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HIV & Civil Rights in 2003
posted by anastasiav at 11:54 PM PST - 1 comment

Today is World AIDS Day. If you have a website of your own, you might consider participating in Link and Think.
posted by Vidiot at 11:12 PM PST - 7 comments

Pictures from the Bloggers' stand in the first Web festival of in Tehran, Iran, include some photos of Iranian female bloggers.
posted by hoder at 10:27 PM PST - 7 comments

Was the Queen's Speech Too Political? The Queen's speech at the state opening of Parliament is entirely written by 10 Downing Street. But is it appropriate for Her Majesty to talk like a Blairite? (Full text)
posted by rschram at 9:28 PM PST - 12 comments

Three million Germans have voted post-war Chancellor Konrad Adenauer as the greatest German of all time. Reformation Monk Martin Luther came second, with communist philosopher Karl Marx third. Composer Johann Sebastian Bach and writer Johannes Wolfgang von Goethe were also in the running. Adolf Hitler and other Nazis were excluded from the poll.
posted by stbalbach at 8:30 PM PST - 16 comments

the chemical home
"babies are born with toxic chemicals already contaminating their bodies" - we know we are exposed to these dangerous chemicals everyday, greenpeace puts together a nice site describing what the dangerous ones are how to avoid them. Isn't this the kind of thing our tax dollars going to the EPA are supposed to provide? [ via computerlove.net ]
posted by specialk420 at 6:00 PM PST - 30 comments

If Michael Jackson hadn't undergone any plastic surgery, today he would look like this.
posted by Mwongozi at 4:11 PM PST - 25 comments

Seven hot technologies that we'll soon see on the market, according to MIT's Tech Review magazine. The spam blocker sounds like it might work. But the babelfish?
posted by iffley at 3:46 PM PST - 14 comments

The Ovid Collection Outstanding site devoted to the Metamorphoses, featuring the original Latin, five different English translations, and some foreign-language translations as well. Be sure to look at the page devoted to illustrations. Speaking of illustrations, The Ovid Project reproduces the plates from one seventeenth-century and one early eighteenth-century edition. For much more Ovid, see this German metapage.
posted by thomas j wise at 2:46 PM PST - 4 comments

The Soldiers At My Front Door. "I looked out the front window of the house where I live, next door to the church, and there they were--all 75 of them, standing yards away from my front door, in the street right in front of my house and our church, shouting and screaming to the top of their lungs, 'Kill! Kill! Kill!' Their commanders had planted them there and were egging them on." Rev. John Dear, a Jesuit priest and peace activist, describes an encounter with his local National Guard unit.
posted by homunculus at 2:29 PM PST - 50 comments

Disney Character Family Trees
posted by Orange Goblin at 2:03 PM PST - 6 comments

the working poor A new book by Beth Shulman called The Betrayal of Work” argues that hard work is just not cutting it in America anymore. According to Shulman, even in the go-go ’90s one out of every four American workers made less than $8.70 an hour, an income equal to the government’s poverty level for a family of four. Many, if not most, of these workers have no health care, sick pay or retirement provisions. more inside.....
posted by jbou at 1:27 PM PST - 52 comments

Leisuretown's "A Comedy Crisis" Dear Members of Metafilter: Unless one of us posts our Leisuretown archive up for all to see, this might be your last chance to see the amazing work of Tristan Farnon. This link wil only be up for a few days.
posted by Keyser Soze at 1:04 PM PST - 22 comments

A collection of the god-awful news-art that CNN churns out for its front page.
posted by machaus at 11:19 AM PST - 21 comments

CIA admits lack of specifics on Iraqi weapons before invasion ...and then some justification etc etc follows
posted by Postroad at 10:49 AM PST - 4 comments

Alum Falls Ohio. 'An original comic about growing up in the Fifties.'
posted by plep at 3:26 AM PST - 5 comments

Harry Potter: The New Atlas Shrugged.
posted by Espoo2 at 12:06 AM PST - 75 comments

Welcome to ArtServe: Art & Architecture mainly from the Mediterranean Basin and Japan.
posted by hama7 at 8:42 PM PST - 7 comments

Sure, you all know Barberella from the campy 60's cult film, and our own vacapinta turned us on to the classic French anti-hero, Fantomas. Yet there are even more sleazy, Eurotrash cartoon characters to adore at Cool French Comics: the diabolical Satanik, the [ahem] big-top avenger Felina, and in a shocking twist, my childhood idol TinTin going main a la main with the Dark Knight.
posted by MrBaliHai at 2:16 PM PST - 11 comments

So we put a number of differently colored letters on the tray that we use, put the tray in front of Alex, and asked, ''Alex, what sound is blue?'' He answers, ''Ssss.'' It was an ''s'', so we say ''Good birdie'' and he replies, ''Want a nut.'' Well, I don't want him sitting there using our limited amount of time to eat a nut, so I tell him to wait, and I ask, ''What sound is green?'' Alex answers, ''Ssshh.'' He's right, it's ''sh,'' and we go through the routine again: ''Good parrot.'' ''Want a nut.'' ''Alex, wait. What sound is orange?'' ''ch.'' ''Good bird!'' ''Want a nut.'' We're going on and on and Alex is clearly getting more and more frustrated. He finally gets very slitty-eyed and he looks at me and states, ''Want a nut. Nnn, uh, tuh.'' - That Damn Bird - A Talk with Irene Pepperberg. Referential Communication with an African Gray Parrot. Irene Pepperberg says that Arthur, an African Gray parrot, is so smart that she and a group of students at the Media Lab are teaching him to go online. A more subjective take on some more African Grey parrots here. The Alex Homepage. Alex interviewed. languagehat on talking parrots.
posted by y2karl at 12:13 PM PST - 34 comments

The FDA has put the brakes on clinical trials of a promising form of stem cell therapy which uses the body's own stem cells to heal dammage. The procedure was used earlier this year to heal the heart of a teenager who was shot in the heart by a nail gun. Other research is being done with the body's own stem cells on the heart and the spinal cord, and new ways to produce large numbers of adult stem cells have been discovered by MIT and the British company TriStem. With the controversy over embryonic stem cells, I'm glad that adult stem cell therapy is showing promise. [Some links via FuturePundit, who is rather annoyed with the FDA.]
posted by homunculus at 11:34 AM PST - 11 comments

One Saturday Night in Furbank is an entertaining diary entry wherein diarist, Kitty Bukkake, crashes a furry shindig, The 14th Annual International Anthropomorphic Convention and Exhibition, ConFurence 2002 at the Burbank Airport Hilton.

"Problem: we don't want them to know we are impostors or they might kick us out. We'd brought some plush toys along: Steven had a bunny, and I had a whale, a bee, and a dragonfly, plus a panda keychain. But we weren't fooling anyone with our old toys, our short hairdos and stylish, non-pleated jeans. We didn't fit the profile."

Ms. Kitty B has turned those exciting field notes and photos of the Furry gathering into a book.
posted by antifreez_ at 11:11 AM PST - 23 comments

Xtreme martial arts video gallery - a gallery of clips of traditional martial arts fighting styles and weapons, as well as some rather cool "in-the-body" animations. The site is a preview for a show on martial arts that will launch this week on the Discovery Channel. (via Buzz).
posted by madamjujujive at 11:00 AM PST - 10 comments

This is how they treat a man
This man has been arrested yet again for his ongoing attempt to walk the length of Britain naked. Is he right to be arrested, or should he be allowed to continue?
posted by johnny novak at 10:11 AM PST - 16 comments

Woman trampled in mammonmas sales I knew those Americans loved to shop, but wow. Appalling though, is Wal-Mart's behaviour. No free DVD for her ... but, hey, they'll put one on hold. You see, they want to "keep her as a shopper". Harsh.
posted by bonaldi at 9:40 AM PST - 51 comments

Michael Musto on Michael Jackson ("We couldn't get Rosie or Martha to melt—and we can't even find bin Laden or Hussein—but if Jacko would just agree to be a pedophile, we could have our kook and eat him too.") Sarah Hepola on Michael Jackson ("In my life, I have spent many years wishing I were someone else, but I have never wanted to be anyone – ever – more than I wanted to be Michael Jackson. Do you remember? Help me sing it.") Michael Jackson on Michael Jackson ("You are right to be skeptical of some of the individuals who are being identified in the mass media as my friends, spokespeople, and attorneys. With few exceptions, most of them are simply filling a desperate void in our culture that equates visibility with insight.")
posted by adrober at 8:42 AM PST - 5 comments

"The newspapers of the twenty-first century will give a mere "stick" in the back pages to accounts of crime or political controversies, but will headline on the front pages the proclamation of a new scientific hypothesis."

From an interview with Nikolai Tesla in 1937 about the now near future...
posted by Aleph Yin at 8:22 AM PST - 12 comments

Sheremey's Gallery. Russian artists and photographers.
posted by plep at 11:03 PM PST - 2 comments

Estimating the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow. Hashing out the classic question with Strouhal numbers and simplified flight waveforms. The site also includes other very well presented number crunching articles too. [via The One]
posted by riffola at 6:36 PM PST - 10 comments

These people make for some "Interesting Motherfuckers."
posted by the biscuit man at 6:09 PM PST - 17 comments

"Van Gogh never sold a painting in his life and died a pauper" is Toby Richards-Carpenter defending a car designer that may be destroying BMW. Chris Bangle is the designer that believes it's all about the art, but his many enemies are petitioning him to stop the damage to BMW's reputation and bank balance. Whatever, his unusal/innovative work seems worth discussing.
posted by meech at 5:11 PM PST - 41 comments

Welcome to the Relativist Fallacy. Conservative blacks in the United States are objecting to recent comparisons between the gay marriage and the 1960s civil rights movement, which fought segregation against blacks, arguing that sexual orientation is a choice.
posted by the fire you left me at 4:48 PM PST - 89 comments

ShipBreaking The photographer Edward Burtynsky captures some dramatic images of ShipBreaking. The Perils of this industry were first highlighted in a Pulitzer prize winning series of articles by the the Baltimore Sun. Today, these ship graveyards still pose serious environmental issues as highlighted by this shipbreaking weblog maintained by Greenpeace.
posted by vacapinta at 4:09 PM PST - 10 comments

Why Isn't Ted Gärdestad's Beautiful Music More Well Known? Everyone has a favourite musician who, for some reason, remains unknown and unfairly overlooked. At least for some swedes it might be this musical giant who worked alongside with the well known Benny & Björn of ABBA fame. warning: first link a 2.7 meg mp3
posted by lazy-ville at 4:00 PM PST - 8 comments

Philographikon - Galerie Rauhut: Antique Prints and Rare Maps.
posted by hama7 at 2:15 PM PST - 3 comments

Apparently genuine reply to a letter sent to the Inland Revenue. "I must take issue with your description of our last as a "begging letter". It might perhaps more properly be referred to as a "tax demand". This is how we, at the Inland Revenue have always, for reasons of accuracy, traditionally referred to such documents." [via Orbyn, via Cal]
posted by feelinglistless at 1:27 PM PST - 9 comments

memogate
first the plame affair - now stolen confidential memos from democratic senators servers ... business as usual on capitol hill?
posted by specialk420 at 10:28 AM PST - 28 comments

Russian Dacha Panormas - what a charming place! The voyeur in me likes to peek in houses to see how other people live. This is just one of many fascinating Russian interiors from Bee Flowers whose portfolio celebrates the everyday. Don't miss the magnificent Moscow Metro series.
posted by madamjujujive at 9:28 AM PST - 7 comments

"The turkey is stuffed with raped women, dead babies, warriors who were stripped of their ability to fight and could no longer protect their families - which to warriors - is a fate worse than death."

Comedian Margaret Cho weighs in on turkey day.
posted by emelenjr at 8:40 AM PST - 94 comments

12 oddest Christmas hits... ever! Almost December, the stores are playing the usual Xmas compilations (already) so I propose a change to the usual "Rockin around the Christmas Tree". Which ear worm do you want?
posted by snowgoon at 5:12 AM PST - 33 comments

3D Tube Map
posted by Orange Goblin at 2:44 AM PST - 18 comments

Gothic Miss Manners : advice from a Gothic perspective.
posted by starscream at 1:27 AM PST - 8 comments

What will happen if Howard Dean loses the Democratic presidential nomination? Will he quietly disappear from the national stage or run as a third party candidate? Could he be popular enough to win without the Democratic Party, or just split the Democratic voting population?
posted by MrAnonymous at 12:51 AM PST - 63 comments

GEEKPLTS4U. License plates of the geek set and the stories behind them.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 12:28 AM PST - 12 comments

How to beat Super Mario Brothers 3 in 11 minutes. If it's unedited (which I think it is), this is amazing. (link goes to .wmv file)
posted by Espoo2 at 11:50 PM PST - 34 comments

It's a sex toy, and it's alive! It's also NSFW and doesn't exist, but I really enjoyed the attention to detail that went into making this bizarro gag site.
posted by headspace at 10:36 PM PST - 21 comments

Bush in Baghdad, Behind the Scenes. Drudge has posted Washington Post reporter Mike Allen's raw notes from the 2-day secret whirlwind trip to Iraq. It reads like a script from "The West Wing." (The stripped-down finished article appears in Friday's Post.) Meanwhile, some in the journalism field are pissed, says Howard Kurtz. Says one: "Reporters are in the business of telling the truth. They can't decide it's okay to lie sometimes because it serves a larger truth or good cause."
posted by PrinceValium at 8:56 PM PST - 57 comments

Sign Language, The Easy Hungabunga Huggerbugger Boogerhunger Hoogerbrugge Way: Type a letter. Any letter. Or better still, a brilliant epigram by your good self. And see it finally make sense! [A few letters produce pleasantly rude results. Shockwave req. Via Bifurcated Rivets.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:16 PM PST - 10 comments

The Courtald Institute of Art , via Art and Architecture, has made 40,00 images, and much else besides, available online. One more reason to love the web.
posted by Fat Buddha at 1:46 PM PST - 8 comments

Here are some ideas for Thanksgiving dinner, though not a circumstance I'd like to participate in. If ever there was a time to say Grace before dining, this certainly is one of those times. Pumpkin pie anyone?
posted by bluedaniel at 1:08 PM PST - 10 comments

Cannibalism was widespread and routine. Citing archaeological evidence and recent findings in molecular biology, archaeologist Timothy Taylor, author of The Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death, says that cannibalism has been the norm in the past, and the more interesting question is why particular societies gave it up. (Previous discussions of cannibalism here and here.)
posted by homunculus at 1:06 PM PST - 9 comments

A martyr in the "war against terror"? Russian Pvt. Yevgeny Rodionov, 19, was killed in capitivy in Chechnya in 1996. (pic) Today, there is a folk movement to have him venerated as a saint. Another unusual diversion in the complex and uneasy dance between the church and the right wing in Russia.

(Warning: last link includes poorly-disguised swastika; English text by Boris Badenov)
posted by gimonca at 12:13 PM PST - 6 comments

Bush in Baghdad & Clinton in Kabul.

How far did you travel on this Thanksgiving Day?
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 12:07 PM PST - 53 comments

Kittens! [via waxy]
posted by riffola at 11:38 AM PST - 47 comments

Chinese Philately: stamps and cancellations of Imperial China.
posted by hama7 at 11:26 AM PST - 3 comments

Modern Drunkard's 86 Rules of Boozing. My favorite?

70. The patrons at your local bar are your extended family, your fathers and mothers, your brothers and sisters. Except you get to sleep with these sisters. And if you're really drunk, the mothers.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 9:15 AM PST - 24 comments

When your list of "dinosaur movies" can include "Wizard of Oz", maybe you've gone too far. These people make a distinction between “Live-action with people dressed as dinosaurs and/or mechanical dinosaurs” and “Live action with lizards dressed as dinosaurs or prehistoric animals”. That’s beyond thorough. But for basic information even potentially remotely related to dinosaurs and/or movies, I can’t imagine a better starting point.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 8:55 AM PST - 5 comments

My very own parasite "I swear it had two beady eyes on it. And it came out two or three inches, looked around and then retracted. I thought it was a dream, a vision of some sort." The yuck factor of our 'little friends' vs. the yuck factor of Flushing PCB's into your nursing infant through breast feeding ("Study finds a cocktail of potentially harmful man-made chemicals in every person tested in UK...") On our day of public gnawing on bird chunks, I ask : which of the above is yuckier? And does anyone out there have a juicy parasite tale to share?
posted by troutfishing at 5:56 AM PST - 45 comments

No volunteers for orgasm implant. A scientist claiming to have invented a device which produces orgasms at the touch of a button can't find women to help him conduct trials into it.
posted by MintSauce at 5:26 AM PST - 27 comments

The Beck Isle Museum , Pickering, North Yorkshire, chronicles rural Yorkshire life of the last 200 years. The collection of photographs by Sidney Smith is good. Via Museophile's museums around the UK links page.
posted by plep at 4:13 AM PST - 2 comments

The Right To Die, ABORTION!!!, Campaign Reform. What? No severing of limbs?!
posted by poopy at 10:38 PM PST - 7 comments

The War on Drugs hasn't been working at all well. So let's make it even less sensible: harsher penalties, invasion of privacy, all that jazz. The proposal is surreal, but fits in with the rest of US Drug Policy: rapists aren't denied federal funds for post-secondary schooling, but pot-heads are; you can spend more time in jail for dealing weed than for murder; gonna deal pot, ya might as well deal speed, it's the same jailtime. And now... let's encourage dealers to sell pot with more carcinogenic tars! [link goes to NORML, possibly NSFW, danger: encourages political activism]
posted by five fresh fish at 10:34 PM PST - 16 comments

Maintaining contact info. I suck at it, but this new automation service may be the best I've ever come across, of any kind, on the net. No, seriously. Some have justifiably expressed concerns about what could possibly be the email-harvester to end all email-harvesters, but their privacy policy looks sound, and so far, after a week, I am astounded at how well it works. [Outlook/OE on Windows only, and this post smacks of bit of refreshing Pepsi Blue, I know, but I reckon it's the best of a very small breed, and free, so worth the link. Plaxo rocks.]
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:56 PM PST - 19 comments

The Book of the Courtier - Baldessar Castiglione (Sir Thomas Hoby tr.), An Essay on the Regulation of the Press - Daniel Defoe, The Schoole of Abuse - Stephen Gosson, Merrie Conceited Jests - George Peel and The Praise of Hemp-Seed - John Taylor, a sample selection submitted for your approval from Renasence Editions, An Online Repository of Works Printed in English Between the Years 1477 and 1799.
posted by y2karl at 6:24 PM PST - 7 comments

The value of disobedience. [note: nytimes] "Ignoring the reactionary policies of the Vatican, some local priests and nuns quietly do what they can to save parishioners from AIDS." So: when and why do people choose to quietly disobey, rather than leave and promote change from outside their social institutions...or vice versa? Should dissenters just leave, or stay and fight? Anecdotes from Republicans and NRA members are especially welcome ;-)
posted by stonerose at 5:52 PM PST - 15 comments

What's really undermining the sanctity of marriage? Dahlia Lithwick has an interesting piece in Slate commenting on the real threats to marriage in light of Massachusetts Supreme Court's declaration that gay marriage is protected by the Constitution. Lithwick lists:
1. Divorce (~43-50% of all US marriages end in divorce)
2. Frivolous marriages (i.e. it is easier to get married than it is to drive a car, buy a gun, buy alcohol, etc.)
3. Birth control (is marriage "only for procreation"?)
4. The various challenges to our time and attention that take away from quality time with our spouses

Can MeFiers please share with those of us yet to be betrothed your secrets in keeping a marriage successful?
posted by gen at 5:41 PM PST - 55 comments

Mr. and Mr. Claus -- Harvey Fierstein, fabulous star of Hairspray and three-time Tony winner, is planning an homage to that happy couple--the Clauses--in tomorrow's Thanksgiving Parade. His NYT op-ed (reg.reqd) today says it all: In the end all I can say is this: If I really was Santa's life partner, you can believe that he would ask and I would tell about who has been naughty or nice on this issue. Still, as we approach the holiday season I'd like to imagine that fear and bigotry will not prevail in this land. Maybe this holiday season we can toss out some of the intolerance that nests in our hearts and make room for more love and acceptance.
posted by amberglow at 3:22 PM PST - 34 comments

"Our enemies seek to inflict mass casualties, without fielding mass armies. They hide in the shadows, and they're often hard to strike," says Bush while signing a new defense bill that includes millions of dollars for a small nuclear bomb designed to destroy deep, hardened underground bunkers. The legislation repeals a decade-old ban on research into low-yield nuclear weapons.
posted by Espoo2 at 3:17 PM PST - 35 comments

A fun way to browse the planet. PBase is a popular online photo gallery service with several trick features. Using data from the image file headers and user profiles, PBase makes its large photo database browseable by camera used to make the shot (of interest if you're in the market for a digicam), and by country where the photo was taken. The latter provides some real armchair travel gems, including architectural hotspots in Qatar, an elephant orgy in Botswana, some regular guy's hiking tour of LOTR locations in NZ, the Tel Aviv Love Parade (NSFW), a Polish air-show, and a Namibian Wedding. I'll see you all at cocktail hour in New Caledonia!
posted by scarabic at 3:00 PM PST - 6 comments

