May 2004 Archives

May 31

In Memoriam

Taps: Sometimes broken, recently automated; an American melody.
posted by mr_roboto at 10:31 PM PST - 18 comments

Hold This.

Listening to the Universe Weep:
The Stark Beauty of the Buttercup Festival.
posted by kaibutsu at 8:36 PM PST - 13 comments

Blogging for charity is like screwing for virginity. No wait, it isn't.

So the Blogathon is taking a year off to come back bigger and better than ever before, but for all of you just itching to stay awake for 24 hours raising money for charity, there is Project-Blog, a Blogathon-style event happening July 24th. See previous Blogathon discussion here.
posted by Orange Goblin at 3:54 PM PST - 2 comments

Albert Martin, Last Known Widow of a Civil War Veteran

Alberta Martin, the last known widow of a civil war veteran, has died at the age of 97. Alberta Martin married William Japser Martin, a Confederate veteran, in 1927, when she was 21 and he was 81. William Martin died less than four years later and Alberta Martin married his grandson two months after that. [Much of the news will cover it (i.e. CNN, MSNBC, et all, but the link above is for a site specifically about her.]
posted by bluedaniel at 3:20 PM PST - 12 comments

Lucire enters the real world

Lucire the fashion website becomes the next website to go real world with a magazine in newsagents. It's not the first (see Chud which publishes Movie Insider) but they've taken the step of putting the prototype May issue online in .pdf format and are asking readers for their input. How well can they do in an already crowded market place and is it significantly different for us to care?
posted by feelinglistless at 2:58 PM PST - 3 comments

Trust me.

Bush campaign lies with unprecedented frequency. Making history with unprecedented negativity.
posted by four panels at 12:10 PM PST - 74 comments

Come on, don't 'cha wanna know what's next?

Your favourite band's favourite band sucks. Slate article discussing iTunes' celebrity playlists. via gizmodo
posted by Capn at 11:09 AM PST - 32 comments

America's First POWs

America's First POWs. The Department of Defense says there were 4,435 battle deaths during the Revolutionary War. More than twice as many Americans died in British prison ships in New York Harbor. You can get an idea of their suffering from the news stories I've linked, or read a more detailed account written in the 1860s from Henry R. Stiles's A History of the City of Brooklyn (scroll down a bit and keep hitting Next). There are more links at this site, which focuses on the long-neglected Monument for the Prison Ship Martyrs in Brooklyn's Fort Greene Park. A remembrance for Memorial Day.
posted by languagehat at 10:00 AM PST - 6 comments

candy wrappers

the candy wrapper museum
posted by crunchland at 9:48 AM PST - 3 comments

Quakers on the WWW

Digital Quaker Collection Courtesy of Earlham College, the Digital Quaker Collection offers free access to "over 500 individual Quaker works from the 17th and 18th centuries." More historical texts, including many from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, are available from The Quaker Writings Home Page. (Main link via Scribblingwoman.)
posted by thomas j wise at 8:38 AM PST - 5 comments

Wikipedia Reinvents

Wikipedia has reinvented itself. It now supports discussions about any article, and provices an easy way for users to look at previous article versions. Maybe it could do this before -- but my memory and the Google cache lead me to think not. To the jaded eye, this looks like just a software upgrade. But the implications are greater than that. Wikipedia is the great white hope for free (as in freedom) information on the web, and this ups the ante. My big questions: Can they handle the load? And how long before anyone notices?
posted by lodurr at 8:36 AM PST - 18 comments

The Paper Trail

The Paper Trail "But TIME has obtained an internal Pentagon e-mail sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official—whose name was blacked out by the Pentagon—that raises questions about Cheney's arm's-length policy toward his old employer. Dated March 5, 2003, the e-mail says "action" on a multibillion-dollar Halliburton contract was "coordinated" with Cheney's office. The e-mail says Douglas Feith, a high-ranking Pentagon hawk, got the "authority to execute RIO," or Restore Iraqi Oil, from his boss, who is Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. RIO is one of several large contracts the U.S. awarded to Halliburton last year"
posted by Postroad at 3:35 AM PST - 28 comments

bogota street art

Popular De Lujo: A portrait of a city (Bogota, Colombia) through its folk art and street graphics. "Some sections of this site are not translated in order to keep the original and true sense of local idiomatic expressions which have no precise equivalent in other languages. However, you will realize that the graphic language is so rich in shapes and colours, that it speaks for itself."
posted by vacapinta at 1:55 AM PST - 10 comments

