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"A Kmart Exclusive! This Inflatable Costume from Pumpkin Time is sure to make you the comic hit at any Halloween Party. The cool and comfortable costume self inflates and requires 3 "AA" batteries (not included) to do so."
Other designs:
--You think your kids are scared of clowns now...
--Can Paul Prudhomme sue for this?
--Aarrgghh!! My eyes!!!
"So, Little Tommy, what do you want to go as for Halloween?" "I wanna be Jiminy Glick!"
...with 3 AA batteries. Now it's official: Kmart is doomed.
posted by wendell at 10:37 PM PST - 40 comments

An Elevator to the Stars. The paper of record claims this isn't science fiction, but do we really believe that in ten years we'll be able to build a 60,000 mile long cable capable of supporting 13 ton cargo loads? Would you trust this to take you into asynchronous orbit? (Or maybe you just want to make like Joe Kittinger and jump out at 100,000 feet.)
posted by alms at 6:34 PM PST - 24 comments

Bill Is Thinking About The Children. MSN has decided to close almost all of it's chatrooms across the world. It cites concerns about paedophiles targeting and grooming children. Some children's charities are delighted. Some of MSN's competitors are less impressed.
posted by Blue Stone at 5:50 PM PST - 33 comments

Plenty of pop music explosions have been international in scope-metal, punk, hip-hop. But none as much as the initial blast garage rock and roll that erupted after the Beatles and Stones broke big. Cutie Morning Moon does an astounding job of documenting the far flung outposts of garageland like Chile, Hong Kong, Sweden, Holland Japan Uruguay, Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe. It also includes the story of Japanese Brazillian expatriates Os Incriveis , plenty of wild photos, movie footage of swede legends the Tages and an article on the secret history of Joan Jett's #1 hit " I Love Rock And Roll". This site is seemingly bottomless, but if that ain't enough there's great links too. If the whole world gan get together and dig three chord boogie, I say there's still hope. *some pages are translated from Japanese. The prose can be awkward. But the feelings there.
posted by jonmc at 5:44 PM PST - 13 comments

Digital Fiction attempts to make something artistic using Flash. Monochromatic darkness, crazy writing and some weird visual effects.
posted by seanyboy at 3:04 PM PST - 3 comments

The requirement to carry passports while visiting US, that will eventually include biometric markers such as iris scans as well as digital photos, leaves Canadians unhappy.
posted by riffola at 2:59 PM PST - 23 comments

President confirms denies confirms link between Iraq and terrorism! " The regime of Saddam Hussein cultivated ties to terror while it built weapons of mass destruction."

In other news, we're at war with Eastasia. We've always been at war with Eastasia... Food rations have jumped by 10%! Doubleplusgood!
posted by insomnia_lj at 2:51 PM PST - 39 comments

Jim Munroe, author of Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask [free e-book here] and other books, is also the creator of No Media Kings, an anti-media monopoly site where you can learn to make your own books (why & how). Jim also makes movies/cdroms and recently co-created The Perpetual Roadshow [careful, sound].
posted by dobbs at 1:52 PM PST - 3 comments

The Most Phallic Building In The World? Cabinet Magazine collected assorted nominees, both circumcised and not. Of course, these days we prefer our erotic architecture to be user-friendly.
posted by liam at 12:02 PM PST - 44 comments

Hooray For Leonard Feather's Scrapbook: Here's something wonderful to go with proud owners of his epochal Biographical Encylopedia of Jazz . Seminal articles and delicious jazz clips (Quicktime req.) are part of the pleasure.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 10:57 AM PST - 4 comments

The Alphabet: Meaningless shapes arbitrarily linked to meaningless sounds. When George Bernard Shaw died in 1950, his will provided for the development of a new alphabet for the English language, an alphabet of at least forty letters that could be used to write English without all the oddities of our traditional spelling. Learn more about the history and origins of The Shaw Alphabet, and look at some of its competitors, including the initial teaching alphabet, Inglish Simplifíd Speling and The Unifon Alphabet - a 40 character alphabet resulting from the Shaw alphabet competition. Or, read what Mark Twain had to say on the subject.
posted by anastasiav at 10:04 AM PST - 10 comments

Iraq's governing council bans Al-Jazeera, al-Arabiya TV stations. "US officials have accused Qatar-based Aljazeera and Dubai-based al-Arabiya of giving too much prominence to anti-US attacks and providing a forum for backers of ousted President Saddam Hussein." Wouldn't buying them be more American?
posted by Eloquence at 9:58 AM PST - 44 comments

Warblogger as Goodwill Ambassador Chief Wiggles, one of the major military warbloggers, is running a toy drive for Iraqi children. Seems like it might be a nice way to engender some good vibes in the next generation of Iraqis.
posted by jengod at 9:56 AM PST - 30 comments

In the long tradition of Google anouncements may I present to you Google Location search (which if you recall was the winner of the competition they held last year)
posted by zeoslap at 9:45 AM PST - 7 comments

Search the dead Internet. (via Q Daily News)
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 8:07 AM PST - 1 comments

another canary tips over
as the administration (more specifically the white house council on environmental quality and its head james l. connaughton) continue to ignore and bury the warnings of the effects global warming from their own scientists.
posted by specialk420 at 7:31 AM PST - 52 comments

Glasgow University Library Exhibitions. Some nice online exhibits : nineteenth century views of Glasgow, sixteenth and seventeenth century anatomical illustration, British bookbindings, Glasgow Cathedral windows, rare Spanish books, music books, flower illustration, etc.
posted by plep at 6:46 AM PST - 2 comments

Does India belong on the UN security council? A fascinating analysis of UN politics from a developing country's perspective.
posted by SandeepKrishnamurthy at 6:41 AM PST - 15 comments

rockface rescue [note: flash]
posted by crunchland at 6:17 AM PST - 5 comments

Skype, a new P2P Telephony service from the people who created KaZaA. [more inside]
posted by davehat at 6:08 AM PST - 16 comments

Breaking the silence Last night ITV1 in the UK ran a documentary that is unlikely to be shown in the USA. It is by a respected journalist called John Pilger and amongst other tidbits it shows Colin Powell saying in 1991 that Iraq poses no threat and also Condoleeza Rice confirming the same thing. It also quotes some US officials that the current bunch who seem to be running US foreign policy were known during the administration of Bush senior as "the crazies". Plus much more.
posted by donfactor at 5:45 AM PST - 101 comments