“We fear the government using the current climate of fear and uncertainty about the future as a means to allow itself sweeping powers without an appropriate consideration of proportionality" ......no-go zones ........ power to ban peaceful protest ...... destroy private property without compensation ........prepare for the introduction of compulsory identity cards .... The climate seems to be changing.
posted by JohnR at 2:38 PM PST - 3 comments

Jon Johansen of DeCSS fame has made a program that strips iTunes ACC files of DRM. Here is what he has to say about it. Maybe I will give iTunes a try after all.
posted by epimorph at 2:38 PM PST - 16 comments

Putzmeister!
Saw it on a truck on the street; thought I was hallucinating; Googled it, and yes, they're into concrete pumping, and it's a German company, too. One for the "Bad Business Name Hall of Shame" that I started with my Blonder Tongue thread a year-and-a-half ago. Got any more? Think of it as a MetaTurkeyShoot for the day before Thanksgiving...
posted by wendell at 2:31 PM PST - 27 comments

Another Letter I Should Have Written
posted by H. Roark at 1:10 PM PST - 20 comments

Kill All Artists! - The art of Tom Sachs.
posted by hama7 at 11:10 AM PST - 9 comments

Make this year's xmas a special one by buying the Flavor Flav Talking Alarm Clock with five alarm phrases "Bass In Your Face, Get Up Get Down, Yo G Yo, Yeaa Boy." Have you seen any other similarly bizarre gifts on sale this holiday season?
posted by mathowie at 10:37 AM PST - 27 comments

Framed for defending herself. On August 28th, 2002 in Las Vegas, Nevada a woman named Kirstin Lobato was sentenced to life in prison. She was the victim of an attempted rape in May 2001, and had defended herself against her rapist. prosecutors used this "confession" of self defense to convict her of a murder that happened months later and in a town where she didn't even live. How "innocent until proven guilty" can you be if prosecutors are willing to use known perjurers and refuse to allow expert testimony?
posted by dejah420 at 10:35 AM PST - 17 comments

Child's Play - Penny Arcade, the popular gaming web comic, is looking to reverse some of the stigma that comes with playing games, by asking the community to send games to children at the Seattle Children’s Hospital.
posted by Orange Goblin at 9:55 AM PST - 10 comments

We had a crack at the Historic Tale Construction Kit a couple months ago in this thread, but Something Awful has done us one better and collected nine pages of raw humor created with the toy. Click! Read! Laugh!
posted by UKnowForKids at 7:22 AM PST - 16 comments

Rude Food - from that old English classic spotted dick to more unusual offerings like bum bum bananas, Erektus energy drink, and Prick potato crisps, here's a wonderful collection of worldwide food items that bring out the giggling 12-year-old boy in all of us.
posted by anastasiav at 7:19 AM PST - 9 comments

Why Books Will Always Be With Us... along with almost everything else. Umberto Eco goes all encyclopedic on us (but in a nice way!) summing up (and reopening) the themes of a lifetime of reading, writing and watching. Though I'm sure what he says about the Web and electronic media will be picked to bits here, I'd say that would be a perfect vindication of this extraordinary exercise in common sense. [Via Arts & Letters Daily.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 6:39 AM PST - 14 comments

Thrift store record collectors' treasure trove. I know that we talked about the supposed worst record album covers of all time here, but some of these were too priceless not to share, and some have MP3s of the actual recordings to boot!!!

Here's just a small taste of what to expect:

"...There's no photos or credits anywhere on this album. Just the sickly drawing on the cover and a list of song titles. I bought it for 50 cents on a hunch after noticing the title: "Diary of an Unborn Child". As far as bizarre Christian LPs, I gotta say, this is this most extreme thing I've ever heard. It's some full grown man with a munchkin voice, singing terrifying songs about drug use, abortion and being a fat kid and each fill me with a profound sense of dread, horror, and disgust."
posted by psmealey at 5:55 AM PST - 20 comments

Looking for a new use for that webcam? Go fly a kite! Kite Aerial Photography has caught the imagination of photographers and hobbyists around the world, and some of the results are spectacular.
posted by rory at 5:31 AM PST - 15 comments

Feeling Guilty? A proposition has been announced recently to help reduce the deficit and to "Take A Bite Out Of Crime."
posted by konolia at 4:34 AM PST - 7 comments

Lala Deen Dayal: Photo Glimpses of 19th Century India. Lala Raja Deen Dayal, pioneer Indian 19th century photographer(1844-1905). has left for us an exquisite photographic record of British India, of a bygone Colonial era influenced by Native Princely India- its picturesque opulence, rich costumes, whiskered nobility, hookah bearers, royal palaces, hunts, and parades, elephant carriages, historic events - golden moments captured on "silver" plates for posterity.' Gallery here.
posted by plep at 4:02 AM PST - 5 comments

Star presenter wears hijab and apparently gets "a flood of calls". But, in an odd turn for the BBC, the piece doesn't say what those calls think. Are they all praising the traditional - and controversial - head-dress, or are they up in arms. The story skirts the issue. Islam 101 explains a bit about it.
posted by bonaldi at 2:37 AM PST - 13 comments

Inaugural Speeches from Our Action Heroes: "As the first robot/semitruck to be elected to these hallowed halls, I pledge to rebuild America. To repair our crumbling roads and bridges, to lower gas prices, and to increase the speed limit. Things that all Americans need." [via queso]
posted by mathowie at 11:52 PM PST - 4 comments

"Doctors and experts are baffled by an Indian hermit who claims not to have eaten or drunk anything for several decades - but is still in perfect health."
posted by The God Complex at 11:28 PM PST - 41 comments

Melinda Lee's Turkey Basics includeing the Ultimate Brine and cooking the turkey upside down so the breast-meat stays juicy. If you are doing the Brine start now. What other last minute Turkey Cooking Tips?
posted by stbalbach at 7:17 PM PST - 28 comments

Positively the last Concorde flight ever in less than twelve hours time. Here are the Avon police plans for Wed 26 November, when the last Concorde flight ever departs London Heathrow, goes Mach 2 just for the hell of it over the Bay of Biscay, and touches down at Filton, Bristol, where much of the original development took place.

I'll try to get to the Clifton Bridge, to celebrate Brunel at the same time.
posted by gdav at 4:32 PM PST - 11 comments

Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, Reserve Affairs, Installations and Logistics in the Reagan administration Lawrence J. Korb is visiting Iraq on a trip that is a part of the Bush administration’s effort to inform the American people of the progress the U.S. is making in Iraq since the end of major combat and is reporting back every day with his findings on the ground. His interview with the Council on Foreign Relations, November 12, 2003 - Did you have a chance to walk the streets in Baghdad? No. They wouldn't let us do that. I guess they worried about our security. It was interesting. You couldn't walk anyplace. When we flew into Baghdad the first day, we landed at the airport and were going over to the palace where Bremer has his headquarters. They put us on an Apache helicopter from Baghdad International Airport and flew us to within 100 yards of Bremer's headquarters, and made us get on a bus. Even when we were in safe areas and were driving to see a Shiite cleric, they made us wear flak jackets, and they had Humvees and armored personnel carriers escorting us with guns pointed at the population. This is in the so-called safe Shiite area. Here is his Day Three In Iraq from November 7th.
posted by y2karl at 3:52 PM PST - 29 comments

Thaipusam. "The Hindu people are intense about their religion, and take some extraordinary measures to display their devotion. A good example is the Thaipusam festival." Warning - images may be disturbing to some people! (more inside)
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:13 PM PST - 13 comments

Politics as usual?...if you're in the mafia, maybe. Pressuring [Republican Congressman] Nick Smith to vote for a Medicare reform bill, House GOP leaders threatened to support candidates running against Smith's son for Congress, Nick Smith said Monday. (via TPM)
posted by jpoulos at 3:12 PM PST - 13 comments

Scotland shamed: Japan wins whisky challenge. The Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre hosted a tasting in Toronto, and a 20-year-old Nikka Yoichi, distilled in Hokkaido, beat out a 16-year-old Lagavulin (my own favorite) and 12-year-old whiskies from Cragganmore and Balvenie (also excellent). This is reminiscent of the 1976 tasting in which California wines beat out French ones and put California on the map; can America someday produce a world-class scotch-type whisky (the preferred spelling in Scotland), or shall we simply continue to take pride in our bourbon and rye?
posted by languagehat at 2:13 PM PST - 37 comments

Ouch! In honor of swordsman, litterateur, scenarist, bodybuilding enthusiast, homosexualist, fascist, and all-around nutball Mishima Yukio, who did the deed 23 years ago today, here's Wikipedia's intruiging list of famous suicides. Now, the West used to have its own tradition of suicide on the part of those who preferred death to dishonor. Apart from various Koreshian poseurs, the demonstrably insane, and those vainglorious fellows who arrange suicide-by-cop, whatever happened to this tradition?
posted by adamgreenfield at 11:33 AM PST - 45 comments

More problems with credit cards...after you canceled one Apparently some credit card company may not take you seriously when you say "I want to cancel this credit card". If the account of the credit card is not "terminated" you may still be charged, even after receiving a letter from cc company confirming you its cancellation. You may also receive "accidental charges" of stuff you never ordered. One more link inside.
posted by elpapacito at 10:25 AM PST - 25 comments

A Critic's Coda. William Grimes, departing NYT food critic, gives an interview to Newsweek. "It’s like 'Groundhog Day.' You wake up the next day having eaten a four-star meal, you must go out and eat another four-star meal. And you get up the next day and you have to go out and eat another four-star meal." I think we've all been there before.
posted by adrober at 9:43 AM PST - 17 comments

Word Oddities - did you know Honorificabilitudinitatibus, 27 letters long, is the longest English word consisting strictly of alternating consonants and vowels? You do now. Click the link for more fun facts about words.
posted by Orange Goblin at 9:34 AM PST - 17 comments

An Educational Exploration of Nunavut. "Setting out to document arctic climate change we will dogsled the territory of Nunavut, meeting Inuit Elders and students, to explore traditional ecological knowledge in the remote communities visited along the trail while gathering scientific data daily from the field for NASA and Environment Canada." - a cool expedition to bring some attention to what many are describing as the greatest threat to mankind today.
posted by specialk420 at 9:13 AM PST - 8 comments

Pitchfork's 100 Best Albums of the 1990's I'm sure that you'll find plenty to bitch about on this list, but hang on, the last 20 will be posted tomorrow. You can also see where they stood at the turn of the decade.
posted by trbrts at 8:24 AM PST - 66 comments

Dave's List of Words That Are Fun To Say
posted by anastasiav at 7:06 AM PST - 140 comments

LA County, leading the charge: Equipment vendors who do business with Los Angeles County received a message in November 2003 from the county's Internal Services Department (ISD) informing them that "based on the cultural diversity and sensitivity of Los Angeles County," labeling or describing equipment with the term 'master/slave' is no longer acceptable. (via snopes.com)
the slashdot comments on this...
posted by sixtwenty3dc at 6:25 AM PST - 141 comments

blatantbush.com. Anti-Bush shirts by Superosity's Chris Crosby. Free plug because the O'Reilly shirt made me laugh.
posted by Eloquence at 2:09 AM PST - 15 comments

A collective "I told you so" from all the layed-off American tech workers. Dell to Stop Using Indian Call Center for Corporate Customers. Apparently, there was a high volume of complaints about thick accents and scripted responses. You don't say? You mean explaining complex technical issues to end users over a phone are further complicated by mixing in large dialect and enunciation differences?
posted by Espoo2 at 8:29 PM PST - 38 comments

Why Isn't Judee Sill's Beautiful Music More Well Known? Everyone has a favourite musician who, for some reason, remains unknown and unfairly overlooked. My choice for a much-deserved and long overdue revival is the silky-voiced, eccentric, tragic, ethereal and ultimately mysterious Judee Sill, one of the great Seventies singer-songwriters. Who would you nominate? (Here are a few mp3s of demos and unreleased recordings which will give you an idea of her beautiful voice and highly-strung delivery and, hopefully, lead you to explore her two main albums.)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:14 PM PST - 50 comments

Cow-Girl Morph Tutorial: "A lot of people ask me how I do what I do at the Transforming Love Ring Fleshsculpting Page. I use a lot of different techniques for what I do, but they are applicable in a lot of different situations. Most of the following techniques are generally 'fleshsculpting' techniques, meaning they change the shape of the flesh and skin without changing the texture much." NSFW.
posted by cedar at 7:10 PM PST - 15 comments

1.26 million people killed every year on the road or from subsequent injuries... ..Four Qld road deaths in 5 hours. 42,815 people died in 2002 in automobile crashes in the United States. Shouldn't these facts give us the resolve to explore a better solution to our transportation needs? I do not see the national debate that these deaths would evoke if the cause was different. Why are we numb to this?
posted by JohnR at 4:00 PM PST - 74 comments

More children now than ever are being born from cesarean sections. It's known that giving birth this way can leave psychological damage to the mother, but what effect is it having on the children?
posted by atom128 at 3:36 PM PST - 38 comments

Sometimes it is a funny world. Sometimes.
posted by xmutex at 2:28 PM PST - 48 comments

Iranian vice-president is blogging. Mohammad Ali Abtahi is perhaps the only major politician who publishes his personal diary, and his secretly taken photos from official meetings (e.g. the ousted president of Georgia, Eduard Shevardnadze) on his weblog, which is unfortunately only in Persian. (via iranFilter)
posted by hoder at 2:24 PM PST - 9 comments

The 1911 Encyclopedia, or the LoveToKnow Free Online Encyclopedia, is advertised as "what many consider to be the best encyclopedia ever written. As a research tool, this 1911 encyclopedia edition is unparalleled - even today." But what about the definition for Negro? It reads in part: "A dark skin, varying from dark brown, reddish-brown, or chocolate to nearly black; dark tightly curled hair, flat in transverse section,1 of the 'woolly' or the 'frizzly' type; a greater or less tendency to prognathism; eyes dark brown with yellowish cornea; nose more or less broad and flat; and large teeth." Can an encyclopedia with definitions like these be considered useful at all?
posted by josephtate at 1:36 PM PST - 39 comments

Alhamdullah. "I do say that freedom is the Almighty's gift to every person," the president replied. "I also condition it by saying freedom is not America's gift to the world. It's much greater than that, of course. And I believe we worship the same god." Apparently, this is causing no small amount of controversy in the Christian God-believing circles. I was always under the impression that it was commonly accepted that Jews, Christians, and Muslims were all working for the same Guy. So, Bush finally says something that's not completely stupid, and he gets all kind of hell for it. Great.
posted by majcher at 1:26 PM PST - 53 comments

Lost Lives "A generation of Japanese youngsters has dropped out of society entirely, unable to cope, it seems, with the rapid syncopation of life in Asia's most developed nation. The phenomenon has been dubbed hikikomori, or social withdrawal, by psychiatrist Tamaki Saito, who estimates that one in every 40 Japanese households has such a loner. That's an astounding 1 million social dropouts". Great article on Asia and how its countries deal/don't deal with mental illness.
posted by SpaceCadet at 1:17 PM PST - 15 comments

Welcome to Mooves. Flash animation, short movies.
posted by ginz at 12:46 PM PST - 2 comments

Looking for that rare science fiction first edition? The Barry R. Levin Science Fiction & Fantasy Literature store just might have the volume you seek.
posted by starscream at 10:43 AM PST - 2 comments

iPod's Dirty Secret (Links to a page with an emdedded Quicktime movie.) Can anyone confirm or debunk this?
posted by badstone at 10:41 AM PST - 84 comments

ET Could Hack SETI. SETI, which uses down time on the computers of thousands of volunteers to search for intelligent signals from space, has a potential problem—besides information, a broadcast to us from an alien intelligence could also carry a computer virus. Leonard David writes in the main link's space.com article that physicist Richard Carrigan (who works here) takes it seriously. He thinks SETI should figure out how to decontaminate any signals it receives.
posted by jasonspaceman at 9:43 AM PST - 35 comments

Want to create a Christmas list that's not limited to items available at Amazon? There are several universal wishlist websites at your disposal.
posted by sanitycheck at 9:27 AM PST - 4 comments

Freewayblogger.com When you put a sign on the freeway people will read it until someone takes it down.
posted by srboisvert at 8:39 AM PST - 56 comments

Copito de Nieve, a.k.a. Floquet de Neu, the only known white gorilla dies at age 37. It was one of the symbols of my hometown Barcelona. Snowflake was the star of the Barcelona Zoo, he always surrounded by female gorillas (not surprisingly he produced 22 offspring but none of them albino) and was famous because of his bad mood and tendency to throw things around. He was finally put down today as his skin cancer condition was aggravating. There it goes a no small part of my childhood (although I preferred the dolphins, always so cheerful)... Snowflake no longer lives with Virunga and Coco... (sigh!)
posted by samelborp at 8:17 AM PST - 9 comments

About a turkey [NYT] explains why the modern industrial American turkey is so dry and flavourless. It's not your mother's fault, it's the turkey. There is hope: Slow Food honors and preserves flavor in food production. Think where to buy next year's turkey.
posted by Nelson at 8:12 AM PST - 49 comments

Computer generated singer, $200. Vocaloid software, which is due to be released to consumers in January, allows users to cast their own (or anyone else's) songs in a disembodied but exceedingly life-like concert-quality voice. Vocaloid will be able to "sing" whatever combination of notes and words a user feeds it. The first generation of the software will be available for $200. [NYTimes link]
posted by Outlawyr at 3:54 AM PST - 23 comments

The International Center for Bathroom Etiquette makes me really glad that I'm a girl. I had no idea there were such complex decisions to be made about where to stand and which sink to use.
posted by anastasiav at 10:51 PM PST - 41 comments

Trashtalking - German Style. Forget talking dolls, Berlin's speechifying its trash cans to thank pedestrians after they dump their litter. But is it appropriate to have immaterial things tell you how to use them? [More Inside]
posted by gregb1007 at 10:07 PM PST - 15 comments

Warp Records becomes the first label to make entire discography available for download as pay-per-track at Bleep.com.

via Pitchforkmedia.com
posted by iamck at 7:46 PM PST - 32 comments

Floraphilia... twenty four luscious images from one garden.
via life in the present
posted by moonbird at 7:12 PM PST - 9 comments

trampoline [note: flash]
posted by crunchland at 6:12 PM PST - 12 comments

Hello, My Name Is Mike And I Have A Dream! How very unusual! Who the hell would want a thing like that? Talk to me about it, Mike...[In other news, PayPal dream projects get way out of hand. Flash or Quicktime required for all links except the last, which is a road test.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:33 PM PST - 15 comments

delenda mp3.com est "Vivendi Universal recently sold the MP3.com domain to CNet. However, they're not selling the approximately one million songs on the archive. (recorded by over 250,000 artists) Instead, they're simply destroying it as of December 3. MP3.com's founder and former CEO, Michael Robertson, is pleading with Vivendi to allow the Internet Archive to preserve the songs." (via Slashdot)
posted by kablam at 4:26 PM PST - 16 comments

The Protean Enemy by Jessica Stern, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2003
What accounts for al Qaeda's ongoing effectiveness in the face of an unprecedented onslaught? The answer lies in the organization's remarkably protean nature. Over its life span, al Qaeda has constantly evolved and shown a surprising willingness to adapt its mission. This capacity for change has consistently made the group more appealing to recruits, attracted surprising new allies, and -- most worrisome from a Western perspective -- made it harder to detect and destroy. Unless Washington and its allies show a similar adaptability, the war on terrorism won't be won anytime soon, and the death toll is likely to mount. Other texts by Jessica Stern: How America Created a Terrorist Haven, Pakistan's Jihad Culture, Talking With Terrorists. Classical Reference: Proteus.
posted by y2karl at 4:02 PM PST - 31 comments

"Dear [katemonkey], I just wanted to drop you a note as to what's happening here in America. The Matrix Trilogy is the latest GROSS thievery by the Hollywood/government in regards to the website www.hammerstrikes.com. The blatant outright and undeniable thievery is ABSOLUTELY OUTRAGEOUS! Surely the truth is getting out and suing for millions and millions is the only appropriate and proper course of action. Sincerely, Joe Messineo"
posted by Katemonkey at 3:59 PM PST - 19 comments

There was no conspiracy in the assassination of JFK, according to a new BBC documentary broadcast tonight. Offering a CG reconstruction of the plaza based on the Zapruder film and interviews with people who knew people, convincing evidence was offered that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone gunman acting on his own. Essentially that all these people are misguided. It also carefully worked through some of the other theories, Cuban and Mob and had very few nice things to say about Oliver Stone. For example, there wasn't a magic bullet because the diagram in the film is wrong -- Texas Governor John Connally wasn't sitting directly in front of the president, but below and just off the side, so the round just went in a straight line. This was tragedy effecting millions perpetrated by one man. How often have we heard that story?
posted by feelinglistless at 2:53 PM PST - 59 comments

Oil drilling in the Lofoten Islands? Norway's gorgeous Lofoten Islands were the subject of a great post by madamjujujive last year. Now the World Wide Fund for Nature is sounding the alarm over the prospect of oil drilling there. A decision from the Norwegian government is expected next month.
posted by homunculus at 11:03 AM PST - 15 comments

If you've participated in an anti-war rally, or helped organize a demonstration, the FBI may have a file on you. The FBI claims that they are only weeding out anarchists and other "extremists." But the ACLU and some legal scholars are warning of a return of Hooverism. Attention pinkos: You can run, but you can't hide, because you're probably on the no-fly list.
posted by PrinceValium at 8:58 AM PST - 38 comments

What is this? I really don't know how to make heads or tails on this one. I was listening to last.fm and some of the strangest ambient noise started playing. I ran a google search on the artist and was led here. One of the most unique pages I've ever seen. There seems to be a lot going on with this page. (Notice the poetry that appears on the index page for 1/3 second before refreshing to the main index map). In addition to having copies of the I Ching and the Kama Sutra (no pics) there is poetry and literature spanning back 2000 years, yet nothing I could find about the the original artist I was looking for. Has anyone run into this before or know what it's all about? And what are your thoughts?
posted by daHIFI at 8:53 AM PST - 9 comments

Walmart Nation Wal-Mart's decisions influence wages and working conditions across a wide swath of the world economy, from the shopping centers of Las Vegas to the factories of Honduras and South Asia. Its business is so vital to developing countries that some send emissaries to the corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., almost as if Wal-Mart were a sovereign nation. [First of a three part series in the LATimes. free reg. req.]
posted by srboisvert at 5:59 AM PST - 89 comments

Naked World.
posted by hama7 at 6:12 PM PST - 18 comments

Create-a-meal [note: flash] ... comes in mcdonalds, subway, barbeque, and pizza hut flavors.
posted by crunchland at 6:08 PM PST - 17 comments

Not in fact about telegraphy. Those fine young people at b3ta have been exercising their imaginations in depictions of the Victorian Internet. (via boingboing).
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 2:48 PM PST - 15 comments

Oh fuck! Are you interested? Let me guess: you're 18 to 34 years old, right? Oh it's a dandy little word, for sure. But is it enough? Here's yet another brilliant marketing idea dreamt up by the 35-50 thoroughly fucked-up Texan reader-research crowd! [Via Arts and Letters Daily.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:17 PM PST - 23 comments

Behold the answer to the Canadian Change conspiracy.
posted by boost ventilator at 12:48 PM PST - 21 comments

Why men should not marry
posted by SpaceCadet at 12:25 PM PST - 189 comments

Okay, Miguel, what wine goes with this? If you like guinea pigs, don't click on this link. Unless you LIKE guinea pig...
posted by konolia at 11:19 AM PST - 14 comments

Bush is sabotaging the laws that have protected America's environment for more than thirty years, according to this excellent article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Rolling Stone. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, was also recently interviewed by Salon.
posted by homunculus at 10:45 AM PST - 33 comments

Political chaos grips Georgia

Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze has declared a state of emergency after opposition forces seized parliament. He refused to resign and said the armed forces would now take over after what he called a coup attempt.