FractalFilter

Blatte's Pages.
posted by Gyan at 1:25 AM PST - 7 comments

May 30

Colin Wilson, genius, knicker fetishist, social misfit and author of 110 books that even his publisher didn't want

Colin Wilson: 'Now they will realise that I am a genius'
posted by titboy at 8:51 PM PST - 15 comments

free speech gagged--thanks to the Patriot Act

National Security Letters and John Doe --once only issued against suspected terrorists and spies, NSLs now can be used, thanks to the Patriot Act, against all and any of us. John Doe, the currently gagged owner of a small ISP was targeted for the political speech of his customers and is fighting, along with the ACLU and others. More here (and more inside)
posted by amberglow at 8:26 PM PST - 20 comments

Good shot

The World Press Photo awards of 2003
posted by mr.marx at 7:03 PM PST - 17 comments

Congrats to the Happy Couple!

A Very Christian Proposal-via-Scavenger-Hunt in Starbuck's Headquarters Hometown "The whole day was so much fun, and absolutely perfect. It meant so much to me that Sean included the people that were important in our lives. This really is the best engagement story I've ever heard - I'm overwhelmed that it is actually mine!"
posted by scarabic at 6:54 PM PST - 47 comments

Some lysol, bleach, heavy duty trash bags...

Calling the 'cleaner' - like Harvey Keitel, who has both played a 'cleaner' and become one in real life, Zbigniew Brzezinski now moves in to rectify the mess. "The present policy - justified by falsehoods, pursued with unilateral arrogance, blinded by self-delusion, and stained by sadistic excesses - cannot be corrected with a few hasty palliatives."
posted by troutfishing at 6:06 PM PST - 16 comments

The Way the Music Died

Interview with David Crosby. "The people who run record companies now wouldn't know a song if it flew up their nose and died. They haven't a clue, and they don't care. You tell them that, and they go, 'Yeah? So, your point is?' Because ...they don't care. They're actually sort of proud that they don't care.... Now they're going in the tank, because the world has changed, and they did not change with it...I think the only way to sell records that I know about now that does look really, really, really promising is iTunes."
posted by weston at 3:10 PM PST - 44 comments

shouting politics-fiter in a crowded theatre

Pros & Cons of Kerry's Veep Choices 14. Ann Coulter, columnist Pro: Flattering position would silence her exposing of the true evil liberal agenda Con: Is composed entirely of spiders and deadly snakes writhing beneath a latex "skin." Courtesy of McSweeneys
posted by leotrotsky at 8:07 AM PST - 38 comments

The Bakken: A social history of electricity

The Bakken: A social history of electricity The Bakken is a growing center "for education and learning that furthers the understanding of the history, cultural context, and applications of electricity and magnetism in the life sciences and their benefits to contemporary society." The site includes an illustrated collection of artifacts ranging from static electricity generators and Leyden jars to Victorian therapeutic magnetic belts, and exhibitions on Mesmer and Mesmerism and Mary Shelley and Frankenstein. The institute was founded by Earl Bakken, the co-inventor of the pacemaker.
posted by carter at 7:27 AM PST - 2 comments

Capobianco Gallery closed?

The Capobianco Gallery in San Francisco is closed. Its owner, Lori Haigh, was assaulted for displaying a painting by Guy Colwell which depicts the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.
posted by homunculus at 2:13 AM PST - 43 comments

May 29

draft military exodus

According to this article: The military may see a "mass exodus that will reach the hemorrhage point by mid-2005." Just in time for the return of the draft. (links via Buzzflash)
posted by thedailygrowl at 11:03 PM PST - 53 comments

The Geek Test

I stumbled on The Geek Test today. Very comprehensive (measures more than just technical geekiness). What's your score?
posted by tbc at 2:19 PM PST - 95 comments

"Oh, si, papa. Si!"

