST - 28 comments

Virtual Replay - Shockwave recreation of the major incidents in all the Euro 2004 matches. Select from multiple cameras, players' viewpoints or even the point of view of the ball. note - doesn't seem to work in Firefox.
posted by chill at 4:03 PM PST - 13 comments

The Textbooks of Military Medicine. An engrossing collection of pdf versions of textbooks used to train military medics. My favorite one is the one on War Psychiatry, which includes summaries of studies that have been done on veterans of WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, and another section on POWs and their phychiatric reactions (perhaps it might explain some things about Kerry or McCain?). Other topics include Medical Aspects of Harsh Environments (Vol. 1), Medical Aspects of Chemical and Biological Warfare, and Medical Consequences of Nuclear Warfare (<-- pdf file).
posted by acridrabbit at 2:06 PM PST - 4 comments

Poster Glory: Antique American Posters.
posted by hama7 at 1:47 PM PST - 7 comments

You Too Can Profit From The War on Terra "You’d think with both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars well under way and with the war on terrorism being more than two years old that the share price of any bullet proof vest manufacturer would be fully valued. Not so! The company that manufactures the amazing life saving bullet proof vests that Sgt. Travis L. McKinney wrote to from the Iraq front line is not only undervalued but is a screaming takeover candidate that is poised to enjoy an up to 450% increase in its stock price." Operators are standing by...
posted by owillis at 1:43 PM PST - 10 comments

Defining Deviancy Down In 1993, one of our greatest statesmen, Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan (D- N.Y.) published one of the most important pieces of social theory entitled "Defining Deviancy Down." Moynihan started from Emile Durkheim's proposition that there is a limit to the amount of deviant behavior any community can "afford to recognize" (called the "Durkheim Constant"). As the amount of deviancy increases, the community has to adjust its standards so that conduct once thought deviant is no longer deemed so. Consequently, if we are not vigilant about enforcing them, our standards would be constantly devolving in order to normalize rampant deviancy. Shortly after Moynihan's article, Charles Krauthammer offered his now-famous response to Moynihan's article in which he argued that the corollary is that society can also "define deviancy up."

Moynihan's theory has been applied to movies, courage, dress codes, sexual indiscretions, corporate behavior, and possibly even to webpages. One might feel compelled to ask, "Do standards even mean anything?" Today, the debate still rages about where we ought to be defeatist about the devolution of standards, or whether we can right the boat by establishing base principles and fight to raise standards up.
posted by Seth at 1:35 PM PST - 63 comments

What's a Ponzi Scheme? Enron was described as a Ponzi scheme. Social security has also been described as a Ponzi scheme. The originator of this scheme was Carlo Ponzi who led an interesting life and bought a nice pink house with his ill-gotten gains. There's even a website where you can read about him in more detail, including the intro to his autobiography.
posted by dodgygeezer at 1:32 PM PST - 9 comments

Operation Shoe Fly • From Afghanistan, Sgt Hook writes, "So my esteemed friends of the blogosphere...I announce the beginning of Operation Shoe Fly in an effort to shoe the children with no shoes on their feet. If you can collect the shoes, used or new, boys' and girls' (age 14 and under), and send them to me, my crewdogs and I will fly them out to the Afghani kids who so desperately need them."
posted by dhoyt at 12:26 PM PST - 38 comments

Bloomsday Virus Inflicts James Joyce on Mobile Phone Users
The first ever computer virus that can infect mobile phones has been discovered, anti-virus software developers said today, rendering many phones virtually useless.

The virus was apparently released in time for the 100th anniversary of the eponymous literary holiday. It infects the Symbian operating system that is used in several makes of mobiles, notably the Nokia brand, and propagates through the new bluetooth wireless technology that is in several new mobile phones.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 11:56 AM PST - 19 comments

Reagan's Son is Not Too Impressed. [An interesting Article from Salon, More Inside.]
posted by chunking express at 11:44 AM PST - 32 comments

Have you heard of Fucking? In Austria? According to Wikipedia, Fucking's sign is "the most often stolen street sign in Austria". Despite the cost of constantly replacing the sign, however, residents of the small village thankfully refuse to change its name.
posted by reklaw at 9:47 AM PST - 43 comments

These days, we remember the age of legends by reliving them, virtually. Is it a sign of the fall of civilization when modern leaders are so bland as to be indistinguishable from one another? Oh how I miss the golden years.
posted by zekinskia at 8:44 AM PST - 3 comments

Consciousness Timeline ll : 1970 - Present (summer reading) Here's a wee summer reading list - on human consciousness and more. A few from the list : Stanislav Grof (altered state/transpersonal consciousness), Charles Tart (altered state/consciousness research), Chogyam Trungpa (Buddhism), Jean Houston, James Hillman, Ralph Abraham (Chaos, Gaia, and Eros), Howard Rheingold (being himself), Mihaly Csikszentmihaly (On "flow"), Joanna Macy, John Lilly (Dolphins, LSD, and more!), James Gleick (Chaos Theory), Thomas Berry, Rianne Eisler, Howard Gardner, Stephen Laberge (Lucid dreaming), Sam Keen (on the manufacture of the "enemy"), James Lovelock (Gaia Theory), Eugene Gendlin ("Focusing"), Hazel Henderson (An alternative economics - for human beings), Jeffrey Mishlove ("The Roots of Consciousness"), Michael Harner (leading world authority on Shamanism), Amory Lovins (on alternative energy), Elaine Pagels ("The Gnostic Gospels"), Huston Smith (on World religions), Ilya Prigogine ("dissipative structures")....now, to the beach.
posted by troutfishing at 7:54 AM PST - 23 comments

Defunct amusement parks. It has postcards and historical photos. It also has relatively current photos of parks in various states of disrepair. A great site for fans of entropy, like myself. (via Linkfilter)
posted by jester69 at 7:21 AM PST - 27 comments

The spite factor - Or, why Democrats are in danger of losing their wonderful, angry momentum.
posted by Space Coyote at 7:12 AM PST - 40 comments

US Presidents: Lists and Records. For Presidential Historians and Trivia addicts only. More inside
posted by psmealey at 6:22 AM PST - 5 comments

Commodore 64 Hip-Hop that you might enjoy, depending on your tolerance for lowfi obsoleet funk freakin.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 5:45 AM PST - 28 comments

Dramatic photographic essays on a variety of themes from the Bilderberg Archiv der Fotografen. I particularly liked "mazes," "water rooms" and "Kenya."
posted by madamjujujive at 4:38 AM PST - 11 comments

Winning hearts and minds in Iraq (or anywhere else, for that matter)? Not really. Check this U.S.-sponsored poll, then pray and hope for the best.
posted by acrobat at 4:15 AM PST - 19 comments

pitchformula.com This project combines a computer science background and a songwriting hobby with an unhealthy obsession for popular music reviews. In it, I attempt to come up with a new computer-assisted songwriting method which takes music critics' opinions into account. By writing software to statisically analyze the content of several thousand record reviews from the Pitchfork music website (www.pitchforkmedia.com), I generate a set of compositional guidelines based on the musical preferences expressed by the critics. I then use those guidelines to write and record a couple of original songs, discussing in detail the relationships between the songs and the data that I have collected. [via music (for robots)]
posted by soundofsuburbia at 3:51 AM PST - 18 comments

My Tiny Garden. (Note: Flash; via milton.)
posted by misteraitch at 2:23 AM PST - 5 comments