A rough rundown on the current situation, Google News
posted by zerofoks at 8:43 AM PST - 27 comments

House Passes Anti-Spam Bill Alas, if it passes it will not likely call for death penalty. Can it work or at least help, or is a ban too easily gotten around?
posted by Postroad at 8:11 AM PST - 21 comments

Cooter's Place is closing next weekend. I'm going as soon as my ride gets here...
posted by JoanArkham at 6:42 AM PST - 20 comments

Seppuku - A Practical Guide. The rules for seppuku are as complex as for the tea ceremony, and the result roughly the same; if pushed we would have to recommend self-disembowelment over a slow death from lethal boredom, arthritis and bitter tea.
posted by srboisvert at 5:42 AM PST - 5 comments

The May 1970 Tragedy at Jackson State University: "Lest We Forget..." 'In the Spring of 1970, campus communities across this country were characterized by a chorus of protests and demonstrations. The issues were the escalation of the war in Vietnam and the U.S. invasion of Cambodia; the ecology; racism and repression; and the inclusion of the experiences of women and minorities in the educational system. No institution of higher education was left untouched by confrontations and continuous calls for change. '
'At Jackson State College in Jackson, Mississippi, there was the added issue of historical racial intimidation and harassment by white motorists traveling Lynch Street, a major thoroughfare that divided the campus and linked west Jackson to downtown ... '
posted by plep at 4:55 AM PST - 16 comments

Rolling Stone's 500 greatest albums. Not a bad list at all, but I'm sure that some of us will find something they missed ...
posted by pyramid termite at 10:54 PM PST - 67 comments

Leisuretown has disappeared. Except for the about, contact, navigation, and most important, the donation page, there are no Christmas suicide balloons or Winter solstice parties. I just found out via this Comics Journal thread and I wonder if there any other favorite web cartoons of mine that are about to bite the dust.
posted by jabo at 10:44 PM PST - 11 comments

The absence of sexual desire. We often discuss the frustrations of excessive sexual desire but rarely touch upon its absence. A woman who was a virgin before her marriage discusses the adjustments she had to make before she started desiring or even feeling comfortable about having sex with her husband.
posted by gregb1007 at 9:53 PM PST - 59 comments

The Dr. Seuss Parody Page : Offered to help wash the image of the Cat in the Hat movie out of your minds... If you've been on the net for more than 3 days, you've seen at least some of these:
For Techies
And Trekkies
And Biblical Scholars,
Biologists,
Psychologists
And Vikings who holler.
Political Seuss
Starring Bush, Gore and Newt.
From E-Mail to ER
And B5, that's cute.
From Purity Tests
To Deconstruction-ests.
From Shakespeare to Dante,
Who knows what's the best?
I'd list every one, I am so unabashed,
But do so, my rhymes would become Ogden Nash.
So click and enjoy
Some of this,
Some of that,
And avoid Mr. Myers in 'Cat in the Hat'.
posted by wendell at 7:51 PM PST - 24 comments

scary russian cartoons [note: flash]
posted by crunchland at 5:46 PM PST - 4 comments

The Kennedy Assassination It seems forty years later, more people believe in a conspiracy theory. So what do you think of Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby and others? Was Mark Lane right? Maybe Prouty had even more answers he didn't share.
A previous post here : ...Up Close and Personal
posted by alethe at 3:06 PM PST - 34 comments

Penis Enlargement Web Ads Prompt Calif. Spam Rage
The guy lost his cool because the pop up spammers basically unleashed all their tricks on him and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
So he threatened to unleash anthrax on them, to use a power drill and an ice pick and to shoot them.
He doesn't own any guns nor did he have access to anthrax and yet he now faces up to 5 years in prison and $250,000 in fines.
Does this set a bad precedent for fighting back against spammers? Or did he get what he deserved for threatening them like this? The case raises some interesting issues about how hard you can fight back against spammers and pop up 'noids.
posted by fenriq at 3:00 PM PST - 22 comments

Triumph Slams O'Reilly NPR's Fresh Air interview with Late Night's Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. He laughs, he cries, and obviously, he poops. And he makes fun of Bill O'Reilly in the process, referencing O'Reilly's Fresh Air appearance last month. (found via DailyKos poster secondcityscientist)
posted by fishbulb at 2:42 PM PST - 13 comments

Subversive Cross Stitch: Now I know what to get quonsar for Christmas.
posted by me3dia at 1:26 PM PST - 17 comments

"If the producers had dug up Ted Geisel's body and hung it from a tree, they couldn't have desecrated the man more," suggests the Boston Globe's Ty Burr, and he's not alone. Do I need to actually go see this stinkbomb in order to trash it? Or will other parents stand with me to assure this guaranteed first-weekend blockbuster has the biggest second-weekend drop ever?
posted by soyjoy at 10:40 AM PST - 110 comments

The Opus Interview
MSNBC: One more personal question: have you ever gotten back together with your mother?
Opus: Yes, we had a big reunion five years ago, and I’ve set her up in a nice place in Florida.
MSNBC: A condo?
Opus: Sea World.
and to think we knew him when...
posted by quonsar at 10:32 AM PST - 17 comments

Someone is watching what you post. Today I received a note from a site called InternetSeer that told me some of my posts on The {Fray} were temporarily unavailable. Too bad I never asked them to keep an eye on things for me. Who are these people are what are they doing?
posted by tommasz at 10:06 AM PST - 27 comments

Fearless? Physically fit? Need some Christmas Cash? Become practice police dog quarry for $8.50CND an hour.
posted by timeistight at 9:58 AM PST - 4 comments

Matt Savage is a promising young jazz pianist whose trio recently performed at the Blue Note in New York City. He's also autistic. He's also 12.

(Challenges of raising an autistic child previously discussed here.)
posted by emelenjr at 9:23 AM PST - 16 comments

Gen. Franks Doubts Constitution Will Survive WMD Attack Gen. Tommy Franks says that if the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government.
posted by mfoight at 9:17 AM PST - 84 comments

Quelques célébrités mises en images fantastiques... While searching for the usual risque pics of Gillian Anderson I came across some wonderful Photoshopped cheese, including Joe Peschi and Will Smith as barbarians and Leeza Gibbons: Warrior Princess.
posted by johnnydark at 8:00 AM PST - 15 comments

Johnny Hart at it again? "B.C." creator Johnny Hart is getting some negative publicity (again) for a comic that some say is anti-Islam. See the comic here. An outspoken Christian, Hart has had brushes with religious controversy in the past. Are people reading too much into this, or does it look like bigotry to you? (via Atrios)
posted by Gilbert at 7:44 AM PST - 114 comments

Collage Machine from the National Gallery of Art. Click images to add; drag into place; click the green tab to bring an element forward, click red to send it backward; use the controls at the bottom to resize, flip, rotate and fade elements; see if you can ever, ever stop.
posted by taz at 5:30 AM PST - 7 comments

"Although this letter will come to you as a surprise..." Fed up with having their inboxes clogged with emails from Nigerian fraudsters promising untold riches, the victims are finally hitting back in what has been described as the Internet's first blood sport.
posted by tranquileye at 5:26 AM PST - 16 comments

Deliawhacking. Search Delia Online for ingredients used in only a single recipe. I give you partridge, tongue and radish. Not as easy as it might first appear. More inside...
posted by nthdegx at 4:58 AM PST - 16 comments

Dentsu Advertising Museum. Japanese advertising 1603-1926.
'The Edo Era (1603—1867), during which a full-fledged feudal system was established by the Tokugawa shogunate, was also an era in which the culture of townspeople flourished. That Japan had already developed distinctive advertising techniques of its own as early as the Edo Era might come as a surprise to you. But ample evidence of these remain for us today to follow a historical trail, in the form of nishiki-e (a multicolored woodblock print), hikifuda (handbills) and signboards. A witness of the times, as well as a chronicle of advertising creative work in Japan, these relics represent a valuable record of both the evolution of corporations and the history of common people's lives.'
'Dentsu Advertising Museum presents selected advertising artifacts and works of art from the Yoshida Hideo Memorial Foundation collection, in order to give you a taste of the historical background to Japanese advertising techniques.'
posted by plep at 3:21 AM PST - 6 comments

John Elway gets the ball to the 18-yard line. Mark Harmon (not that Mark Harmon...) kicks the field goal to bring his team one point ahead with 4 seconds left on the clock. Kevin Moen catches the ball on the return kick, laterals to Richard Rodgers, who laterals to Dwight Garner. Garner laterals back to Rogers who then shovels the ball to Mariet Ford. Ford then passes back to Moen, who finishes what he started by tackling trombonist Gary Tyrrell in the end zone. So ends the 1982 "Big Game" between UC Berkeley and Stanford. So begins the legend of the weirdest play in the history of college football, complete with audio (wav file).
posted by jonp72 at 9:19 PM PST - 22 comments

"In the early 1900's, every music production company had a piano in the office, and from the street you could hear people banging away. Many of these pianos were made by William Tonk & Brothers at 10th Avenue and 35th Street. The pianos and the sounds they made soon became known as honky tonk." (An education in American roots music from NPR, with lots of lovely audio. There's an awful lot on this site to explore, so if you're looking for a place to start, well, it was this segment on Bob Wills that hooked me. Alternatively, the segment on Norteña accordion music or the introductory segment on the changing role of women in country music are also worth highlighting.) [real audio]
posted by .kobayashi. at 9:18 PM PST - 4 comments

Three great interviews in Salon: Former Senator and Vietnam veteran Max Cleland on the stonewalling of the 9/11 commission and the situation in Iraq, author Jessica Stern (previously discussed here) on the recent bombings in Istanbul and Riyadh, and executive director of Amnesty International USA William Schulz on why the left must confront terror with the same zeal that it battles Bush, or risk irrelevance.
posted by homunculus at 9:06 PM PST - 5 comments

Now Suzanne takes your hand
and she leads you to the river

The Story of Suzanne
posted by y2karl at 8:52 PM PST - 32 comments

Jaron Lanier talks about philosophy, computer science and physics. Suppose poor old Shroedinger's Cat has survived all the quantum observation experiments but still has a taste for more brushes with death. We could oblige it by attaching the cat-killing box to our camera. So long as the camera can recognize an apple in front of it, the cat lives.
posted by kliuless at 8:18 PM PST - 11 comments

A great PETA ad ...for me to poop on! Amusing recent campaign featuring Triumph the Insult Dog to promote spaying/neutering that is catching heat for a subtle Clay Aiken jab.
posted by mathowie at 4:05 PM PST - 37 comments

Pssst! Wanna Buy A Reliable, Second-Hand Car? You could do worse than start with Honest John, a plain-speaking, fiercely independent Cockney motor car wonk who'll see you right, no problem. If you're obsessive about reliability, i.e. don't have the time or inclination to look after your wheels and just want the damn thing to get you from A to B and back again, check out the often surprising Reliability Index for the most and least trustworthy automobiles. [Eurocentric warning! Btw, what are the most reliable independent car guides - preferably free and online - in the U.S, Canada, etc?]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:42 PM PST - 32 comments

What should I do if the internet goes down?
posted by Orange Goblin at 2:38 PM PST - 14 comments

del.icio.us is a remotely hosted app that will let you quickly add links, which you can integrate into your site like the pros.
posted by riffola at 2:09 PM PST - 13 comments

BBC lists 50 places to see before you die. Overall, choices are a bit too exotic for my own taste (only four European cities???) and I still consider Bali a wildly overrated place, but what's really shocking is kitschy Las Vegas at #7 and La Serenissa Repubblica di Venezia at #18. What happened to the British tradition of extolling Italy's beauty? via Attu
posted by 111 at 1:33 PM PST - 53 comments

Perpetuating a common misconcetion about the "Morning After" pill and RU-486 Avrum Bluming, determined that my mom should try an experimental treatment, mifepristone, a synthetic antiprogestin better known as RU-486, the "morning after" contraception drug. In a little throw-away line, Scientific American columnist Michael Shermer perpetuates the idea that RU-486 and the "Morning After" pill are the same thing. They are entirely different. In fact, mifepristone is not a contraceptive at all. Regardless of anyone's opinion about these two products, shouldn't Scientific American know better than to mistake the purpose of an FDA-aproved prescription drug?
posted by antimony at 12:34 PM PST - 21 comments

Just who is this Ahmad Chalabi guy ?
posted by jpoulos at 11:15 AM PST - 13 comments

seamonster [note" flash]
posted by crunchland at 11:06 AM PST - 4 comments

Happy Thanksgiving! A friend told me the story of Corn Hill the other day (the house he grew up in is right across the street), so I decided to check out what the internet has to say about the situation. Not much apparently. This ugly website is the only other one I found that didn't say that the pilgrims "borrowed" from a "cache" of corn that they "stumbled upon". What's really crazy is that the pilgrims had never seen corn, nor native americans. This means that they either started digging for fun, or found out about the Wampanoag burial traditions and decided it was a good idea. Either way, happy Grave Robbing Day!
posted by magikeye at 11:04 AM PST - 27 comments

In the United States, the cover of Paul Krugman's new book is a little bit different than the cover in England. (from Atrios)
posted by limitedpie at 10:19 AM PST - 24 comments

Google House. A visual art page using google's image search. [Note - some parts of the house are NSFW. via BoingBoing]
posted by srboisvert at 10:11 AM PST - 4 comments

The President Calling: American Radioworks (MPR) explores the secret phone tapes of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. AFAIK, the content is all previously available, but online, they've packaged and annotated it for ease of use. It's not exhaustive, but the moments picked out are often illuminating, showing "how each man used one-on-one politics to shape history." You might want to start here.
posted by soyjoy at 9:02 AM PST - 5 comments

Santorum. Dan Savage is a man on a mission: he wants his coinage of "santorum" to go all the way to the top of a Google search for "santorum", and he's calling on bloggers to help him do it. The comments of Senator Santorum (R-Homophobia) on the Supreme Court's anti-sodomy case were previously discussed here.
posted by UKnowForKids at 8:48 AM PST - 25 comments

That makes four bombings in the last six days in Turkey. Pro-intervention or anti-invasion, I can't tell what I think anymore.
posted by Leonard at 7:38 AM PST - 99 comments

"Four score and seven years ago..."
Yesterday was the 140th anniversary of Lincoln's famous address. There is only one known photograph of President Lincoln at Gettysburg (here's the detail view if you're having a hard time spotting him). The Library of Congress website explains that the image sat for more than half a century in the National Archives before anyone recognized President Lincoln in it.
posted by Irontom at 6:31 AM PST - 21 comments

What part of no do ya still not understand? Date rape in the time of Kobe, roofies and Girls Gone Wild. By Judith Lewis, with bonus 'toon by Ellen Forney.
posted by xowie at 6:11 AM PST - 84 comments

Interesting Column by Tim Whitaker, editor at Philadelphia Weekly, who "kind of jests" someone should order the main branch of the Free Library at 19th and Vine streets gutted, all the passé books written by the long since dead and decayed--books that nobody looks at anyway, thrown out, and replaced with computers.
This could be done over a long weekend, and the new Free Workstation Center of Philadelphia would open. Thousands of city residents who'd been priced out of the Information Revolution for well over a decade would rush to the free computers to experience the online rush that comes with access to the WWW.
He says Amazon's new service "search inside the book" is the first glimpse of a full-bore revolution in the way research will be conducted and books will be distributed in the future that spells the death of libraries.
He bounced this idea off of Steven Levy, a Philadelphia native who writes about technology for Newsweek, and he says "It's not that crazy, The future of libraries is a hot topic with librarians all over the country."
"Once the Web has become a full-service digital archive of the whole wide written word, it'll only be a quick innovation or two before we'll have the technology to order and bind books on our own home book-printing systems. Ebooks will finally become reality. Libraries will become mini-museums, where old books are kept under glass, relics of the pre-"inside the book" revolutionary age."
posted by Blake at 5:40 AM PST - 22 comments

Stephen King's National Book Award acceptance speech "took the award to task." In his National Book Award acceptance speech, King criticizes and condemns the divisive clash between highbrow and lowbrow literary cultures. NPR audio highlights and post-award interview. To a degree, he blames the National Book Foundation itself for the divisiveness. His acceptance speech revisits many of the points in the previous archived discussion when the award was announced. Stephen King, Mefi snooper?
posted by basilwhite at 4:47 AM PST - 14 comments

Smoking kills (Flash)
posted by Mwongozi at 4:46 AM PST - 13 comments

Yeah baby! Bite my toenails! Funny, sad, simple, sweet, it's all about the luuurve. Remics Vol. 3 features illustrations by 29 artists on the theme of "love"; past editions (Flash and some sound) explored thoughts on "Place" and "Birthday".
posted by taz at 3:08 AM PST - 7 comments

Lichens of North America 'This website grew out of the activities of Sylvia and Stephen Sharnoff, who did the photographic fieldwork for the book Lichens of North America, by Irwin M.Brodo and the Sharnoffs, published in November, 2001 by Yale University Press ... ' - the human uses of lichens, a lichen sampler, lichen portraits ('This lichen is used medicinally in India as a poultice to induce copious urination, as a linament and an incense for headaches, and also as a powder to help wounds heal.') ... more lichen links.
Related interest :- The Hidden Forest, photos of lichens, fungi, mosses and slime moulds of the New Zealand bush.
posted by plep at 3:01 AM PST - 21 comments

But I've never heard of any of these artists... Say hello to iRATE radio. The premise is simple: mp3's collected from various free sites are collected and indexed on a common server. You, through your spiffy iRATE client, are fed mp3's, which you then rate. Over time, your musical tastes are matched against others, and you are then fed mp3's which you will like, ostensibly. [...via Bifurnicated Reinvents]
posted by jazzkat11 at 9:13 PM PST - 14 comments

Perle speaks (the truth)! International lawyers and anti-war campaigners reacted with astonishment yesterday after the influential Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal. I can't decide if this is really stupid or really shrewd. And can legal action be taken?
posted by amberglow at 8:24 PM PST - 64 comments

Taking it public. Ethan Hawke is looking for investors for his new movie, "Billy Dead". For $8.75 a share of preferred stock (and only in blocks of 100 - ticker symbol "BILLY"), Hawke hopes to raise about US $7.3 Million through his broker, Civilian Capital. According to a consultant with Civilian, potential investors will be able to "invest in a film maker, a story or a star."

