October 7
Google rolls out
Mail Goggles, designed to prevent drunk or otherwise impaired emailing by forcing you to answer basic math questions. And no, it's not April 1st.
posted by mattholomew at 11:11 AM -
47 comments
“I have seen many Anne Franks in Cambodia. ...Under Pol Pot, many children were separated from their families. They faced starvation and were sent to the front to fight and die,” she explains. “Like Anna, they never knew peace and the warmth of a home.”
Translated by
Sayana Ser with help from the Dutch embassy in Cambodia (Kampuchea, Khmer), The Diary of Anne Frank has now become one of the most popular and discussed books in this war-torn country.
posted by parmanparman at 10:23 AM -
3 comments
"Far away from the Taliban insurgency, in this most peaceful corner of Afghanistan, a quiet revolution is gaining pace. Women are driving cars — a rarity in Afghanistan — working in public offices and police stations, and sitting on local councils. There is even a female governor, the first and only one in Afghanistan." Carlotta Gall writes about promising developments in
Bamian. (
NY Times;
print version.)
posted by languagehat at 8:22 AM -
12 comments
…if you are the single newspaper in San Francisco or Kansas City or St. Louis, you are just highly constrained about how rigorous you can be in the accuracy of your reporting. Because the whole model is: You are appealing to everybody. Because the whole model is: You are appealing to everybody. … That's why the existence of an independent media sector is so important.
Talking Points Memo is one of the more notable successes in independent journalism and using blogs as a format for journalism. It has broken at least a couple of stories that got picked up by the mainstream press: The
Duke Cunningham bribery scandal, and the
U.S. Attorneys firing scandal. It's grown from being a
one-man shop in 2000 to a staff of ten today.
Josh Marshall talks about how it came to be.
posted by adamrice at 7:13 AM -
33 comments
October 6
Trains of Russia, photos from
Pavoroz.com, a site about the railways of Russia, the Baltics and the C.I.S. (
Commonwealth of Independent States).
More than 50 000 pictures of steam, diesel, and electric locomotives, EMU and DMU trains, draisines, stations, tracks, etc. The collection is updated daily. The Turkestan-Siberian railway.
[more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 9:14 PM -
19 comments
Matt Taibbi vs. David Ray Griffin Taibbi, to whose writing Metafilter frequently links, and who is currently on retainer at
Rolling Stone, takes on Griffin, who is perhaps the most prominent member of the so-called "9/11 Truth Movement," in a knock-down, drag-out multiple-round bout (in three parts).
Part II.
Part III.
posted by Hat Maui at 3:55 PM -
84 comments
A
dress code at the polls?
Many states have 'electioneering' laws in place that can be broadly interpreted to mean that clothing with political messages is not allowed. Snopes put
a page up advising voters to check with their board of elections.
Some election officials have released
statements attempting to clarify [pdf] the enforcement of their state's electioneering laws, though those statements aren't legally binding.
Other election officials are suing to keep the broad definition of electioneering in place. If rules are interpreted to include campaign shirts and buttons, you will likely need to cover the item up, remove it, or otherwise conceal it.
[more inside]
posted by cashman at 10:26 AM -
53 comments
On the 10 year anniversary of his death, Mr. Cee of New York's Hot 97 played a
4-hour tribute mix (with some interviews and such) dedicated to the Notorious B.I.G., a/k/a Biggie Smalls a/k/a Big Poppa a/k/a Christopher George Latore Wallace. Downloads in four parts available
here.
[more inside]
posted by kosem at 10:00 AM -
19 comments
October 5
Sports activism is dead? - so asks Andy Kroll in his review of
Dave Zirin's new book,
A People's History of Sports in the United States.
"And since the ‘80s, the money, TV time, and narcissism have only increased. Most professional athletes could care less — that is, if they even know at all — that their sponsors’ shoes and jerseys are made in squalid conditions in third world countries."
Author Zirin argues that “[w]e can pretend sports isn’t political just as well as we can pretend there is no such thing as gravity if we fall out of an airplane.”
[more inside]
posted by Surfurrus at 7:54 PM -
36 comments
Maybe you've left the corporate world and
its dress code behind, you've decided you're not the
Avril Lavigne type after all, or you're
soon to be unemployed. Whatever the reason, you've got a lot of neckties you no longer wear. What can you do with them? Well, if you still want to wear them in some form, you can make
daisy pins, a
wrist cuff, a
belt or
two, a
shoulder bag, a
wallet or cellphone pouch, a skirt (
long or
short), a
dress, or
thong underwear. If you want to have the best dressed dog in your suburb, you can make a
dog collar or
leash. If you have kids, you can make a
snake or
cravat cats for them, or teach them
how to use old silk ties to dye eggs. If you'd rather decorate the house, you can make
baskets, a
photo frame, a
lampshade, a
new chair seat, a
floor mat,
some throw pillows or
some cool quilts. If you want to start getting ready for Christmas, you could make a
Christmas stocking, a
tree skirt, or an
angel. In fact, there are so many ways to make things out of old neckties
there's a blog devoted to the topic. Whatever your choice, your days as a corporate peon will be memorialized.
As will the peanut butter and jam sandwiches you used to have for lunch.
posted by orange swan at 5:43 PM -
23 comments
"
The Baldwin Project seeks to make available online a comprehensive collection of resources for parents and teachers of children. Our focus, initially, is on literature for children that is in the public domain in the United States. This includes all works first published before 1923."
[more inside]
posted by bitter-girl.com at 5:20 PM -
10 comments
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