Ever wanted a visual tally of the computers, personal data, and other property lost by or stolen from the US federal government? Presenting the Government Lost & Found Map, via OhMyGov!.
posted by the littlest brussels sprout on Aug 30, 2009 - 3 comments

Meanwhile in Hollywoodland, the trailer for James Cameron's much anticipated AVATAR debuted online yesterday and ... ooops! [more inside]
posted by philip-random on Aug 21, 2009 - 190 comments

Russia's Gazprom and Nigeria's oil company NNPC are forming a joint venture. Hmmmm...what do you call such a thing? GazGeria? Nah, Nigeria should come first. How 'bout NIGAZ? Perhaps unsurprisingly, some people have a problem with this.
posted by codswallop on Jul 3, 2009 - 44 comments

90 minutes of rally car crashes. That is all. [via]
posted by schyler523 on Apr 29, 2009 - 106 comments

KaBOOM! This past Friday, the MythBusters exploded 500 pounds of ammonium nitrate (25% of the same material used in the Oklahoma City bombing,) at a rock quarry in Yolo County, CA for an upcoming episode. But the explosion was apparently a wee bit bigger than they expected. It shattered windows in nearby Esparto and was large enough to be picked up as a "small event" ground tremor by National Geographical Survey sensors. Which myth were they busting, you ask? [more inside]
posted by zarq on Mar 26, 2009 - 73 comments

Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition. There's a Murphy's Law for most fields of endeavor. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Oct 19, 2008 - 24 comments

Would you like some Narco ballards with your network software?
posted by Artw on Oct 10, 2008 - 9 comments

[first name of a candidate] and pre/2 [last name of a candidate] w/7 bush or gore or republican! or democrat! or charg! or accus! or criticiz! or blam! or defend! or iran contra or clinton or spotted owl or florida recount or sex! or controvers! or racis! or fraud! or investigat! or bankrupt! or layoff! or downsiz! or PNTR or NAFTA or outsourc! or indict! or enron or kerry or iraq or wmd! or arrest! or intox! or fired or sex! or racis! or intox! or slur! or arrest! or fired or controvers! or abortion! or gay! or homosexual! or gun! or firearm!
posted by unSane on Jul 29, 2008 - 85 comments

Two Spanish women meet in their late twenties and realize that they're identical twins. The hospital had accidentally swapped one with another random newborn, and each family had unknowingly taken home the wrong baby. Now all three women - the two actual twins, and the one fake twin - are suing the hospital, who seriously did not have their act together. But there are all sorts of ways this could happen. For example... [more inside]
posted by granted on Jun 1, 2008 - 28 comments

Enough bad news, enough gloom and doom. You remember that Asteroid 99942 Apophis that we were afraid might hit Earth in 2029? Ain't gonna happen. But it will get close enough for Earth's gravity to alter its orbit and there's a chance it could hit the next time around in 2036. But only a tiny chance: "less than 1 in 45,000 using standard dynamical models". according to NASA. Oh wait... NASA just got skooled by a 13-year-old German Astronomy Geek who says the chances are more like 1 in 450. Still a tiny chance, and the official numbers were only off by a factor of 100. Oh yeah, we're doomed.
posted by wendell on Apr 16, 2008 - 60 comments

Think you've had clumsy moments? Ten bucks says you've never had one quite this bad.
posted by jbickers on Feb 13, 2008 - 118 comments

The "Nuclear Nav." On March 11, 1958, Captain Bruce Kulka was the navigator on an Air Force B-47 Stratojet carrying nuclear bombs to an airfield in North Africa. Somewhere over the southeastern US, the captain sent him to back the bomb bay to check on a cockpit warning light. As he climbed through the narrow space around the Mark 6 nuclear bomb, Kulka grabbed the emergency release pin by mistake. [more inside]
posted by gottabefunky on Oct 10, 2007 - 21 comments

An Unfortunate View From the Sky. The U.S. Navy has decided to spend as much as $600,000 for landscaping and architectural modifications to obscure the fact that one its building complexes looks like a swastika from the air.
posted by brain_drain on Sep 26, 2007 - 70 comments

In January 2006, small amounts of genetically engineered rice turned up in a shipment that was tested ... by a French customer of Riceland Foods, a big rice mill based in Stuttgart, Ark. Testing revealed that the genetically modified rice contained a strain of Liberty Link that had not been approved for human consumption. What's more, trace amounts of the Liberty Link had mysteriously made their way into the commercial rice supply in all five of the Southern states where long-grain rice is grown. Aventis Crop Science had contracted with a handful of farmers to grow the rice, which was known as Liberty Link because its genes had been altered to resist a weed killer called Liberty, also made by Aventis. Then, the French pharmaceutical giant that owned Aventis Crop Science decided to sell the U.S. biotech unit and abandon the very emotional business of reengineering the foods we eat. "We didn't want to take any chances," says a former Aventis executive. "We burned and buried enough rice to feed 20 million people." Last November, the USDA retroactively approved the Liberty Link rice for human consumption.
posted by Kirth Gerson on Jul 23, 2007 - 92 comments