Is this ushering in a new golden age of public media ownership, or an age of increased corporate hegemony? Also, for what other artforms would you like to see such investment opportunites? Finally, in what directors/actors/storylines etc. would you like to invest?
posted by SilentSalamander at 7:09 PM PST - 29 comments

I wouldn't normally post a link to a product, but I found Blueberrry/Pomegranate juice in my local grocery store today and it is giving me the world's biggest juice boner. This is a very good day for my body, the best since Fresh Samantha decided to become some dumb company without a cute picture on the bottle.
posted by clango at 6:22 PM PST - 49 comments

3D Sidewalk Paintings [via 37signals]
posted by kirkaracha at 3:52 PM PST - 17 comments

Lazarus would be proud. Seminal 80's christian Hair Metal band Stryper are still around. And they're touring! And it's the original line up! And they're playing Boston tonight! Now if you'll excuse me, I have to find some modest-yet-rebellious clothing to wear and get to the show.
posted by Mayor Curley at 3:09 PM PST - 12 comments

Girl, I know you wanna show... Baby, make your booty go. (SFW)
posted by TreeHugger at 2:05 PM PST - 12 comments

Tsk, tsk, America. It seems that we may be collectively having a problem with being nice.
posted by moonbird at 1:42 PM PST - 15 comments

Postcards From The Road : US Route 66, as seen through vintage postcards.
posted by anastasiav at 12:41 PM PST - 7 comments

Spot The Essential, Seminal, How-Could-These-Imbeciles-Have-Forgotten? Popular Song: A well-made list, specially if it's authoritative and includes no less than 500 songs, is just asking to be cruelly inspected for omissions, ridiculed for certain inclusions and generally derided. This one is, admittedly, a toughy. But perhaps way too US-centric and too Rockist. I mean, honestly, sometimes you Yanks act as if you'd invented Pop music! ;) (Via the newly-discovered Rivurcated Bifets.)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 12:03 PM PST - 65 comments

Alas, of course I was just reviewing our fourth quarter numbers. Again. Check out Gary Turner's solution for the age-old "I didn't hear you coming" feeling when someone walks into your office/cube/workspace and you're surfing blogs. It's the Web Fire Escape, and it allows you to click on a little box reminiscent (okay, just like) those little "Exit" signs all over Europe. And Here is the muse behind the madness. Found this today via Blogger's front page post about not getting fired for blogging.
posted by djspicerack at 11:40 AM PST - 31 comments

Dear President Bush, I'm sure you'll be having a nice little tea party with your fellow war criminal, Tony Blair. Please wash the cucumber sandwiches down with a glass of blood, with my compliments. Harold Pinter, Playwright. Some caustic open letters in The Guardian for the big state visit.
posted by serafinapekkala at 11:33 AM PST - 40 comments

don't drink and drive
posted by crunchland at 10:29 AM PST - 54 comments

Who wants to marry a Kucinich? "I think we're in a day in age when partnerships are imperative to making anything happening in the world. And I certainly want a dynamic, out-spoken woman who was fearless in her desire for peace in the world and for universal single-payer health care and a full employment economy. If you are out there call me." -- Dennis Kucinich, Nov 5, 2003
posted by mathowie at 10:14 AM PST - 26 comments

How to Make Money and Influence People. Five workers who made false accounting entries during a huge fraud at HealthSouth Corp. kept silent out of fear after realizing the company was buying guns, grenades and spy equipment, according to testimony Wednesday at the first sentencing in the case. Richard Scrushy has been mentioned here before, but his intimidation tactics are a new revelation.
posted by whoshotwho at 8:25 AM PST - 10 comments

The eight finalists for the design of the World Trade Center Memorial were annouced today. Follow the link to see the proposals.
posted by callicles at 8:13 AM PST - 29 comments

Can Jackson buy his way out AGAIN? Ok, I agree that EVERYONE (including drug dealers and supposed terrorists) is innocent until proven guilty, but for christs sake how many hush up bribes can "wacko jacko" pay before the "pedophile of pop" lands where he belongs...IN JAIL!
posted by hoopyfrood at 7:53 AM PST - 152 comments

Client: "People don't know what links are on the web yet, you have to make it blink and say 'CLICK HERE!' " Web designer horror stories from the last days of the dotcom boom. (via the Spinnoff forums)
posted by UKnowForKids at 6:33 AM PST - 50 comments

Anger management therapy in prison. Does it work? Is it ethical? Prisoners who state "If I had had a better education, I would have a good job, and wouldn't need to commit crime" have "distorted thinking"; and one prisoner claims therapy helped him premeditate an attack on an informer. Should prison therapy be effectively compulsory? Meanwhile, the positive psychology movement aims to find out what makes people happy.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 4:57 AM PST - 18 comments

Buck Stupid
You.gotta.be.kidding.me
posted by magullo at 4:03 AM PST - 31 comments

Looking for quality web design? Ugo V. Re, Web Master, might just have what you're looking for.
posted by Outlawyr at 3:57 AM PST - 38 comments

Japanese Prints and the World of Go. Classic Japanese art meets classic Japanese boardgame.
'The purpose of this catalogue is twofold: to enlarge the understanding of print collectors who may be unaware of the long historical and legendary background of a game that has for centuries engaged the interest of many artists in Japan; and to enrich the experience of go players by presenting works that reveal some of the large body of traditions and associations connected with the game in Japan's cultural life. Although artists were inspired by the game of go to work the theme in several media--wood, ivory, metal, textiles, and clay, and while the motif appears on numerous scroll and screen paintings--it is in woodblock prints (ukiyo-e) that its image is most frequently found.'
'. . . there is a text that likens the world to a go-board. For those who see with their minds, it is the centre of the universe.'
Warning: Each sub-link in the article opens a new window.
posted by plep at 2:59 AM PST - 10 comments

The closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind was on individual bands in the 'Blonde on Blonde' album. It's that thin, that wild mercury sound. It's metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up.

Bob Dylan 1978

Blonde On Blonde--Seven mixes, four or five covers, four or five women, some missing photographs and one leather coat... (story within)
posted by y2karl at 2:32 AM PST - 26 comments

A cluster of apple G5 machines at Virginia Tech ranked number 3 in the Top500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers. Apparently, the total cost of the system is around $5 million dollars while the two machines that beat it cost more than $300 million.
posted by geir at 2:22 AM PST - 16 comments

Dolphin activitsts arrested for cutting nets in Taiji, Japan Prominent on the news tonight in Japan, the Sea Shepherd activists discussed here are at it again. Is killing dolphins worse than killing pigs or other animals we eat?
posted by planetkyoto at 1:45 AM PST - 24 comments

Send them back! We're feeling great about ourselves! Because we sent our mp3's BACK!
posted by Espoo2 at 1:21 AM PST - 12 comments

The Daily Herald is running a piece on Violence and Videogames, and to any person who plays games, it may marr their opinion of the Daily Herald for a while. In fact, Steve from www.HardOcp.com (november 18th link) wrote the author a letter to explain that what he wrote doesn't hold weight in the real world. "If a parent wanted their children to develop attitudes like Gary Ridgway, the confessed killer of at least 48 women, these games might provide a good training ground." Seems to me like the author doesnt play video games, especially considering there are other games besides first person shooters. "Video games are expected to reach $20 billion in sales this year. That is a sizable piece of the growing economy everybody is hoping for, and it works directly against what most parents want for their children." A little opinionated, but so am I. What do you think?
posted by Keyser Soze at 9:19 PM PST - 43 comments

Victor Serge is one of the missing links in 20th-century history; in at the beginning of the Soviet Union, he saw before almost anyone what a nightmare it was going to be, wrote some prescient books, may have invented the word "totalitarian," knew everybody who was anybody, and was forgotten. Christopher Hitchens tries to remind us (quote and acknowledgment inside).
posted by languagehat at 6:35 PM PST - 6 comments

Dutch experiment with drug legalisation a failure , say experts.
posted by sgt.serenity at 5:35 PM PST - 46 comments

US-based multinationals have been told they will receive compensation from American trade authorities if they cancel contracts in Britain.
"The US government's stance on steel tariffs is not only illegal it is damaging business on both sides of the Atlantic. The tariffs may have saved a few steel jobs in Ohio but they have destroyed car worker jobs in Detroit.

"Nice visiting with y'all, mind if I take these jobs back with me?"
posted by dash_slot- at 5:13 PM PST - 15 comments

Perspectives on Hawaiian Sovereignty. There are many different perspective on the issue of Hawaiian sovereignty. These are a few of them. Free Hawai'i. Hawaiian Kingdom Government. Hawai'i: Independent and Sovereign. Sovereign Hawaiian Government. Reinstated Hawai'i. Kingdom of Hawai'i. Educate Hawai'i. The Hawaiian Roundtable. Aloha for All. Hawai'i Matters. Native Hawaiians. Office of Hawaiian Affairs. And, in case you want a little further info from yet another perspective, The Story of the Usurpation of the Kingdom of Hawai'i.
posted by Joey Michaels at 4:40 PM PST - 31 comments

Microsoft fires back at Google News. As described in this article in New Scientist, MSN is trying its own version of Google News with a twist: theirs adds customized content tailored to the interests of the current reader.
posted by costas at 1:04 PM PST - 27 comments

Much of the news from Iraq looks grim and it's easy to feel powerless about the whole situation. Mercycorps lets you do something about it, with 92% of all money collected going directly to humanitarian programs to feed, clothe, and provide healthcare to Iraq citizens in need. Looks like a good cause I'm happy to get behind.
posted by mathowie at 11:52 AM PST - 17 comments

To Invade Or Not To Invade?
Many have expressed the sentiment that unilaterally invading other countries can be justified as serving the best interests of its people. We can all agree that brutal dictatorships are a bad thing. What should be done when they are identified? Engagement or invasion? Should cognitive dissonance by our leaders be ignored and/or accepted? Are double standards justified by financial interests? Here is another case where all litmus tests fail.
posted by nofundy at 10:22 AM PST - 38 comments

bruno coulais pushes the envelope merging photography and motion at this beautiful site ... flash 6 required.
posted by specialk420 at 9:40 AM PST - 7 comments

PMS Alert 1.0   A system-tray reminder of where things stand. Read a simple scale of five colors to get the likelihood of mood swings. Get a real-time estimation of fertility. Pick a date off the calendar to get a quick forecast of what's to come. Store custom notes to go along with each day in the cycle. Get reminders when conditions are changing. Even get reminders of her next birthday and anniversary.
posted by gottabefunky at 9:35 AM PST - 46 comments

Freecycling. Reducing the amount of trash we generate by connecting people who have things that they no longer want with people who want those same things. The only rule: Every item posted must be free.
posted by grabbingsand at 8:55 AM PST - 31 comments

Propaganda Postcards From World War I
posted by anastasiav at 8:50 AM PST - 3 comments

In response to the obvious need chronicled by an Onion article, Blogger publishes its Official Stance on "What to do if your Mom discovers your blog," an interesting document that tries to be both ironic and informative at the same time. Anybody ever had to do some last-minute editing in view of new readership? Remember, what you say can come back to haunt you in unexpected ways...
posted by soyjoy at 8:41 AM PST - 53 comments

planetary photojournal
posted by crunchland at 7:43 AM PST - 1 comment

Recovering the files of the Stasi
A group of German scientists has developed a computer scanning system that will be used to reconstruct millions of files torn up by the East German secret police after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.
posted by Irontom at 7:27 AM PST - 18 comments

Mass. Rules In Favor Of Same-Sex Marriages. The highest court in Massachusetts has ruled that same-sex couples are legally entitled to wed under the state constitution, but stopped short of immediately allowing marriage licenses to be issued to the seven couples who challenged the law. The court is giving the Legislature 180 days to "take such action as it may deem appropriate in light of this decision."
posted by Stynxno at 7:24 AM PST - 124 comments

The news at a glance. Categorized news photos. [via slashdot]
posted by srboisvert at 5:13 AM PST - 5 comments

CIA Seeks Probe of Iraq-Al Qaeda Memo Leak The CIA will ask the Justice Department to investigate the leak of a 16-page classified Pentagon memo that listed and briefly described raw agency intelligence on any relationship between Saddam Hussein's Iraqi government and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network, according to congressional and administration sources...and if this probe is like so many others, that will be the end of this news item.
posted by Postroad at 4:56 AM PST - 10 comments

Oh... the evils of psychotherapy. And they are many - by turning to therapists, we don't get the strong emotional bonds that are the benefit of sharing your trouble with friends. (More Inside)
posted by gregb1007 at 4:09 AM PST - 35 comments

The Digital Mirror: Treasures of the National Library of Wales. Online collections related to Welsh history and culture - the Mary Dillwyn Album (a Victorian family photography album), autobiography of a smuggler, Lloyd George's 1886 diary, witchcraft in 17th century Flintshire, the 'Black Book of Carmarthen', a letter in the hand of Ann Griffiths, hymn writer, the Book of Taliesin (14th century), and more.
posted by plep at 2:52 AM PST - 5 comments

Paul Erdös (pronounced Air-Dersh) was the most prolific mathematician of all time. He wrote almost 1500 papers with many others, leading to the creation of the Erdös number, connecting mathematicians to each other by way of their co-authored papers. Even a horse has an Erdös number of 3. He also had his own language - if a person had "left", they had died, but if they had "died", they had stopped doing mathematics.
posted by Orange Goblin at 2:36 AM PST - 24 comments

.www deprecated? A quest to get rid off the "WWW" cruft in urls. Is it a good idea or a bad idea?
posted by riffola at 9:38 PM PST - 58 comments

Where Are You? Are You Sure? Are cell phones robbing us of our sense of place? (More inside.)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:34 PM PST - 47 comments

What is it about dolls? Sometimes they just seem so very VERY creepy!
posted by willnot at 8:24 PM PST - 10 comments

Whose criminals are they? Canada and the U.S. are deporting immigrant criminals back to the Caribbean -- criminals who were born there but, in many cases, raised in North America. Whose problem are they? Virtually every Caribbean country feels the burden of the deportations, especially from the U.S., which, in 1998, deported 55,500 "aliens" on criminal grounds, 3,700 to the Caribbean. Defenders of the deportations say Canada and the U.S. are just getting rid of bad apples, many of whom shouldn't be here in the first place. But The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) says that, frequently, the deportees have little more than place of birth to connect them to the region. In most cases these deportees have no money, little education, few relatives or friends to whom they can turn, and many are truly violent and lawless. The culture of drugs and guns that many carry back to their native lands is wreaking havoc in nations that receive them in substantial numbers.
posted by orange swan at 6:00 PM PST - 32 comments

And the MPAA will 'up the ante' with the Artists' Rights and Theft Prevention Act. Increased jail time and fines for distribution of copyrighted works. And careful with that cam-phone in the theater, those and the screeners (leaked before they're commercially available) will get you the stiffest penalty.
posted by Nauip at 3:43 PM PST - 53 comments

Golden Spirit. Née "The Homer?" Finnish cheerleading squad not included. Hat tip to the NY Times automotive section.
posted by Dick Paris at 2:57 PM PST - 19 comments

Clone blogs: spurious blogs that look real, but exist solely to purvey smut in a very shady way. They're becoming ever more clever, those spammers.
posted by moonbird at 2:12 PM PST - 32 comments

The art of Vik Muniz includes pictures of air, dirt, dust, thread, chocolate, ink, clouds... {flash} (don't click the "erotica" section if at work--otherwise, i think it's completely safe)
posted by dobbs at 1:45 PM PST - 4 comments

Do you agree with Jamie? Whether you do or not, it's been hard to escape the Jamie propaganda machine at my university for the last couple weeks: signs, buttons, toques, shirts, a website, and probably more. As it turns out, Jamie's just one of many interchangeable spokespeople for the cause, apparently with quite a bit of cash behind them. Google reveals it's a continent-wide phenomenon. If you do agree, perhaps you'll want to organize an event yourself. I wonder if the campaign has made any converts yet...
posted by chumptastic at 1:04 PM PST - 69 comments

Remind me: why did the U.S. government invade and destabilize Iraq? It's one thing to read this stuff, it's a whole other thing to hear it from the horse's, err, I mean chimp's mouth.
posted by jackspace at 1:00 PM PST - 40 comments

Googlerace: see how Google ranks your favorite candidate on specific terms, such as economy or Iraq or MetaFilter.
posted by me3dia at 12:33 PM PST - 14 comments

Bowlingal is a dog bark translator. Discuss. (Flash link)
posted by omidius at 12:02 PM PST - 33 comments

"Amodal Suspension" is a large-scale interactive installation developed for the opening of the new Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM) in Japan. [more]
posted by hama7 at 11:51 AM PST - 6 comments

"MyLastEMial.com is a unique online service, which allows you to leave messages for those you care about – to be emailed after your death." Oh. My. God.
via - would you believe? - Yahoo's Daily Links
posted by wendell at 11:23 AM PST - 28 comments

Climb on Board Seemingly in line with the tenor of much of the discussion here lately, I present for your delectation World Toilet Day 2003 on Nov. 19, brought to you by the folks at the World Toilet Organization. My good buddy AL's on board....
posted by Pressed Rat at 11:21 AM PST - 4 comments

Bush pulls out of speech to Parliament during upcoming British trip. Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela and Francois Mitterand, have all given speeches to the Lords and the Commons while visiting Britain, but Bush is afraid of hecklers.
posted by wsg at 10:09 AM PST - 60 comments

The Soylent Green Biscuit Factory Are automation, robots, and computers taking human jobs and producing a new class of permanently superfluous ex-workers? (see Robot Nation thanks spazzm) Maybe the Soylent Green Biscuit Factory can help! Robert Wenzlaff says - "I'm not just the president. I'm also a raw material."
posted by troutfishing at 9:28 AM PST - 11 comments

Motel Postcards from the Era of the Open Road
posted by anastasiav at 8:47 AM PST - 10 comments

Blogrolls around the globe now all point to Laura's blog. Laura doesn't sound like your stereotypical evil hacker to me, but something sure went wrong at Blogrolling.com. Anyone know what? Laura's blog seems to have gone down what with all the hits it must be getting, but you can still read Google's cache of it.
posted by jill at 7:51 AM PST - 31 comments

Don't do browser sniffing. To properly view our site, you must be using a standards-compliant web browser. Your current browser is: (...nothing...) Over 97% of our audience now uses a standards-compliant web browser, however you appear not to be using one. We want to help you fix this situation and improve your experience on reuters.co.uk and the rest of the internet. I'm using Mozilla 1.5 but my user agent string is set to report Netscape 4.75 running on Windows 95.
posted by jfuller at 7:35 AM PST - 45 comments

The U. S. Secret Service is going to extraordinary lengths to ensure the safety of George W. Bush's visit to London - including some not insignificant structural changes to the Palace (which have not as of yet been approved). The article claims that "There will be more armed men on the streets of London this week than at any time since the end of the Second World War." British security officials further describe operations as has having been "hijacked by the US secret service."

Everyone knows there's a possibility of violence against the president, especially in light of recent events. A measure of security is thus justified. However, are economic concerns being considered? Now, I have the utmost respect for the president's life - as much as I do for just about anybody. I hate the callousness of associating any sort of price on human life. But when security measures require 5,000 police officers and £4,000,000 (that's merely the cost footed by UK taxpayers, mind you), have we not yet reached the point where that money would have been better spent? -especially when the U. S. executive branch has a very robust official policy of succession in place. It's not like the government will suddenly evaporate if the president were to be killed.
posted by SilentSalamander at 8:16 PM PST - 111 comments

The Mob Inside Your Computer! Better bust out some SpyBot!
posted by shepd at 5:45 PM PST - 9 comments

Metababy Returns - "Metababy is an experiment in collaboration, a Web site created by its visitors. You're welcome to post anything you want on Metababy, and anybody else is free to change it. "
Content subject to change at any moment, so NSFW.
posted by 2sheets at 5:01 PM PST - 56 comments

"We have a society that is moving very rapidly to the super-, super-, super-consumptive," says architect Paolo Soleri. "And I'm proposing that might not be the final answer. So I'm saying, why don't we try a leaner alternative?" (via PBS; more inside.)
posted by .kobayashi. at 3:06 PM PST - 21 comments

The huge vending machine in DC's Adams-Morgan neighborhood is, alas, no more.
posted by Vidiot at 2:12 PM PST - 14 comments

Ladies Against Women. I haven't heard much about these ladies lately, but I'm sure they're pleased as punch that the boys are gradually advancing their agenda. [LAW link via Crooked Timber.]
posted by homunculus at 1:44 PM PST - 4 comments

Oneirogmophobia ...and you though you had problems.
posted by boost ventilator at 1:40 PM PST - 25 comments

Who gives, who gets... and surprise, Google is on top. I always figured that the search engines had a symbiotic relationship, but playing with this Search Engine Decoder to actually see it is far more entertaining. And, I'd never heard of Overture, but it seems like all the big boys pay them for content. The Decoder is hosted by Search This, which "[provides] search engine optimization and web marketing strategies for the everyday web designer." I guess that's a few of us...
posted by pineapple at 1:03 PM PST - 11 comments

Whatever you do, don't touch anything, especially the walls! (again) [note: flash]
posted by crunchland at 11:37 AM PST - 13 comments

One hundred established graphic and fine artists were approached to create the definitive album cover of their favorite recording artist. Each chose an iconic musical subject from the 1940s to the present and from the genres of rock, blues, jazz, country and soul music. The result is an original and highly creative collection of contemporary art. The Greatest Album Covers That Never Were.
posted by riffola at 11:23 AM PST - 23 comments

Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture A major UK archive of all things cinema-related, ranging from magic lanterns and transparencies to games and cigarette cards. Registered users can build and display their own exhibitions from the website's images.
posted by thomas j wise at 9:39 AM PST - 1 comment

MetaFilter as a ransom note. Crazified by crazy sites. [via Adactio]
posted by mathowie at 9:15 AM PST - 10 comments

Terrific Frank Rich piece (NYT link) on Angels, Reagan, and AIDS in America.
posted by adrober at 9:14 AM PST - 35 comments

Anthony Argyriou uncovers what seems to be a serious problem either with California voting machines or the vote tallying system: The Secretary of State's summary of votes on the Davis recall shows three counties--Alameda, Kern, and Plumas--that apparently had zero voters who didn't vote on the recall. Not one. All three counties used Diebold machines. Other counties ranged from 0.5% to 10.3% of voters not voting on the recall. More from Rick Hasen, a top election law scholar. [Via Volokh.]
posted by monju_bosatsu at 8:08 AM PST - 41 comments

The Fantastic in Art & Fiction - Cornell University's bank of nearly 300 images of the fantastic, the grotesque, the macabre, the marvelous and more "from works spanning a period from medieval manuscripts and printed incunabulae, to the early twentieth century."
posted by madamjujujive at 7:16 AM PST - 6 comments

Do you wanna see some birds? How about some of these?
posted by mokey at 7:01 AM PST - 6 comments

newspeak from disney: we at the Walt Disney Internet Group are dedicated to protecting your privacy and handling any personal information we obtain from you with care and respect. How is your personally identifiable information used and shared? The Walt Disney Family of Companies may use your personally identifiable information in many ways, including sending you promotional materials, and sharing your information with third parties so that these third parties can send you promotional materials. [...]As another example of Operational Uses, we may share your personal information with the Walt Disney World © Resort telephone reservations center [...] The Walt Disney Family of Companies may share your personal information with companies that offer products and/or services under brand names of The Walt Disney Family of Companies. [...] use of personal information shared with them under this Privacy Policy is subject to the same opt-out rights (and limitations upon those rights)
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 6:29 AM PST - 9 comments

Two black hawk helicopters down. 18 US soldiers killed.
No, not today.
October 3rd, 1993.
Mogadishu, Somalia.
posted by insomnia_lj at 10:53 PM PST - 21 comments

His name is Jean-Michel Cousteau! [dramatic chords] His father's name was Jack something, and like his father, Jean-Michel believes by working on things like Finding Nemo he, "can reach a far larger audience through entertainment in popular media than through innumerable press conferences, summits and reports. That is not to say that prestigious conferences and notable studies are irrelevant. They are critically necessary to validate the condition of the world’s oceans and bring opinion leaders together to share ideas and shape the collective political will." With this new sea-lebrity (haha! get it?), he hopes to help young people change the world. ...Well I just thought that was like totally rad and wanted to share with the virtual blue.
posted by ZachsMind at 10:53 PM PST - 7 comments

Iraq and Al-Queda Linked? The WeeklyStandard claims to have received a letter sent from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy to the chairmen of the Senate Intelligence Committee, outlining the connections between Iraq and Bin Laden. Shortly thereafter, the DOD criticizes the WeeklyStandard for mischaracterizing the memo. Story still developing...
posted by nads at 8:45 PM PST - 15 comments

I've been meaning to post this for the longest time.
posted by staggernation at 7:49 PM PST - 23 comments

Ascii Farts.
posted by holloway at 6:52 PM PST - 5 comments

Algorithmic Obscenity [maybe nsfw?] Who knew math could be this much fun? [via BoingBoing]
posted by srboisvert at 6:15 PM PST - 5 comments

Photos by Matt Stuart - the weird and wonderful around London.
posted by Orange Goblin at 5:24 PM PST - 9 comments

Republican Dolls, Dons, Dens And Dubyas: Come back Barbie and Ken - all is forgiven! (Via Bifurcated Rivets.)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:23 PM PST - 8 comments

Elves in Iceland. Many modern Icelanders either believe in or won't rule out the existence of supernatural beings like the álfar, or elves. In the town of Hafnarfjordur, they are respected citizens. If you want to learn more, consider attending the Álfaskólinn, the Icelandic Elf School. (Iceland also has trolls, but then don't we all.)
posted by homunculus at 1:36 PM PST - 19 comments

"DEAR MR PRESIDENT, WE WE THINK YOUR WAR IS STUPID, AND WE SAY NO WAY!" Thus the Radical Cheerleaders arrive on the protest scene, taking the outfits and chants usually found on the football field to protests and demonstrations all over the world. Some chants here, and more coverage here. hey, it beats giant puppets!
posted by amberglow at 11:37 AM PST - 51 comments

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World The Russell Crowe film adaptation of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels, opens this weekend (the film was previously part of this discussion). The critics love it (though some find it boring). Patrick O'Brian fans are legion, and often passionate. (Good fans sites include Dr. Maturin's Natural History and The Gunroom, The Patrick O'Brian Compendium, and the page of Patrick O'Brian Web Resources.) The upcoming Cold Mountain looks to be another promising film adaptation of quality historical fiction. What other historical novels have made a smooth transition to film? Which novels would you like to see make the transition? (Flashman?)
posted by jdroth at 11:00 AM PST - 43 comments

Time Tales : a collection of abandoned photographs, found at fleamarkets, thriftshops, or just lying on the street
posted by anastasiav at 10:41 AM PST - 7 comments

"Pending its review, the EPA says it is not now advising consumers to stop using Teflon products. The results of the agency's review of the safety of C-8 and of Teflon-related products that may release it are expected in coming months" Teflon may cause birth defects and illness. D'oh!
posted by mathowie at 10:13 AM PST - 35 comments

Nirvana to blame for industry's focus on image?
posted by boost ventilator at 9:49 AM PST - 33 comments

DNA profiling may be a complex issue, but whatever your take, go ahead and try your hand at genetic sleuthing with this spiffy flash interactive.
posted by moonbird at 8:10 AM PST - 2 comments

Garden Sheds. Why is it when men reach a certain age they get a hankering after a garden shed, somewhere they can escape to, to potter or mend things or just smoke and read? Well I'm glad it's not just me. And is this a particularly British thing?
posted by rolo at 7:22 AM PST - 20 comments

While you were sleeping: Alaska became part of Canada, and Vancouver Island sunk into the ocean. This according to the lobby floor of the CBC building. It may be time for those guys - and all of us - to reexamine our geographic literacy.
posted by PrinceValium at 7:19 AM PST - 19 comments

As Texas Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos said of his Republican colleagues: "They don't want to govern. They want to rule." An apt quote regarding the sea change in American politics found in an enlightening article about the current state of pork barrel politics. I'm going to pinpoint that change as being the 1994 election when the Republicans gained control of Congress. Ever since then, it seems like the welfare of the American people wasn't only low on the politician's priority list, but it plain dropped off...and the PORK found in this batch of legislation has done nothing to disabuse me of that notion.

As an aside, I think I've found my new favorite texan (HA, like there's many), Molly Ivins. little bit of FARKfilter for ya, sorry.
posted by taumeson at 6:34 AM PST - 15 comments

solar system [note: requires anark plugin]
posted by crunchland at 6:16 AM PST - 14 comments

Chinese cricket culture encompasses a 2000 year history of both singing insects and fighting crickets. The tradition continues today, with some crickets selling at market for $1200. A visitor to Shanghai explains the allure of crickets as pets while others see their value as fearsome fighters. Cricket boxes and cages make interesting collectibles.
posted by madamjujujive at 4:46 AM PST - 16 comments

Why use an ax when you can use a bulldozer? Der Spiegel article, summarizing what we have learned about the inception and planning of the 9/11 attack from interrogating captured planners.
posted by crunchburger at 7:00 PM PST - 14 comments

AFGHAN DRAFT CONSTITUTION WORRIES CIVIL-SOCIETY ADVOCATES Ah, the women. Again. I was unable to come up with some flash item to go with martinis so instead posted this. "The draft constitution of Afghanistan seeks stability in an ethnically diverse country whose infrastructure barely survived 22 years of constant war. It outlines a central government with a strong president and embraces principles of independent media and civil law. However, gaps in the draft worry advocates for women and for religious freedom. " And then there is the huge new opium crop.
posted by Postroad at 4:34 PM PST - 8 comments

Wal-Mart as Leviathan. "The giant retailer's low prices often come with a high cost. Wal-Mart's relentless pressure can crush the companies it does business with and force them to send jobs overseas. Are we shopping our way straight to the unemployment line?"
posted by the fire you left me at 3:24 PM PST - 31 comments

Buddhists go badass. "Rathana, an official with a powerful Buddhist group, dismisses Sri Lanka's peace process and urges renewed military action against Tamil Tiger separatists." Let me anticipate mefi's notorious left bunch of bananas and attribute it to this.
posted by jfuller at 2:20 PM PST - 27 comments

The Flawed Dog-O-Matic, a Friday Flash piffle that 'morphs' dog breeds, shamelessly promoting Berkeley "Bloom County" Breathed's new book and Humane Society pet adoption (in that order). Everybody go "Aw-w-w-w-w."
posted by wendell at 1:42 PM PST - 3 comments

Too good to be true? United Internet is launching its public hosting service with a special promotion: a full 500 meg hosting account free for three years. Includes email hosting, FTP and shell access, 5 gigs of transfers, Perl, Python, PHP and MySQL... plus $25 worth of Google AdWords. Sounds fishy to me, but they never asked for my credit card when I signed up.
posted by johnnydark at 12:58 PM PST - 58 comments

"George Bush killed my son." With these words, peace activist Rosemary Slavenas buried her son, Brian, a National Guardsman and "great, big kid" killed in the downing of a Chinook helicopter in Iraq. A tragic story of an Illinois family split in two by the death of their son, who received two funerals -- one military, with honors, and the other, with strong words for the current administration.
posted by digaman at 11:25 AM PST - 96 comments

The Foreign Groceries Museum. (via coudal)
posted by Ufez Jones at 11:24 AM PST - 10 comments

Lyric Quiz - Test your knowledge of memorable lines from various hits of the 80's. Watch your spelling. warning: It's a tad cheesy, but fun.
posted by Witty at 10:40 AM PST - 35 comments

These guys have something for sale here If we all went in on it together, what could we do with it? (Aside from arguing over it, of course.)
posted by trondant at 10:24 AM PST - 8 comments

A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Night
A bedtime story for your Friday fun. Very well done.
Apologies to Judith Viorst, author of “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day”
posted by nofundy at 10:02 AM PST - 8 comments

International Jewish Conspiracy Now you can get all the latest Conspiracy News without resorting to hard-to-remember secret handshakes, inconvenient drop boxes, or messy exotic fruits! ¨ Occupy world government! ¨ Dilute the Aryan bloodline! ¨ Read all the latest Protocols! ¨ Get the hottest tips for a successful Cabal!
posted by turbanhead at 9:56 AM PST - 14 comments

Monkey Nut Eating Means Old Nutshells In Carpet, aka mnemonics! They come in many forms, helping you remember everything from taxonomic classifications ("King Phillip Came Over For Good Sex") to the order of the planets ("My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets") to musical staves to the first 31 decimal places of pi to how to spell tricky words such as "rhythm" or "principal." They're more a way of life for med students, birdwatchers, and boaters. Which mnemonics have helped you survive?
posted by kmel at 9:15 AM PST - 54 comments

The elegant universe. A 3 hour PBS NOVA documentary on string theory [in 24 ~5-10 minute chunks of real player or quick time video]. Welcome to the 11th dimension.
posted by srboisvert at 8:40 AM PST - 18 comments

The fascinating story of how a lone security guard in Afghanistan managed to ensure the safety of the Bactrian hoard.
posted by stbalbach at 8:15 AM PST - 3 comments

New Scientist reports that a virus has been built up from mail order components. Other reports on this are in USA Today and Nature. This isn't time life has been created in the lab, as previously linked.
What's interesting is that this study was funded by the Department of Energy to produce a completely man made lifeform that can create hydrogen or consume greenhouse gasses. The present virus is an artificially created copy of a naturally occurring virus.
posted by substrate at 8:14 AM PST - 7 comments

Is David Lynch Really The Best Director In The World? The Guardian, along with many other Europeans, seems to think so, in an impressive but very subjective (not to say that dreaded word quirky) list of the best 40 film directors. (More inside.)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:00 AM PST - 91 comments

Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) doctors the numbers.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 7:05 AM PST - 28 comments

If You See George W. Bush, Email or Text The Time and Location To... Chasing Bush.

"A special online diary, designed to track George W. Bush for the duration of his visit to the UK.... If he wants to make a state visit that isn't marred by protest, he should do it on another island. He's not welcome on this one; and we're determined to let the world see that."
posted by grabbingsand at 5:30 AM PST - 50 comments

Stories of Krishna: The Adventures of a Hindu God is a lovely interactive Flash presentation from the Seattle Art Museum: Click an image and hear the accompanying tale (or read the transcript), then click "close the story" and mouse over the image icons to explore the characters and view details. After you are finished you can test what you've learned with a drag and drop card game. No broadband? View images of Krishna here and here, and read some background.
posted by taz at 4:38 AM PST - 6 comments

Let them sing it for you. Hours of Friday fun.
posted by MintSauce at 2:40 AM PST - 20 comments

Cnet has acquired "certain assets" of Mp3.com (read story here).

Please be advised that on Tuesday, December 2, 2003 at 12:00 PM PST the MP3.com website will no longer be accessible in its current form. Also, all content will be deleted from our servers and all previously submitted tapes, CD-ROMs and other media in our possession will be destroyed. We recommend that you make alternative content hosting arrangements as soon as practicable.
posted by Quartermass at 11:17 PM PST - 28 comments

Matrix in ASCII. Nice.
posted by oissubke at 11:14 PM PST - 16 comments

Five champions of nonviolence. A look at five people who have fought for political and social justice using the principles of Mahatma Gandhi.
posted by homunculus at 8:15 PM PST - 30 comments

We've had lively discussion of unusual baby names here before, but this BBC report about a growing American trend is certainly a curious and rather disturbing angle.
posted by moonbird at 6:50 PM PST - 111 comments

Balloon basket for sale. Low mileage. Only used by possibly the smartest man on the planet. [via linkdump]
posted by mr_crash_davis at 6:31 PM PST - 17 comments

106 Cures For The Hiccups
posted by anastasiav at 4:53 PM PST - 37 comments

Just in time for xmas, it's Critters U Love: stuffed animals with robust genitalia. About as apealing as erotic cakes (funny, tho).
posted by mathowie at 4:29 PM PST - 30 comments

The Doctor's back ... again .... this time he's an animated Richard E Grant (looking oddly like a vampire). Strange goings on in the east end of London and whatnot. Just the right amount of mystery and unanswered questions. Also an interesting use of flash animation.
posted by feelinglistless at 3:11 PM PST - 12 comments

"Right away you can tell: it's white people." Music reviews by 5th graders and kindergartners. via Slatch.
posted by btwillig at 3:11 PM PST - 22 comments

Extending your life, how to age well. The Seattle Times is running a week long series of articles on how to extend your life. One of the most interesting ideas is calorie restrictive diets. The basic idea is that you consume approximately 30% less calories than you need, and you will live a 30% longer lifespan. The Calorie Restriction Society website can answer any questions you have. Of course any plan that has problems like "Getting used to looking gaunt" and "How do I stop waking up from hunger" seems a little iffy to me.
posted by patrickje at 12:38 PM PST - 32 comments

It's all about the Fun Food. Today's posts seem so damn serious, I want a Deluxe Apple Hacker as well as a Humidified Pretzel Merchandiser Super King Ultimate Funnel Cake Fryer is going on my porch. Party starts at midnight.
posted by jeremias at 12:24 PM PST - 7 comments

Jeb Bush, comedian. "It looks like the people of San Francisco are an endangered species, which may not be a bad thing. That's probably good news for the country."
posted by the fire you left me at 12:00 PM PST - 50 comments

Masterpieces of 20th-Century Chinese Painting, and more at Civilization.
posted by hama7 at 11:41 AM PST - 6 comments

With the 50th anniversary of the exposure of Piltdown Man as a hoax coming next week, The Guardian brings you the top ten science hoaxes.
posted by Ufez Jones at 10:39 AM PST - 30 comments

Want to know what Rummy said at the last press conference?
Well, here you go.
posted by me3dia at 9:43 AM PST - 10 comments

The definitive Ray Davies interview by Candy Darling, Tinkerbelle and Glenn O'Brien
Tinkerbelle: You've probably made a lot of money. Do you ever get carried away with the material side?
Ray: I'm not wealthy. I never made that much. You probably don't want to talk to me now.
Candy: People really are more interesting when they're rich sometimes. You just can't help but like them better. Do you feel that way?
posted by y2karl at 7:10 AM PST - 26 comments

Through the lens of a soldier. Pictures taken by CPL Prieve of the 101st Airborne in Mosul, Iraq
posted by srboisvert at 6:46 AM PST - 21 comments

Are You Just A Little Nerdito, A Regular Nerd Or Full-Blown-Ambulance-Case Nerd Well, take the test and find out! (Via LinkFilter. Oh and perhaps someone will kindly take the time to explain to us strangers the nuances that distinguish nerds from wonks, pointy-heads, wusses and geeks?)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 6:12 AM PST - 38 comments

A person who cannot be named for legal reasons has secretly denied participating in an alleged act that cannot be described for legal reasons. But you know who we mean.
Do you?
posted by magullo at 2:13 AM PST - 67 comments

"Wow! I have a lot of shows to watch... Will I ever catch up?” Reuters reports on TiVo addiction, and it's tonight's #1 story on Keith Olbermann's Countdown, a news show with less viewers than TiVo has owners. When they put up a transcript, it'll be in here. Still, Keith asked one very good question: "Is it just part of the inevitable pattern of technology that everything starts as a luxury, becomes a necessity and finally becomes something for which we need therapy?" (I was able to do my own transcription because... I got it on my TiVo!)
posted by wendell at 7:41 PM PST - 34 comments

you don't have an excuse not to floss anymore
posted by prescribed life at 5:21 PM PST - 51 comments

Andy Griffith Beats Jessica Lynch Interview for Viewers
Well sure, it was for the Andy Griffith Reunion Show. What was ABC thinking putting Diane Sawyer and Jessica "Selective Amnesia" Lynch up against Andy, Opie and Aunt Bea?
posted by fenriq at 3:10 PM PST - 23 comments

Every single UK chart position from 1952 to 2003. EveryHit.com is a searchable database of every single artist that's charted in the UK Top 40 chart, EVER. It's fully searchable by date, artist, chart position - everything. Want to find out how many times your favourite band charted, and when, and for how long? It's all here. There's also more statistics and all sorts of trivia and records than you could shake a stick at! Win your next pub quiz armed with this information!
posted by metaxa at 3:00 PM PST - 9 comments

Christopher Lee has been cut out of 'Return Of The King'. "Of course I am very shocked, that's all I can say....If you want to know why you would have to ask the company New Line or director Peter Jackson and his associates because I still don't really know why.".

Does anyone know any more about this sayonara to Saruman? 'Asked if he would attend the première, he said: "No, what's the point? What's the point of going? None at all."' I'm kind of shocked. But not quite as much as he is from the sounds of it.
posted by boneybaloney at 2:21 PM PST - 79 comments

Bad Toon Rising - Think you remember what Mickey Mouse looks like? Daffy Duck? Bart Simpson? Ok - grab a scrap of paper and draw that character. Right now. (No peeking!!) Some other people already have, and these are the results.....
posted by anastasiav at 11:41 AM PST - 21 comments

"We were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why." In The Fog of War, a revelatory new documentary about his life and times, a disquieted Robert McNamara implores us to understand why he did the things he did as an Air Force lieutenant colonel who helped plan the firebombing of Japanese cities in World War II, and, later, as a secretary of defense and pivotal decision-maker during Vietnam, which some Americans came to call "McNamara's War." One of the movie's most powerful passages covers McNamara's little-known service in World War II, when he was attached to Gen. Curtis LeMay's 21st Bomber Command stationed on the Pacific island of Guam. LeMay's B-29s showered 67 Japanese cities with incendiary bombs in 1945, softening up the country for the two atomic blasts to come. McNamara was a senior planning officer. Story by "Killing Fields"' Sydney Schanberg in the American Prospect (more inside)
posted by matteo at 10:40 AM PST - 83 comments

Vanished America If you've ever wondered what to do with all of your old vacation photos and slides, wonder no more. A fellow named Charles Cushman bequeathed his collection of over 14,000 slides and photos taken over a period of three decades, from 1938 to 1969, to Indiana Univiersity. IU has decided to create an amazing digital archive of his photos as a history project. The photos are nothing special in themselves. He took countless pictures of things he and his wife saw as they took driving tours across the United States, mostly near their home in Chicago and in the West. They are no different than and no better than anybody else's amateur photos. But, as the director of the project points out, without realizing it, Cushman captured an America already beginning to disappear in the middle of the 20th century, and did so by documenting its disappearance unwittingly over a thirty-year period. I lightly perused the slide show of 120 images and the photos are indeed both banal and compelling all at the same time. A very nicely done site with a lot of rich material. (via The Cartoonist)
posted by briank at 10:19 AM PST - 45 comments

Love Shack!
posted by divrsional at 8:58 AM PST - 29 comments

Time mag lists this year's 'coolest' inventions, in their humble opinion. For archival fun check out their lists for 2001 and 2002.