"Like the famous 18-minute gap in the Nixon White House tapes ... This sounds like the Administration's version of 'the dog ate my homework" says Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt, as the White House struggles to explain how dozens of staffers' emails sought by the Senate Judiciary Committee in the course of its investigation were 'accidentally' deleted. "You can't erase e-mails, not today. They've gone through too many servers," said Leahy, D-Vt. "Those e-mails are there, they just don't want to produce them. We'll subpoena them if necessary."
posted by sweet mister on Apr 12, 2007 - 256 comments

The Swiss accidentally invaded Liechtenstein last night but no retaliation is expected. Oops! Guess it's time to make these standard military issue. The last time something like this happened, the Spanish ignored an accidental British invasion. Previously on MeFi: More about Liechtenstein than anyone ever cared to ask.
posted by zarq on Mar 2, 2007 - 53 comments

Don't Buy this Book! Seth Godin, author and marketing guru, has his book, Everyone is an Expert, for purchase on Amazon. The problem? He wrote it as an ebook in 2005, and it is downloadable for free. And it isn't even illegal, as it was licensed under a Creative Commons license that allows for for profit reproduction.
posted by zabuni on Feb 10, 2007 - 39 comments

Do You Live Near a Brothel? It turns out that I do, and they're at Sacramento State's Art Department, the local office of NOW, and the Sacramento Film Commission, among others. Dubya, as it turns out, lives near a bunch of them as well, including the Center for Public Integrity and the local branch of the DC Public Library. You can find out the houses of ill repute near you, too, by simply entering your zip code and the word "brothels" in the Google Maps search box. It's supposed to be returning destinations for that type of local business. Oops. Google has no comment.
posted by robhuddles on May 13, 2005 - 52 comments

Bush/Cheney Poster Creator
Best use of web resources to reach the masses, or easiest.culture-jam.ever? You be the judge.
posted by plemeljr on Mar 10, 2004 - 58 comments

Someone needs Photoshop classes. Cat Schwartz, TechTV vixen, posted some pictures of herself on her blog. Due to an obscure bug in Photoshop, she also inadvertently posted pictures of herself nude. Oopos. Warning: Minor nudity enclosed.
posted by manero on Jul 24, 2003 - 89 comments

Looks like Verisign forgot to renew their UK domain name.
posted by timeistight on Sep 28, 2002 - 15 comments

Strap on your Zyklon B's. Could help shed the pounds from eating all those Temptations.
posted by robself on Aug 28, 2002 - 55 comments

This might be taking the war on terrorism a little to far. Royal Marines get lost or should I say vamos. (Parden my french).
posted by FidelDonson on Feb 19, 2002 - 8 comments

Wow, talk about your bad luck. Or perhaps proof that heavy pot use(or hot-tubbing) can addle your thinking processes.
posted by jonmc on Feb 6, 2002 - 11 comments

Oops! A plaque intended to honor James Earl Jones at a Martin Luther King Jr. celebration said: "Thank you James Earl Ray for keeping the dream alive.''
posted by quirked on Jan 16, 2002 - 9 comments

Ben Brown once had this thing called Teeth Magazine. I don't know how long it lasted. But visiting ye olde Glassdog, I saw a random adzert for it. Intrigued, I clicked on it. And it's a bit different now. Anyone else have funny lapsed-domain stories?
posted by solistrato on Aug 21, 2001 - 16 comments

Oops! Drugs awareness officer dies from overdose. I just saw 'Traffic' tonight...
posted by black8 on Jan 6, 2001 - 3 comments

Doesn't this billboard say it all?
posted by ericost on Oct 23, 2000 - 22 comments

When captions go bad? It's the one below the first picture.
posted by solistrato on Sep 28, 2000 - 4 comments

Sony: "Oops."
posted by baylink on Aug 30, 2000 - 0 comments

Intel botches one bigtime. They recalled their 1.133 GHz P3 the very same day that AMD started volume shipment of the 1.10 GHz Athlon. (More inside)
posted by Steven Den Beste on Aug 28, 2000 - 4 comments

Tonight, I was thinking of replacing my old North Face fleece jacket, so I went to their site to shop for a new one. Instead of a product catalog or online store, I learned that their copy of Apache worked! Wow, that helps me out.
posted by mathowie on Dec 28, 1999 - 1 comment

My car gets ten rods to the hogshead and that's the way I like it! I love how we stubborn Americans just flat out refuse to adopt the metric system; the mars orbiter blowing up cost us $125 million.
posted by mathowie on Sep 30, 1999 - 0 comments