Fish-skin bikinis?
posted by moonbird at 3:57 AM PST - 18 comments

"Bring 'Em On:" A Certain Four Horsemen Rein Up to Inquire of The Taunt -- or "The Health and Environmental Costs of War on Iraq (PDF)." An independent survey just released by the UK global health charity Medact, finds that "the war on Iraq and its aftermath exacted a heavy toll on combatants and civilians, who paid and continue to pay the price in death, injury and mental and physical ill health. Between 21,700 and 55,000 people died between March 20 and October 20, 2003." According to the BBC, the report says that the "conflict and its aftermath have put the most vulnerable in society - women, children and the elderly - at risk", and "there has been a reported increase in maternal mortality rates, acute malnutrition has almost doubled from 4% to 8% in the last year and there is an increase in water-borne diseases and vaccine-preventable diseases."
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 1:41 AM PST - 32 comments

The Kumeyaay Nation of southern California. 'This Web site is dedicated to the promotion and preservation of the Kumeyaay culture. Kumeyaay.com tells the story from the Kumeyaay perspective, and is the premiere source for Kumeyaay Indian information.' With an interesting history, language and culture section.
posted by plep at 12:52 AM PST - 6 comments

Radiohead are taking over the BBC this Christmas. For one week, from the 22nd to the 28th of December, the band will assume control of BBC digital staion 6Music, choosing music, selecting shows, co-presenting programmes and contributing website material. The station is streamed worldwide. Christmas this year may be a little less jolly. ;)
posted by Blue Stone at 10:55 PM PST - 33 comments

Mystery Solved. Somewhere in the Catskill Mountains, two nature filmmakers are busy shooting a documentary on rabbits in their natural habitat. In the morning dew they are about to meet something considerably bigger than a rabbit... [Flash and safe for work]
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 10:37 PM PST - 14 comments

"The creation of the Nuclear Power Plant at Sellafield (formerly known as Windscale) was a bonus for the local zoo, as large tracts of land were made available and cheap by people moving away or dying."
posted by mr_crash_davis at 8:33 PM PST - 15 comments

American rhetoric online "A database of 5,000+ full text, audio and video (streaming) versions of public speeches, sermons, legal proceedings, lectures, debates, interviews, other recorded media events..." all in one unbelievable ugly website. From Roosevelt to Malcom X to Ursula LeGuin to Bush as text or stream with Scesis Onomaton from Bill Murray(mp3). Here's for a starting point for the aesthetically picky. Excellent resource- ie 21minute Malcom X "Ballot or Bullet" (mp3) speech!- from a prof at a public university in Texas that that makes me reconsider lynx but excites me about the internet.
posted by superchris at 7:32 PM PST - 5 comments

Spammers strike back? Well then call this return of the Webmaster Jedi. As a blogger and domain owner, I am sick of waking up to fifty new comments, all of which are spam for something of dubious legality. The fine folks at Kalsey are angry too. And they declared war. Lots of people stood up and took notice. What can you do to help stop this infestation? Blacklists and Bayesian filtering come to mind... (Via Smart Mobs)
posted by swerdloff at 7:00 PM PST - 22 comments

Science Times: 25th Anniversary The first issue of Science Times[weekly section of N.Y. Times] appeared 25 years ago, on Nov. 14, 1978. Its guiding principle ever since has been that science is not a collection of answers, but a way of asking questions, an enterprise driven by curiosity. To celebrate the anniversary, we pose 25 of the most provocative questions facing science. As always, answers are provisional. [free reg req'd]
posted by Postroad at 5:09 PM PST - 2 comments

Robert Durst Admits to Killing but is found innocent because the jurors didn't think the prosecution proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Durst intentionally murdered, cut his ex-friend up and then threw the body parts in a lake.
I'm sure the fact that he's got like $9 billion had absolutely nothing to do with it.
But since he's got a history of killing, I suppose they'll just wait for him to "accidentally" kill someone else and then try to dispose of the body without getting caught.
But isn't an accidental killing still prosecutable? Isn't the fact that he admitted to chopping the body up and throwing it in a lake prosecutable?
Are you wondering what ever did happen to his wife too?
posted by fenriq at 2:44 PM PST - 21 comments

Art Carney ...dead @ 85. My favorite Ed Norton quote: "One hand washes the other... And both hands wash the face."
posted by thrakintosh at 2:33 PM PST - 16 comments

Antique Loos from the Thomas Crapper Company.
posted by angry modem at 12:49 PM PST - 5 comments

catapult [note: shockwave]
posted by crunchland at 11:37 AM PST - 18 comments

Celebrity Death Match: Bush v Soros
posted by H. Roark at 11:28 AM PST - 44 comments

More Magnificent Obsessions - 14to42.net - "This site intends to survey all of the signs in New York City from 14th Street to 42nd Street." Great photos of Ghost Signs, signs painted on buildings, signs attached to buildings, window signs, modern signs, graffiti signs, and even some pretty creepy signs, along with some surprisingly complete histories of the businesses the signs were made to advertise.
posted by anastasiav at 11:19 AM PST - 14 comments

A nice sit down and a cup of tea are among many events (pdf) planned for GWB's impending visit to the UK. Police are estimating 100,000 plus demonstrators for his visit, and London's Mayor says of American requests for an exclusion zone to protect him, 'I don't think that's got a chance at all'. How does this level of grass-roots dissent compare to his reception when out and about in the US?
posted by punilux at 11:10 AM PST - 45 comments

"Mac or PC" question planted at the Rock the Vote debate. After much ridicule and criticism over her question, Brown University student Alexandra Trustman has written an Op-Ed to the campus Daily Herald explaining that CNN planted the question with her so they could "modulate the event" in order to keep the debate "light-hearted" making it easier for "the candidates to relate to a younger audience." Trustman, feeling that the question CNN gave her was not relevant, wrote a different, and more relevant she thought, question on "how, if elected, the candidates would use technology in their administrations." The executive producer told her just to read the card they had given her.


Howard Kurtz reports today that CNN regrets getting caught the producer's actions.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 10:48 AM PST - 45 comments

yasse is a nice little bi-monthly arty web magazine with some beautiful photography and intersting articles. enjoy.
posted by zeoslap at 9:39 AM PST - 8 comments

Iraqi official shot dead over parking violation. U.S. military officials said Tuesday that U.S. soldiers shot to death the chairman of Sadr City's governing council during a heated argument this week.... Officials said the quarrel got under way Monday when the chairman, Mohannad Ghazi al Kaabi, tried to park his car near the District Advisory Council building in an area closed to traffic.

Do you suppose this might have a negative impact on public opinion in Iraq?
posted by ilsa at 9:26 AM PST - 56 comments

Judgment Day: Roy Moore faces the music for defying federal law. Misconduct aside, will Roy Moore become a martyr? I think he should go, but is it wise? I believe it is; I mean someone needs to reign the "runaway" judiciary the Republicans are always talking about. (Who knew that their own straw-man would bite them it the ass?)
posted by Bag Man at 8:26 AM PST - 23 comments

Jenna's a bargain at $200 and a pint of peppermint schnapps The Taiwan press reports accusations that Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian allegedly paid $1,000,000 for a meeting with the President's brother Neil Bush. (via TPM)
posted by jpoulos at 8:04 AM PST - 17 comments

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918 may have brought an end to the Great War, but the ending was merely the beginning of the aftermath.

The aftermath years were a time of paradox, where the men who returned from the horrors of the trenches wanted to forget, and where those who had stayed behind, and had lost husbands and brothers, and sons and fathers were equally determined never to forget. It was a time where remembrance of the dead became a way of life, and where it was somehow assumed that all the best, and the finest young men of a generation had died. The other side of that assumption was that those who had survived were somehow less than those who had died. . . The exploration of that time, that world, is the theme of these pages.

posted by ewagoner at 8:00 AM PST - 11 comments

It sucks to be wounded.
posted by kozad at 7:18 AM PST - 26 comments

When Web Designers Reproduce We've all seen web pages announcing new arrivals, and I have thrown up my own minimalist attempts using bare bones html. But I found this link a fascinating example of what happens when one applies a particular web aesthetic to an important life event. A new genre is born!
Is your infant w3c compliant? (no Flash required)
posted by mecran01 at 6:58 AM PST - 57 comments

Are You, Deep Down, Secretly, Between-You-And-Me, Proud Of Your Country? Even if you're not Canadian? Because a lot of people in the world, no matter how badly run their country might be, seem to be just that. Isn't it weird, though - and, well, stupid - to be proud of something that just happened to happen to us and that we've done nothing to deserve, whether for good or for bad? A more telling question that occurs is: what nationality would you choose to be, if you couldn't be the one you are? Here's the menu.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 6:54 AM PST - 105 comments

Yuebing is the new Oolong.
posted by srboisvert at 6:07 AM PST - 13 comments

Smooth. One for Crunch & his fans.(flash of course).via FiGoo.
posted by johnny7 at 5:41 AM PST - 5 comments

Remembrance Day. Some links to help us remember.
posted by pooligan at 5:32 AM PST - 25 comments

Thirty minutes of sleep, every four hours. Master this and you've conquered the art of polyphasic, or "Uberman," sleep. [more inside]
posted by PrinceValium at 5:18 AM PST - 37 comments

In Lebanon, 144000 e-votes casted by 19000 registered voters. No need to blame Middle East crisis, try Lebanon , Boone County, Indiana. Diebold is no longer alone.
posted by elpapacito at 4:19 AM PST - 15 comments

Ecological art takes many forms, fascinating, beautiful, provocative, ephemeral, live, active, and even bloggy. See greenmuseum.org's featured artists and visit the Getty's Ecological Art Gallery (see also Art and the Earth, six photo essays).
posted by taz at 3:45 AM PST - 4 comments

Bush's Speech on the Spreading of Democracy This is a massive and difficult undertaking -- it is worth our effort, it is worth our sacrifice, because we know the stakes. The failure of Iraqi democracy would embolden terrorists around the world, increase dangers to the American people, and extinguish the hopes of millions in the region. Iraqi democracy will succeed -- and that success will send forth the news, from Damascus to Teheran -- that freedom can be the future of every nation. (Applause.) The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution.

Since this speech was posted earlier, I just thought it would be good if we are exposed to ideas from both sides.
posted by VeGiTo at 9:22 PM PST - 84 comments

701 78s. A huge set of "old-time" music recordings from 1924-1946, made available in RealAudio format by honkingduck.com. Not high sound quality, but an invaluable collection for anyone with any interest in early recorded bluegrass, folk, country, blues, etc.
posted by staggernation at 7:38 PM PST - 23 comments

An attempt by developing countries to put management of the Internet under United Nations auspices is likely to be shelved at next month's world information summit in Geneva - but the issue is now firmly on the international agenda.
posted by Mick at 7:29 PM PST - 14 comments

Breasts on men — most people's only knowledge of this stems from Fight Club (his name was Robert Paulson), but Gynecomastia is a very real medical condition, often a side effect of Klienfelter Syndrome. This person's experiences with their gender identity (raised primarily as a girl, then switching to being publicly masculine when older) while growing up with Gynecomastia in a small town fascinated me. (First FPP!)
posted by djwudi at 7:21 PM PST - 17 comments

"Hi Jerks! Bender here. I just got back from the drinkin'est town in the known Universe: Las Vegas, Nevada- Earth. Check out these photos and you will see what I mean!" from Bender's Las Vegas Scrapbook. (Tons of pictures, big download alert) [via waxpancake]
posted by riffola at 7:05 PM PST - 18 comments

Face blind: Imagine living in a world in which you are surrounded by blank faces. You see people all around you, but you can't recognize them by their faces, only by context, clothing, and hair. You don't recognize your neighbors when you see them in the grocery store, and you couldn't pick your co-workers' faces out of a line-up. You have to learn special coping methods to get through your daily social activities. This is what it is like to have prosopagnosia, or face blindness.
posted by litlnemo at 6:17 PM PST - 7 comments

Why We Should Fear The Matrix. No, not the movie, the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange program. It's a new version of the Total Information Awareness program for participating states which is run by a private corporation, Seisint Inc. Needless to say, privacy advocates are concerned.
posted by homunculus at 5:44 PM PST - 12 comments

Fundrace. Innovative rankings and maps about presidential candidates. The maps are especially cool.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 5:20 PM PST - 14 comments

30,000 bombs were dropped on Iraq during the war. This is the story of just one. (RealVideo, 1h14m) While filming at a cross-roads in northern Iraq on April 6, a US Navy jet launched a bomb into a crowd of US and Kurdish soldiers who a BBC team were accompanying. In the seconds that followed, BBC cameraman Fred Scott began to film the disaster as it unfolded, footage which was heavily censored when shown on US news.
posted by Mwongozi at 4:40 PM PST - 13 comments

IN AFGHAN PROVINCE, POPPY PLANTING HAS STRONG APPEAL It isa good to be freed from the constraits of the Taliban and to engage in capitalism at the global level. Chhers for the family farmers.
posted by Postroad at 3:59 PM PST - 14 comments

Free online music lessons from the Berklee College of Music, licensed under the Creative Commons and suitable for file sharing networks. Via Larry Lessig's weblog.
posted by turbodog at 3:20 PM PST - 6 comments

D'you know about the Georgia and Carolinas' sea island culture of the Gullah? Mostly known for their crafts which can fetch a pretty penny, the Gullah way of life (which may be endangered) is an interesting synthesis of American and African culture. They speak a unique dialect of English, which you can hear with Aunt Pearlie-Sue's folktales. Of course, there's the food... check out the recipies for Frogmore Stew and other classic island cuisine.
posted by moonbird at 2:34 PM PST - 10 comments

This guy has hit the nail on the head. I've been marveling at how it was possible to completely screw up the sequels to what I consider the greatest action movie of all time. Matt Feeney has precisely and eloquently pinpointed everything wrong with the Matrix sequels.
posted by aznblader at 2:05 PM PST - 48 comments

“Prescott Bush, George W's grandfather, and a band of Bonesmen, robbed the grave of Geronimo." Grandpa Prescott brought the skull of the Apache leader back to Yale in 1919, where they were kept in a glass case in the Skull and Bones House. Today the Mescalero Apaches are not amused. Meanwhile, the Skull and Bones initiation ceremonies are finally revealed! Eating clubs are nothing compared to this...
posted by zaelic at 1:18 PM PST - 15 comments

Jason Salavon is an artist who creates images (and video) by averaging data to create seemingly complex amalgamations. From the mundane to the more exotic (and nsfw) his work shows the regularity inherent in almost all media.
posted by PenDevil at 1:12 PM PST - 9 comments

Think the RIAA is doing something new by threatening and suing? Think again... it's all part of a 4-step process.
posted by clevershark at 1:05 PM PST - 13 comments

Pax TV. Salam Pax is diversifying; moving into TV. His first report will be shown on the BBC's Newsnight programme. Newsnight broadcasts at 10:30pm GMT, and can be watched here by clicking on the "latest programme" link during or after the show.
posted by Blue Stone at 12:33 PM PST - 6 comments

The New DJ Revolution? "You are a DJ but you don't have any bulky gear. You don't need to drive to a gig, the subway/underground will do just fine. You don't need an assistant to carry milk crates of heavy vinyl. Everything you need is in your pockets and the size of a cigarette pack. You only have 2 iPods, but they together hold enough music to play for several months straight, 24-7, without a single repeat. You are a mp3j." [thank you, iPodLounge.]
posted by grabbingsand at 12:00 PM PST - 27 comments

Dirty Bombs
Federal investigators have documented 1,300 cases of lost, stolen or abandoned radioactive material inside the United States over the past five years and have concluded there is a significant risk that terrorists could cobble enough together for a dirty bomb. (warning - Salon link)
posted by Irontom at 11:22 AM PST - 13 comments

This page is about past, present and future of the german autobahn system. Discover the changing history, take a look at abandoned roads or get informed about new transportation plans. Have fun! [via Travelers Diagram]
posted by soundofsuburbia at 11:04 AM PST - 7 comments

But There's No Oil You Say? The humanitarian situation in northern Uganda is worse than in Iraq, or anywhere else in the world, a senior United Nations official has said. It is a moral outrage" that the world is doing so little for the victims of the war, especially children, says UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, Jan Egeland. The rebels routinely abduct children to serve as sex slaves and fighters. Thousands of children leave their houses in northern Uganda to sleep rough in the major towns, where they feel more safe from the threat of abduction by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). The United Nations [should] play a great role in scaling down the violence The LRA, under shadowy leader Joseph Kony, says it wants to rule Uganda according to the Biblical Ten Commandments. They often mutilate their victims, by cutting off their lips, noses or ears.
posted by turbanhead at 10:56 AM PST - 15 comments

Roadies. They've got their own lingo, rules, and even recipes. Obviously, they've also got their own website, which has much more to be explored.
posted by Ufez Jones at 10:51 AM PST - 4 comments

Paperplane.org : Ken Blackburn holds the World Record for time aloft for a paper airplane. Visit his site to read how he did it, the history of paper airplanes, read some competitive airplane flying rules, and learn to fold some new airplane designs of your own.
posted by anastasiav at 10:09 AM PST - 6 comments

"He's not in this for the paycheck. He really takes the 'defender-of-humanity' thing seriously." Gary Kasparov faces another, still-tougher computer opponent, but this time in VR! "For the first time the man will meet the machine on its own turf, the virtual world," is the spin on this latest twist on the Kasparov-vs-Computer tradition. You can watch the match online starting tomorrow, but note that ESPN (!) will cover the entire match - "nearly 18 thrilling hours of live chess," Wired notes wryly.
posted by soyjoy at 10:02 AM PST - 29 comments

marbles [note: Java] ... and there are other addictive games in java from the same site, too.
posted by crunchland at 8:39 AM PST - 5 comments

Did you think about buying tickets to the one day showing of all three LOTR movies? It would have been a good investment.
posted by alms at 8:11 AM PST - 15 comments

Daredevil and Captain America Hang Out... at the Quickstop.
(Warning: Flash --and geekfare!-- follow.)
posted by Shane at 7:41 AM PST - 7 comments

"Media Carta is the human-rights battle of our information age. It is about us, the people, singing the songs and telling the stories and generating culture from the bottom up, instead of having it spoon-fed from the top down."

Kalle Lasn and the gang at Adbusters are at it again.
posted by Quartermass at 7:22 AM PST - 9 comments

Begun the microseries has... in a very interesting format. Star Wars: Clone Wars will be shown in two sets of ten installments, each three minutes long, which can be viewed on the Cartoon Network's website the day after they are aired. Director Genndy Tartakovsky (of Samurai Jack fame) seems to be doing a good job, based on my impressions of the first episode. Can this series help redeem the Star Wars franchise for the thousands (millions?) who feel cheated by the shoddy prequels?
posted by UKnowForKids at 5:03 AM PST - 15 comments

Hill of Crosses, Siauliai, Lithuania [via boingboing]
posted by srboisvert at 4:47 AM PST - 10 comments

"Now we know that no other President of the United States has ever lied so baldly and so often and so demonstrably... The presumption now has to be that he's lying any time that he's saying anything." So says Ray McGovern, who worked as a CIA analyst for 27 years. Now, who still believes the P(L)OTUS?
posted by acrobat at 3:42 AM PST - 50 comments

The Beast of Bodmin. 'Photographs and even films had been taken of these beasts, but there has been little physical evidence to support the sightings. That was until recently when a 14-year-old boy discovered a skull with large fangs, in the River Fowey on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. '
'This is the story of how The Natural History Museum tracked down this beast... '
More at the British Big Cats Society.
posted by plep at 1:50 AM PST - 8 comments

Dean can't carry the south. The New Republic's Jonathan Chait writes in response to Dean's flag gaffe: "What's alarming here is not that Dean wants to win votes from guys with Confederate flags on their pickup trucks. It's that he thinks he actually can... His aggressive secularism, association with civil unions, and antiwar stance all make him culturally anathema in the South. This is one of the many, many reasons Dean would be squashed like a bug in the general election if nominated: Bush could take the South for granted, and concentrate all his resources on battleground states like Pennsylvania. "
posted by gregb1007 at 11:54 PM PST - 46 comments

Career marine forced from job for 'liberal' views - "I was brought up on charges of "Disloyal Statements" under Article 134 of the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice). Not because anything I wrote was disloyal, but because of my political views...We now live in a climate of political correctness and false patriotism where anyone who goes against our president is immediately labeled as disloyal; unpatriotic; a traitor; a liberal. Consider the recent scandal involving the White House CIA leak. Because Mr. Wilson disagreed with our President and publicly acknowledged this, his wife's cover was conveniently blown so she could never work as an intelligence operative again."
posted by troutfishing at 10:03 PM PST - 25 comments

Dean forgoes federal campaign funds. This goes contrary to his beliefs, although favors his campaign considering he's the front-runner. Why the ideological shift? You might ask why I'm linking to the Des Moines Register, since every major newspaper is carrying this story anyway. Well, a little more than a week ago, Dean made some rather off-color remarks to this same paper. Edwards is now calling him out on two of his latest twists. Not that I think Edwards stands a chance of winning, considering he blatantly came out against gay marriage on the program. But, Edwards has a point, and Dean seems to be stumbling.
posted by BlueTrain at 7:06 PM PST - 44 comments

That's What Friends Are For: Laughing, getting drunk together, telling all...and making celebratory, determinedly silly websites like this one. Generally, private jokes are painfully unfunny but, when the vicarious instinct kicks in, other people's gregarious joie de vivre is contagious, touching - and great fun.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 6:50 PM PST - 7 comments

We need an "Information Technology Disclosure Act." The Programmer's Guild is pushing for the creation of legislation to require companies which outsource abroad to tell consumers when their sensitive personal information is being sent to companies in other countries. This aspect of outsourcing has gotten little attention, but the SF Chronicle's David Lazarus has reported on it being done by hospitals (like UCSF, which is being threatened over back pay by a transcriber in Pakistan), accountants, banks (BofA), telecom companies (SBC), and perhaps most alarmingly, two of the three major credit-reporting agencies.
posted by homunculus at 5:28 PM PST - 24 comments

The Snow Show! In the winter of 2004 a unique cultural event, The Snow Show, will take place in Lapland. Internationally recognized architects like Steven Holl and artists, for example Yoko Ono, will collaborate to design installations using as their primary materials snow and ice.

They already made some pretty cool previews last winter.
posted by hoskala at 2:19 PM PST - 3 comments

the second most powerful man in the world , is the world a more or less safe place with this man (some would argue) in charge?
posted by specialk420 at 1:59 PM PST - 31 comments

So I reinstalled an older game, StarTopia (Flash required and RIP Muckyfoot, you will be missed), t'other day and discovered I'd lost my manual to it. Never fear, for Real Time Strategic Carnage had about, oh, a bazillion times more info about the game than did the manual that actually came with the game, which should come as no surprise to most gamers. RTSC has detailed information on a number of strategy games, old and new, and I recommend it to your notice wholeheartedly.
posted by WolfDaddy at 11:42 AM PST - 3 comments

recordstorereview.com : a database and archive. Is your favorite record store listed?
posted by anastasiav at 10:03 AM PST - 10 comments

What can you do with all those plastic bags? I use mine for scooping cat litter, but some people get really crafty with them. And really clever.
posted by JanetLand at 6:35 AM PST - 22 comments

a buddhist adventure game
posted by crunchland at 5:20 AM PST - 20 comments

The Virtual Colour Museum presents Colour Order Systems in Art and Science: "a complete cultural history of colour", including illustrated explanations of 59 colour theories from antiquity to modern time, plus the significance of colours in various cultural systems (click the small images to enlarge), and a "virtual colour-space" dedicated to illustrating the spherical colour system construction of early 19th century painter Philipp Otto Runge. Walk this way >>
posted by taz at 4:31 AM PST - 4 comments

“In a world being torn apart by international conflict, one thing is on everyone’s mind as they finish watching the nightly news: 'Man, this would make a great game.'” ...um, yikes. Playing headline based games could put you in some uncomfortable shoes indeed. I've played wargames that made me really want to not be in a real one - maybe this needn't be as vile a concept at it seems at first blush. But maybe games can't give the nuanced, serious treatment of such topics as, say, movies such as Benini's "Life is Beautiful"
posted by freebird at 11:52 PM PST - 14 comments

McDonalds CEO Puts McJob in Mainstream. By taking Merriam-Webster to task for including McJob ("low paying and dead-end work") in its latest Collegiate Dictionary, McDonald's CEO Jim Cantalupo has ensured that yet another disparaging fast-food web-fed meme joins the venerable "You want fries with that?" If this had been Fox, I would have said it was intentional.
posted by mischief at 10:45 PM PST - 39 comments

Vice Fund. Put your money where your black heart is.
posted by srboisvert at 8:02 PM PST - 7 comments

Overclocked Remix is the home of some fantastic game music remixes in a variety of styles - from relaxing piano to higher tempo hybrid affairs. Have a rummage and a listen..
posted by Mossy at 6:45 PM PST - 7 comments

Many common food plants contain noxious and toxic antinutrients designed to ward off predators, including humans. Tomatoes and Potatoes for example contain Glycoalkaloids which cause a Depressed central nervous system; kidney inflammation; carcinogenic; birth defects; reduced iron uptake. Can Genetically Engineered strains increase these naturally occuring antinutrients and toxins? (more inside)
posted by stbalbach at 6:45 PM PST - 26 comments

Princeton University Eating Clubs A walk down Princeton's Prospect Avenue leads visitors to illustrious clubs like The Tiger Inn and Colonial Club. Ramen be damned!
posted by keli at 12:08 PM PST - 19 comments

It seems that Halliburton is one step closer to getting caps on the Asbestos claims against it. And so what? Well, this is for its units DII Industries and Kellogg, Brown, and Root. KBR might seem familiar because it's the subsidiary that won the 7 billion dollar no-bid Iraq contract for services. And again, so what? Well, the asbestos caps are part of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. That's right....the SAME EXACT subsidiary that was just awarded a 7 billion dollar no-bid contract filed for bankruptcy in March.

Positively Machiavellian.
posted by taumeson at 9:41 AM PST - 16 comments

Anarchist Twelve Traditions of Alcoholic Anonymous. "Over the course of this short text the author shows beyond any reasonable doubt that Bill Wilson, the sainted pioneer of Alcoholics Anonymous, was a semi-closeted fan of Peter Kropotkin, the all-but-forgotten anarchist-communist writer and revolutionary."
posted by jester69 at 9:23 AM PST - 11 comments

Anima: A fascinating archive of the ways early photography was used to give the illusion of motion, as well as information on the evolution of optical toys and early cinema.
posted by anastasiav at 9:18 AM PST - 4 comments

Clay Shirky smacks syllogism around. Nice criticism of the semantic web and the present (and increasing) hype of the "semantic web revolution". The most damning part of the essay is the part about languages and categories being deeply intertwined with worldview and with culture—if there's no good definition for the word "bachelor" (see), how can there be an encoding of "friend", "lover" (see article for the classic AI example of "John loves Mary") or anything else that isn't zipcode?
posted by zpousman at 6:59 AM PST - 62 comments

Early Manuscripts at Oxford University. 'This site provides access to over 80 early manuscripts now in institutions associated with the University of Oxford. Please read the information about using this website. '
'Between 1995 and 2000 the Early Manuscripts Imaging Project created high resolution digital images from manuscripts which were selected as major treasures from their respective libraries, to create wider availability for originals which may otherwise be too fragile for handling. '
posted by plep at 12:52 AM PST - 5 comments

La Folia - A Musical Cathedral Heroic effort, devoted to documenting and exploring a single harmonic device through history.
posted by crunchburger at 11:38 PM PST - 5 comments

Things other people accomplished when they were your age. Well nobody likes a smarty dick.
posted by johnny7 at 10:44 PM PST - 31 comments

The Wingnut Debate Dictionary - spice up your political screeds with some colorful new terms like Colmestrato (n.) - an emasculated, harmless "liberal" stand-in included for purposes of fairness and balance and Condiment - a statement that needs to be taken with a heavy pinch of salt. I am so adding Deus ex rectum and Stepford Democrat to my vocabulary. And how is it that fucksimilie hasn't found it's way here long before now?
This is a game that MeFi wags of all political persuasions can play...anyone have any terms to add to the lexicon? (compiled by Ethel the Blog)
posted by madamjujujive at 8:56 PM PST - 24 comments

Friday XLS spreadsheet fun. How many of the Pop icons can you recognize, take the MiniPops Quiz.
posted by stbalbach at 6:28 PM PST - 14 comments

What's that pol running? "For what it's worth, the Republican National Committee is running Microsoft IIS on Windows 2000, while the Democratic National Committee is running Apache on Linux. As of this writing, November 5, 2003, the RNC has an uptime of 4.26 days (maximum of 39.04) and a 90-day moving average of 16.91. The DNC has an uptime of 445.02 days (also the maximum) and a 90-day moving average of 395.38 days." Also broken down by individual campaigns.
posted by cedar at 5:43 PM PST - 9 comments

Florida's New Senator. Bob Graham's retiring and not running for re-election of his senate seat. It's sad to see a good senator go. But not to worry because the end of this Floridian's distinguished senatorial career marks the beginning of another... Katherine Harris for U.S. Senate 2004!
posted by gregb1007 at 3:47 PM PST - 11 comments

Pin-up Photoshop fraud. I know Photoshop massaging of images has been posted here earlier (somewhere), but Maxim magazine seem to be getting sloppy. A least Vargas didn't do tiles. (via Mikes list)
posted by marvin at 1:29 PM PST - 35 comments

Ten years of therapy in one night Could a single trip on a piece of African rootbark help a junkie kick the habit? That was the claim in the 1960s, and now iboga is back in the spotlight. But is it a miracle cure? Daniel Pinchbeck decided to give it a go. And life, he says, will never be the same again... Any of you junkies at Metafilter care to give it a try?
posted by Postroad at 1:11 PM PST - 34 comments

The hugely popular iTunes is a success story. But not for Apple, which makes virtually no revenue from the online download service. "When that 99 cents leaves your wallet, the RIAA monopoly swallows most of it, and the credit card companies swallow the rest. As the supplicant in this relationship, Apple is left holding the can." Steve Jobs - "We would like to break even/make a little bit of money but it's not a money maker,"
posted by Blue Stone at 12:32 PM PST - 57 comments

Impeach Andrew Johnson.
posted by me3dia at 11:49 AM PST - 6 comments

"You are What you Drink?" The University of Manitoba has published a study asserting that your choice of tipple could provide insight on your personality. Perhaps we will finally have some answers to the questions posed in this thread.
posted by Otis at 11:44 AM PST - 9 comments

At the recent Digital Games Research Conference held at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands, Florence Chee and Richard Smith presented a paper on Everquest and its implications for addiction policy. Here's the full text and a decent summary here.
posted by Ufez Jones at 10:21 AM PST - 5 comments

The Grinch Who Stole Linux via GROKLAW
posted by gruchall at 8:51 AM PST - 3 comments

scribbler [note: flash] via jwalk blog
posted by crunchland at 8:37 AM PST - 10 comments

In September, soldiers stationed in Iraq began to be granted two-weeks of leave so they could come home and see their families. There's just one catch - the military flies them to one of three US Airports (Baltimore, Dallas or Atlanta) for free, but then the soldier must pay his own way home. The 87 Billion package passed October 17th does contain 55 million in funding to pay for these R&R trips, but that money won't become available for several weeks. In the meantime, more than 470 solders are arriving each day in the US, and they must find ways to pay for their travel home.

Support Operation Hero Miles - donate your Frequent Flyer miles so a soldier can get home.
::via snopes::
posted by anastasiav at 8:21 AM PST - 87 comments

Private Jessica Lynch says "The military used me!" Lynch, now honorably discharged and with a book coming out, told Diane Sawyer in a "Primetime" interview to air Tuesday that the military lied to the press and used her for propaganda purposes. This was reported in May by Robert Scheer of the L.A. Times, who was called "unamerican" by Bill O'Reilly and personally called a liar by the Pentagon. Once more, we've been lied to by our government, but something tells me that the frogs ain't gonna march anytime soon.
posted by insomnia_lj at 6:12 AM PST - 75 comments

CBC's long-running series The Fifth Estate recently ran a very unsettling episode (in Canada) entitled 'Conspiracy Theories'. The show dealt with all manner of claims surrouding 9-11 including a possible US/Saudi/Bin Laden connection, major intelligence breakdowns, etc. Their website provides further reading for those who like to believe the worst.
posted by denbot at 5:43 AM PST - 13 comments

Not happy with the level of scientific discourse on The Discovery Channel Fed up with missing out all those keynote addresses by top scientists at various conferences around the globe? Fear not! The Cable Science Network is gearing up for launch. Billing itself as 'a C-Span for science' they hope to use television to counter some of the crap and misinformation that usually rides the airwaves.
posted by PenDevil at 3:54 AM PST - 25 comments

Get the plane out of the garage for me would you dear? Not only is John Travolta a qualified pilot (to commercial level) he has his own Boeing 707. And what does any self respecting jetliner owner do? Buy a house with a 1.4 mile runway attached and taxi on up to the door of course...

Oh, and if you hear "Bring your Daughter to the Slaughter" blaring out from the cockpit next time you fly, don't worry it's probably just Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson at the controls.
posted by jontyjago at 1:23 AM PST - 29 comments

China's crackdown on online dissent continues. It's been a year since the arrest of Chinese internet dissident Liu Di. Many of her supporters have signed petitions calling for her release, but last week one of their organizers, essayist Du Daobin, was himself arrested.
posted by homunculus at 12:58 AM PST - 13 comments

A flood of red ink This time the turnaround will be much tougher. There will be no “peace dividend” from the end of the cold war (indeed, the pressure on military spending may continue to increase). America is unlikely to see another stockmarket bubble, with its surge in tax revenues. As baby-boomers retire, the pressure from entitlement spending will be more acute. Set against this background, the path back to a sustainable fiscal policy will be extremely painful, even without any dramatic fiscal crisis. Long after Dubya is back on his ranch, Americans will be trying to recover from the mess he created.
posted by y2karl at 10:49 PM PST - 33 comments

I half figured this would be posted here by now... The folks at Google have done it again. The Google deskbar has been released. In front of their apparent IPO (previously discussed here), Google rolls out something even cooler than their toolbar. Cue the critics saying that this deskbar violates my privacy somehow. As I hope we all know, Google has fixed the toolbar problems, albeit after people started complaining.
posted by ajpresto at 7:21 PM PST - 45 comments

Cunnilingus In North Korea - Young-Hae Chang. [flash]
posted by hama7 at 6:47 PM PST - 42 comments

What's in a name? Taste to find out. Fancy Lawnmower Beer, No Disput'n Putin Russian Imperial Stout, Bierbitzch, Honey Act Your Sage, and Old Numbskull. What's your favorite beer with a wacky name?
posted by jasonspaceman at 5:13 PM PST - 53 comments

Picture Hunt time! How many women are in this picture? (more inside)
posted by AaRdVarK at 3:48 PM PST - 53 comments

The New Orleans Karaoke Cam comes to you live from Cat's Meow in New Orleans. Choose the streaming video option and you can watch and listen to the performers and sing along if you know the song! If karaoke isn't your thing, there are other cams on the site as well. Warning: this can be a MAJOR waste of time.
posted by SisterHavana at 3:40 PM PST - 5 comments

How do you get teens to crave milk? Load it with caffeine. "We're giving teens the caffeine they want but also vitamins, calcium and protein" ...and also a lot more calories.
posted by bluno at 3:12 PM PST - 32 comments

The Ideosphere, a prediction market like the one the Pentagon wanted to set up, predicts a 20% chance of the non-test use of a nuclear device on U.S. soil by 2010. Other predictions include the likelihood of various candidates winning the next Presidential election, as well as the number of troops killed in Iraq and the chance of a human clone by 2005.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 2:54 PM PST - 7 comments

Amnest Int'l drops documentary after petition. Two Irish filmmakers were inside the palace during the coup in Venezuela in 2002 (also on MeFi: 1 2). I caught their powerful documentary, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised here in Chicago (review). The film was just recently dropped from Canada Amnesty International's upcoming film festival in Vancouver after opposition parties in Venezuela organized a petition of over 7,000 signatures (mp3). The groups have concerns about it's accuracy, especially in it's characterization of the opposition to the democratically elected President Chavez. A petition supporting the film has been started as well. I found the movie stunning and a chilling account of how media outlets can shape, gauge and control public perception at home and abroad (ergo the Reagan miniseries debacle). Also notable I found was Chavez's passion to teach the poor to understand the constitution of their country - impoverished Venezuelans talking passionately about how they realize that understanding politics and policy is one of the first steps out of their poverty. I picture Jerry Springer trash trying to articulate any understanding of the U. S. constitution. Any Venezuela MeFi'ers wanna give a background on how the country had been faring since the coup and restoration? Was it a CIA action? I'm sure the honeymoon's over - how's it going?
posted by ao4047 at 2:33 PM PST - 16 comments

Church sign generator. Crank out your own roadside platitudes.
posted by ChuqD at 1:36 PM PST - 49 comments

New nickels in 2004. Also, the mint is holding out the possibility of further changes after the Lewis and Clark designs are retired after 2005, so maybe they'll finally have the guts to use Felix Schlag's original design for the coin, with the oblique view of Monticello.
posted by yhbc at 11:12 AM PST - 21 comments

Cyber-Coolies? Huh? Is There A New Globalization-Savvy Racism In the Air? I admit I was discomfited by this article - it seemed sly paternalistic and colonialist at best; racist if you read between the lines. Are these sort of attitudes going to ruin what the global telecommunications revolution has achieved? (Via should-know-better Arts and Letters Daily.)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 10:55 AM PST - 58 comments

A total lunar eclipse will be seen Saturday night, November 8 in the Americas and early the next morning in Europe and elsewhere.
posted by the fire you left me at 9:09 AM PST - 5 comments

You want me to stick what, where? [via Gizmodo]
posted by anathema at 8:44 AM PST - 19 comments

McNewsFilter... National Public Radio is announcing today the largest donation in its history, a cash bequest from the will of the late philanthropist Joan Kroc of McDonalds of well over $200 million.
posted by bluedaniel at 8:24 AM PST - 46 comments

This is Broken A compendium of bad designs. By Mark Hurst
more inside..
posted by anastasiav at 7:55 AM PST - 9 comments

Those anti-Semitic Europeans are at it again. In an opinion poll conducted in October, when shown a list of countries and asked "if in your opinion it presents or not a threat to peace in the world", some 59 per cent of European Union citizens polled said that Israel was a danger. "This shocking result... defies logic and is a racist flight of fantasy that only shows that anti-Semitism is deeply embedded within European society, more than at any other period since the end of the war," responded Rabbi Marvin Hier. But, is it really so?
posted by acrobat at 7:50 AM PST - 51 comments

National Men Make Dinner Day is today, gentlemen. What culinary delights will you be whipping up this evening?
posted by debralee at 4:49 AM PST - 90 comments

The Internet Broadway Database From The Prisoner of Zenda, which opened Sep. 4, 1895, to (well) Urinetown, due to close in January, a comprehensive hyperlinked database of official Broadway performances through the years.
posted by dhartung at 1:55 AM PST - 10 comments

The Patriot Act turned two years old recently. To celebrate its birthday, its buddies took it to a strip club.
posted by homunculus at 11:39 PM PST - 24 comments

November 8th is the Harmonic Concordance! No don't confuse it with 1987's Harmonic Convergence that was a different one. Anyhow the new age, astrological and the tin foil hat communities are abuzz with speculation about the significance of this latest event. What is it? According to astrologers the Grand Sextileis a rare and powerful planetary alignment. The November 8th Lunar eclipse will happen simultaniously to the alignment.
posted by thedailygrowl at 11:11 PM PST - 16 comments

Claim: U.S. Government Spurned Peace Talks Before the War With Iraq - A possible negotiated peace deal was laid out in a heavily guarded compound in Baghdad in the days before the war, ABCNews has been told, but a top former Pentagon adviser says he was ordered not to pursue the deal, ABCNews has learned.
Baghdad Scrambled to Offer Deal to U.S. as War Loomed - As American soldiers massed on the Iraqi border in March and diplomats argued about war, an influential adviser to the Pentagon received a secret message from a Lebanese-American businessman: Saddam Hussein wanted to make a deal. Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, had told the businessman that they wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction, and they offered to allow American troops and experts to conduct an independent search. The businessman said in an interview that the Iraqis also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 who was being held in Baghdad. At one point, he said, the Iraqis pledged to hold elections.
posted by y2karl at 9:33 PM PST - 28 comments

Months ago, we mourned the passing of the Brunching Shuttlecocks. Now, one of the sections from that site has been reborn as Lore Brand Comics, and it comes with an interesting guarantee.
posted by kickingtheground at 6:52 PM PST - 11 comments

I feel so burned. I can't believe I (called in sick to go see) went to Matrix Revolutions. IMO, they shouldn't have made it into a franchise, as the first Matrix was just fine as a stand-alone movie.
posted by Lynsey at 3:44 PM PST - 118 comments

Conspiracy theories are my friend.... And I thought I was the only one. For the longest time, I have thought that there has been no evidence to tie Osama bin Laden and the WTC attack. At least one other nut agrees with me (via BoingBoing.net).
posted by ajpresto at 2:50 PM PST - 19 comments

Far, far away. Today, Voyager 1 will reach 90 AU from the sun, around which distance it is expected to cross the "termination shock," finally crossing into the fuzzy boundary between the heliosphere and true interstellar space. (Yes, it's taken that long to get there.) Some even think that the termination shock has already been reached, but then re-expanded past the spacecraft. Tears need not be shed yet for these distant explorers: both Voyagers have juice till about 2020, and the mission remains very much alive. (No word, however, on a possible return to the Creator.)
posted by brownpau at 12:04 PM PST - 25 comments

"I killed so many women I have a hard time keeping them straight." With those chilling words, Gary Leon Ridgway (better known as the Green River Killer), plead guilty to the murder of 48 women. Previous discussion here...
posted by vito90 at 11:57 AM PST - 35 comments

Who gives how much to whom. For those like me who have been wondering about the claim that Republicans get more of their funding from ordinary people and the Democrats get more from foundations and rich individuals here is where we can find out. So far, I have found some surprises.
posted by donfactor at 10:44 AM PST - 36 comments

POWERSLAVES: An Elektro Tribute to Iron Maiden A record label in Amsterdam has assembled 14 electro-fied covers of classic tracks by the British metal band. Vocoders, drum machines, and analog synths galore, plus influences as diverse as industrial, synthpop, and Miami bass. Loving tribute? Unholy abomination? Entertaining genre cross-pollination? You decide -- the entire album is available as streaming audio from this Dutch radio station.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 10:25 AM PST - 20 comments

15 trends taking shape in logo design
posted by crunchland at 9:16 AM PST - 44 comments

Wannabe Vegetarians Or Hypocritical Carnivores? Do you enjoy eating meat but hate the way it reaches your table? (More inside.)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:09 AM PST - 90 comments

Howard Dean is asking his supporters whether or not he should accept federal matching funds and the concomitant spending restrictions.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 8:14 AM PST - 38 comments

A good article from the wild-eyed radicals at Forbes Magazine. Capitalism and international trade is so cool, man.
posted by pooligan at 7:47 AM PST - 16 comments

Panther Bites Firewire - users get burned. Reports continue to pour in about catastrophic data loss on external firewire drives among users of Mac OS 10.3 (Panther). Apple continues to insist that only FW 800 drives are affected, but numerous users of FW 400 drives report similar problems. (more inside)
posted by stonerose at 7:41 AM PST - 32 comments

The History of Robots in the Victorian Era
posted by anastasiav at 7:27 AM PST - 2 comments

How many times was the word "cheeseburger" spoken in the first Olympia Restaurant sketch? Everything you always wanted to know about NBC's Saturday Night Live but were afraid to ask. The answer is "80," by the way.
posted by NedKoppel at 7:15 AM PST - 14 comments

You thought web standards were bad, how about PC, DVD and Recorder standards too? Well, the FCC has officially mandated that vendors making devices such as dvd players, recorders, pc's, must include (by July 1, 2005) copy-protection mechanisms which will prevent sharing of most digitally broadcast content. Broadcasters will have the option of adding a 'flag' to data streams which will prevent users from sharing digital content ala mp3's. Yes, there will be ways around this;yes, old systems will still work (maybe), but in the end, the FCC has just established a new technological standard which will end up in all of our new computers, dvd players, tivos, post 2005. Want to do something about it? Sorry. Too late.
posted by jeremias at 6:38 AM PST - 29 comments

Democracy Aid 2004. One year from now, on November 2nd 2004, the next American Presidential elections will be held. For the first time ever, because of the Internet, it is possible for non-American private citizens to participate in the campaign process.
posted by soundofsuburbia at 4:15 AM PST - 20 comments

Arar releases statement: "There were cats and rats up there, and from time to time the cats peed through the opening into the cell. There were two blankets, two dishes and two bottles. One bottle was for water and the other one was used for urinating during the night. Nothing else. No light.

I spent 10 months, and 10 days inside that grave."
a follow-up to my previous thread
posted by The God Complex at 2:16 AM PST - 92 comments

Barcodes are really cool. This guy's apparently historical site generates barcodes for numerical values which are mostly used in retail stores, but new "symbologies" have arisen since then. Some (Code 39 and Code 128) can translate alphanumerics, which is way fun (you have to specify the 'T' parameter as either of the aforementioned symbologies)!
I admit it: The new version of XScreensaver inspired this post.
posted by magikeye at 1:06 AM PST - 10 comments

ESA astronaut, Pedro Duque writes "I am writing these notes in the Soyuz with a cheap ballpoint pen. Why is that important? As it happens, I've been working in space programmes for seventeen years, eleven of these as an astronaut, and I've always believed, because that is what I've always been told, that normal ballpoint pens don't work in space... and here I am, it doesn't stop working and it doesn't 'spit' or anything. Sometimes being too cautious keeps you from trying, and therefore things are built more complex than necessary." From Snopes: Fisher spent over one million dollars in trying to perfect the ball point pen before he made his first successful pressurized pens in 1965, which NASA uses. [via GearBits]
posted by riffola at 9:56 PM PST - 23 comments

Worst Album Covers Ever. It is either "Let me touch him" or "Julie's Sixteenth Birthday." I'll let you decide.
posted by gen at 5:57 PM PST - 39 comments

Stunned to see that a Tertiary Phase of the radio series of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy is going into production and everyone (apart from the obvious) is back for it. It'll be a dramatisation of the third novel Life, The Universe and Everything. A fourth series covering everything else will follow. It's being produced by Dirk Maggs who's worked with Douglas Adams before and has rejected one my own radio scripts in the past. Not that I blame him. It was pretty awful. It's going to be odd not hearing Peter Jones as The Book, but his seat is being filled by William Franklyn. I was hoping for Oliver Postgate if anyone was going to do it. Anyone have a sample of how Mr. Franklyn's voice sounds?
posted by feelinglistless at 4:35 PM PST - 12 comments

Getting converted has never been so easy! "The Plug 'n' Pray concept: Religion is no longer a mystical experience or a personal journey to get closer to our transcendent inner dimension - it belongs now to the FCG (Fast Consumer Goods) segment." …A brilliant religious (and software marketing) satire, IMHO.
posted by Down10 at 3:52 PM PST - 12 comments

The BBC introduces it's new grass-roots political website iCan. After research showed (surprise surprise) that "many people are very disillusioned and cynical about politicians and local civic institutions" moves were made to set up iCan, to enable people to get information on and engage in local and national political issues. With search tools to find actions on local issues, message boards, and the ability to create a website for your cause, "iCan aims to make politics accessible to ordinary people confronting a problem." It's also one of the things Rupert Murdoch and The Guardian would like to squash.
posted by Blue Stone at 12:08 PM PST - 7 comments

Oops Paste - The Soap-in-the-Mouth alternative
posted by Orange Goblin at 11:46 AM PST - 54 comments

A neato sand "cartoon" (.wmv). It's a video clip from the 2003 SiCAF. The file is a bit large, but hang in there.
posted by Witty at 11:45 AM PST - 15 comments

The Trojan Games (as in Trojan condoms.) Forget the Olympics, this is where true champions rise to greatness. NSFW. [Via Milk and Cookies.]
posted by homunculus at 11:43 AM PST - 10 comments

Yoshikazu Iwahashi Photograph.
posted by hama7 at 11:03 AM PST - 10 comments

Nearer, My Galaxy, to Thee. The only thing I find more surprising than the discovery of a galactic collision-in-progress is the fact that a similar nearby galaxy had already been found last decade. I need to get up to date and throw out all my astronomy books which still cite the Magellanic Clouds as being our closest neighbors.
posted by brownpau at 9:50 AM PST - 9 comments

The Random Wisconsin City Name Generator. Every state needs one!
posted by mimi at 9:19 AM PST - 11 comments

jpg2ascii
posted by crunchland at 9:12 AM PST - 12 comments

Ocean Tank and Shark Video Cam - take a aquatic break to explore the New England Aquarium's 200,000-gallon ocean tank, viewable from user-controlled cameras. The exhibit has more than 50 species of sea creatures from eels, sharks and barracuda, to turtles, stingrays and angelfish. You might catch a diver in the tank at feeding times. Viewable 9 am to 5 pm, EST.
posted by madamjujujive at 8:24 AM PST - 12 comments

ABC last night ran a program examining the life of Mary Magdalene and her role in Jesus' life as possible wife. The Mary-as-whore idea was debunked some time ago, but is it possible that she was made into a whore by the church to explain her intimacy with Jesus? The novel The da Vinci Code, on which this ABC program was based, explores the relationship between da Vinci and a secret society protecting the blood line of Christ, who according to some theories fathered children with his wife, Mary Magdalene. If you look at the Last Supper, the figure to the right of Jesus is so clearly a woman, and it is possible that the Holy Grail that gathered the blood of Christ is a metaphor for Magdalene's womb carrying Jesus' children. And according to Magdalene's apocryphal gnostic gospel, she knew secrets that Jesus kept from the apostles.
posted by archimago at 7:44 AM PST - 58 comments

Hey, Linda. Thanks for all you've done! Linda Tripp gets a $600K settlement from Bush's Defense Department for having her privacy violated. Oh, sickening irony. via TPM
posted by jpoulos at 6:19 AM PST - 59 comments

Bluejacking is the new craze (according to the BBC) of sending random strangers within range unsolicited messages on their mobile phone via Bluetooth.
posted by brettski at 5:57 AM PST - 12 comments

Doors East is upon us again. A meeting of the minds on information design, brought to you by Doors of Perception. More inside....
posted by yoga at 4:21 AM PST - 1 comment

The gallery of Kidrobot is a collection of toy photos I ran into on a recent search for a U.S. retailer of a desktop toy I wanted by Cube-Works. Outside of finding what I came for, I enjoyed just browsing the photos and descriptions. In the vein of "fair and balanced", I also found the toy at Sweatyfrog, which has some other neato-torpedo things.
posted by rudyfink at 2:34 AM PST - 7 comments

R.I.P. Bay Area Transit Information Page, 1994-2003. The site, started by two Berkeley students, provided quick access to transit information in the San Francisco Bay Area, who later received funding for their efforts in 1996. Instead, it gets replaced by this abomination of web design. On the other hand, it is very unusual for a web site to keep the same user interface over the span of almost a decade. Already, there have been user interface rants, complaints about not finding information, sarcastic commentary, and a brief eulogy delivered from one of the original creators, and it hasn't even been the first day. Is content over style dead or are information sites like this (flash) the wave of the future?
posted by calwatch at 12:12 AM PST - 12 comments

Just in time for Christmas! Shop for scrotums. Get yourself a bull penis walking stick. Spoil your dog with bull penis chew treats. (Go for the 24" ones, if only for the jealousy factor)
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:06 PM PST - 14 comments

In need of a little cyber-divination? Here's a rather eccentric online tarot oracle based on Timothy Leary's and Rob't Anton Wilson's eight circuit model of consciousness.
posted by moonbird at 8:10 PM PST - 8 comments

In this corner, Left-Wing Redneck Steve Earle! "The deal is, he's gonna interrupt me and then eventually he's gonna tell me to shut up," Earle says. "That's what he does, then on to the next thing. Equating any of that with a serious political discussion is like thinking pro wrestling is real. But the worst that comes out of it is I get the shit kicked out of me on Fox News and we get free publicity for the tour. It's a win-win situation. The worst part is I actually have to watch Fox."

I *heart* Steve Earle.

Sorry, but it's probably already been aired by now. Anyone catch it?
posted by nyxxxx at 6:16 PM PST - 19 comments

Poor, Much-Maligned Alcohol Gets A Good Word: It's quarter to three, there's no one in the place/Except you and me,/So set 'em' up Joe, I got a little story/ I think you should know... And the story is something, if you're a drinker, you probably already know. (I was so surprised by this article I wondered if it was sponsored by the booze industry. But then I mixed myself another drink; read the wonderfully-named, probably Guinness - and poteen-fuelled - Dublin Principles and drank its health anyway!)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 6:07 PM PST - 16 comments

Neil Gaiman Q&A on Slashdot. Another on Sequential Tart. If you loved the books find out about the author (who has a blog and has been mentioned here a few times).
posted by srboisvert at 3:56 PM PST - 18 comments

An act of ‘betrayal’--Army Times (newspaper) Army TimesSounds like the cuts the Bush gang making on social programs except these are for our MILITARY: "Commissaries and the Defense Department’s stateside schools are in the crosshairs of Pentagon budget cutters, and military advocates, families and even base commanders are up in arms. Defense officials notified the services in mid-October that they intend to close 19 commissaries and may close 19 more, mostly in remote areas. At the same time, the Pentagon is finishing a study to determine whether to close or transfer control of the 58 schools it operates on 14 military installations in the continental United States.
posted by Postroad at 3:33 PM PST - 44 comments

Nuclear plant operation correlates with increased infant mortality rate. Correlation may not prove causation, but these numbers are pretty dramatic.
posted by alms at 3:16 PM PST - 19 comments

A large collection of panoramic views of Norwegian cities. Possibly the largest collection of its kind, it gives you the opportunity to navigate trough Oslo, walk into certain shops or just have a look at the famous Vigeland park. With convenient clickable map.
posted by spazzm at 2:15 PM PST - 9 comments

Spammers Strike Back - It looks like spammers aren't going to stand for your rejection of their messages. One of the current virii (Mimail in various incarnations) is specifically designed to launch dDoS attacks against anti-spam websites. A newsletter at spamhaus.org describes this attack in detail, but you may not be able to read it since the site is currently under attack. In other words, the spammer's attacks are working. Spam fighters are getting driven off the Net. [more inside]
posted by y6y6y6 at 2:10 PM PST - 30 comments

Got ipecac? Toss it out. The American Academy of Pediatrics reverses its long-standing position on the vomiting-inducer that has served many parents as a talisman of safety against poisoning.
posted by soyjoy at 1:10 PM PST - 34 comments

The National Beard Registry.
posted by me3dia at 12:51 PM PST - 8 comments

OsMoz. Inhale a little history, then follow your nose to the Sniffer Game. (Sorry, no scratch-n-sniff.)
posted by grabbingsand at 12:20 PM PST - 2 comments

Photographs of New York City overlayed and linked from a subway map, with the photo links specific to the position of the points clicked.
posted by the fire you left me at 11:28 AM PST - 12 comments

This is the coolest flash animation I've seen in a while...
posted by Slimemonster at 11:03 AM PST - 44 comments

Hail to the world beard champion. I bow to you Karl Heinz Hille. (pics)
posted by Bag Man at 10:32 AM PST - 10 comments

Problems in infinite decision theory [pdf]. You are in hell and facing an eternity of torment, but the devil offers you a way out, which you can take once and only once at any time from now on. Today, if you ask him to, the devil will toss a fair coin once and if it comes up heads you are free (but if tails then you face eternal torment with no possibility of reprieve). You don’t have to play today, though, because tomorrow the devil will make the deal slightly more favourable to you (and you know this): he’ll toss the coin twice but just one head will free you. The day after, the offer will improve further: 3 tosses with just one head needed. And so on (4 tosses, 5 tosses, ….1000 tosses …) for the rest of time if needed. So, given that the devil will give you better odds on every day after this one, but that you want to escape from hell some time, when should accept his offer? More discussion here.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 10:05 AM PST - 36 comments

Secret 9/11 case before high court
"It's the case that doesn't exist. Even though two different federal courts have conducted hearings and issued rulings, there has been no public record of any action. No documents are available. No files. No lawyer is allowed to speak about it. Period."
posted by Irontom at 9:58 AM PST - 23 comments

Seduce the opposite sex: learn the universal language of laundering and drycleaning symbols.
posted by xmutex at 8:36 AM PST - 12 comments

"American power worldwide is at its historic zenith. American global political standing is at its nadir." - Zbigniew Brzezinski speaking at the New American Strategies for Security and Peace Conference. [ via tpm ]
posted by specialk420 at 8:27 AM PST - 31 comments

sandlot science ... optical illusions and visual oddities... hundreds of exhibits and interactive demonstrations.
posted by crunchland at 7:48 AM PST - 4 comments

Has Rumsfield Lost His Mojo? Time was first to break the story, but now the world is listening. Can it be? Has Rumsfield truly, really, devastatingly lost his mojo? And is he just pretending to not know what it means?
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 6:58 PM PST - 29 comments

These guys are pretty upset. Symantec's new Internet Security suite combines a firewall, anti-virus utility, and content-filtering parental controls in one package. And guess what? When a user sets the filter to block "Weapons" sites, it blocks NRA pages!

Internet Security 2004 isn't really the issue, however. It's a (large) "community" once again overreacting, spreading FUD about rights being taken away, political brainwashing, and the world coming to an end.

Or, this is just the best. troll. ever. You decide.
posted by bhayes82 at 6:29 PM PST - 34 comments

One of the many casualties of the California fires was the unique and lovely studio and residence of artist and architect James Hubbell. Hubbell is a proponent of Architecture of Jubilation and his living and working quarters reflected many of his ideas about organic designs and sustainable building. The artist and his family and co-workers are fine but his one-of-a-kind house is not.
posted by jessamyn at 4:55 PM PST - 12 comments

This excellent overview of pixel noise in digital images also offers up some plugins to help make your photos look better and print cleaner. I'd noticed the effects and noise in much of my digital photos, but had no idea how to remove it -- until now.
posted by mathowie at 2:34 PM PST - 22 comments

British explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Dr. Michael Stroud just completed an extraordinary feat: they're running seven marathons. On seven continents. In seven days. It's all to benefit the British Heart Foundation, and it wound up today with the New York Marathon.
posted by Vidiot at 1:44 PM PST - 9 comments

Clear Channel DJs advocate violence against bicyclists. "One caller said her dad had purposely hit a biker on the road on the way to church one Sunday and kept on going. That got laughs." Clear Channel apologizes, but won't release transcripts or tapes of the broadcasts. Don't you love responsible radio journalism?
posted by zaelic at 9:59 AM PST - 143 comments

Friedman quotes a former Swedish prime minister. "Our defining date is now 1989 and yours is 2001," I find this to be true. For most of the 90's, the US struggled to find a new purpose for its power. A few peace-keeping missions, a skirmish in Iraq (the first time), but for the most part, no real global strategy. Europe, on the other hand, has made significant progress with developing the EU, the euro (which no one believed would ever come about so quickly), and a semi-unified policy concerning the rest of the world (GB being the notable exception). NY Times
posted by BlueTrain at 6:11 AM PST - 68 comments

The World Federation of Advertisers 50th Anniversary Hall of Fame 1953-2003
posted by crunchland at 8:25 PM PST - 6 comments

Craneporn is a collection of photographs of cranes.
posted by hama7 at 7:43 PM PST - 14 comments

Isaac Newton Massive, ongoing project based at Cambridge University, devoted to putting Newton's MSS on the Web. At present, the digitized materials available range from journals to scientific MSS to theological speculations.
posted by thomas j wise at 5:00 PM PST - 6 comments

Hotelchatter. The ever-prolific Rusty of Kuro5hin fame has a new website out. This one is a collaborative weblog for reviewing hotels around the world. Having had some bad hotel experiences, I fully endorse the idea, but will people be motivated enough to write?
posted by Eloquence at 4:44 PM PST - 34 comments

Despite administration claims, it is simply not true that no one could have predicted the chaos that ensued after the fall of Saddam Hussein... What went wrong was not that no one could know or that no one spoke out. What went wrong is that the voices of Iraq experts, of the State Department almost in its entirety and, indeed, of important segments of the uniformed military were ignored. As much as the invasion of Iraq and the rout of Saddam Hussein and his army was a triumph of planning and implementation, the mess that is postwar Iraq is a failure of planning and implementation (pdf). See also, from June 24, 2003: A marred follow-up to a brilliant military campaign by Tim Carney. (Added to illustrate a very slow learning curve indeed.)
posted by y2karl at 12:02 PM PST - 105 comments

Night View of Seto - impressive panoramas of western Japan. (via Yakitori)
posted by madamjujujive at 9:10 AM PST - 12 comments

A giant game of telephone in the sky --For most of November in Yamaguchi, Japan, messages sent will be translated to japanese and back, and encoded as a unique set of flashes and redirected into the sky ove the city, flashing there until the recipient of the message retrieves it, transforming the skyline with data as light--created by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer.

Meanwhile, at the same time on the other side of the world, there's Poetrica, on Sao Paulo, Brazil, advertising billboards.--messages that also can't be read in public in their current form. You write something and convert it into a non-phonetic font. The visual messages are archived on the web site and you get an email when your message is displayed on one of the billboards--created by Giselle Beiguelman
posted by amberglow at 8:37 AM PST - 9 comments

Is The Blood Red Water For Real? A discussion on egullet, of all places, suggests at least one of these shocking pictures (inside) has been retouched. A more interesting question is: is it OK to "enhance" real evidence, if the salient facts are true? Or even, more radically, if the cause is just and dedicated to save lives or relieve suffering?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:30 AM PST - 69 comments

Famous freaks. There really should be an IFDB. Until then, marvel at these miraculous testaments to God's sense of humor.
posted by condour75 at 12:05 AM PST - 12 comments