Diary of a truck stop cruiser. "B.J. Cruiser," a self-described obese gay man, shows us that California highways teem with repressed, married truck drivers waiting for an insatiable man like him. Can this blog possibly be for real? Hilarious text not safe for work.
posted by inksyndicate at 1:48 PM PST - 32 comments

Iraq Net Assessment: Strategic Overview and Recommendations

Iraq Net Assessment: Strategic Overview and Recommendations
From Defense and the National Interest
Read it and weep.
posted by y2karl at 11:53 AM PST - 52 comments

Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz,

Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz known also as Witkacy, was an absurdist playwright, a painter, a philosopher, an aesthetician, a novelist, and generally a prolific artist since about the age of 8. He lived from 1885 to 1939, and often has just the right mix of sharp wit, deep insight, and self-reflective irony.
posted by mdn at 11:41 AM PST - 7 comments

Ashcroft's terror warning

One of Ashcroft's "credible sources" from last week's terror warning came from Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, a group that has also claimed responsibility for the blackout in the Northeast last year, the power outage in London, the Madrid bombing and has been called "notoriously unreliable" by U.S. officials. “The only thing they haven't claimed credit for recently is the cicada invasion of Washington". Ashcroft blames the FBI who have admitted that claims that terrorists were 90 percent ready to attack came not from al-Qaida, but from the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades’ statements.
posted by gfrobe at 8:03 AM PST - 11 comments

Suicide.....by Chat?

Dial-Up For Murder.
So, you're a typical geeky teenage boy with serious angst and a death wish. How do you commit the fatal deed? Obvious! Groom an older boy by writing 50,000 lines of fantasy, inventing 8 characters, including a female spy offering sex, meet up to buy a blade, and voila! - redefine murder plots for us all.
Wierdest.Web.Story.Evah?
posted by dash_slot- at 6:28 AM PST - 15 comments

SFW

Safe For Work A photoshop competition just for Metafilter. Nudes from the history of art, only with clothes on. You can see the originals too. My favourite is the water carrier. (SFW!)
posted by Zootoon at 5:01 AM PST - 32 comments

Moore scores

Michael Moore finds distribution for his explosive new Bush expose', Fahrenheit 9/11.
For those interested, this is the latest chapter in the Moore saga.
More Moore discussions here, here, here, here and here.
posted by wsg at 1:49 AM PST - 34 comments

Dinosaur 0, Common Sense 1

Barney is a 6 year old boy whose dad bought the .co.uk domain of his name so he can use it when he's older. Barney is a 60 million year old malevolent purple dinosaur and wants "his" domain name back. Hilarity, thinly vieled contempt and common-sense ensues .. (via NTK)
posted by Pericles at 1:38 AM PST - 15 comments

May 28

intrerim P.M

IRC nominates one of their own to be interim P.M. U.S. supports this even though only one-tenth of one percent of Iraqis believe they should be making this choice, according to CPA poll.
posted by dreeed at 9:40 PM PST - 13 comments

Defamer.

Defamer. LA is the world's cultural capital. Defamer is the gossip rag it deserves. Oh, but it's much better than that. Smart, funny, ever so slightly understated satire and snappy, sarcastic commentary. [via wonkette]
posted by bingo at 6:16 PM PST - 43 comments

Pepsi Blue Filter

Discovery Network has some amusing new commercials. (click "Watch the TV spots", lower-left). My favorite? Milk truck!
posted by mr_crash_davis at 2:51 PM PST - 13 comments

Flash Zen Garden

Flash Zen Garden. Rake away. Via littlefluffy.
posted by brownpau at 1:41 PM PST - 10 comments

lonely hunter

Timeship. Stephen Valentine goes insane and builds a cryopark.
posted by plexi at 1:36 PM PST - 21 comments

It's Rodeohead,

It's Rodeohead, (MP3 download), the radiohead country and western medley. Please note there is absolutely no reason to post this apart from it's Friday, it's a bank holiday weekend and it made me laugh. If you're looking for in-depth then move along, nothing to see here...
posted by ciderwoman at 1:27 PM PST - 26 comments

Bukowski: Born Into This

"Whadyawant, motherf*ck?" These are the first words Charles Bukowski speaks in John Dullaghan's documentary about the poet and novelist, famous for his writing and infamous for his drinking and brawling and screwing. The audience member might respond, "To hear your story, Hank, that's what I want." The movie opens with friends (Sean Penn, Harry Dean Stanton, Bono) and colleagues and lovers and fans recounting the myth; theirs are stories of blades pulled on the maitre d' of the swanky Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills, of dangling dicks revealed in public, of a drunk who'd just as soon crack his bottle over your head than share its contents. (more inside)
posted by matteo at 12:02 PM PST - 26 comments

the cynicism of higher education

An architect, falling apart. A disparate status of the modern architect.
posted by four panels at 10:10 AM PST - 64 comments

Sustainable Living Project

The World Wildlife Fund and BioRegional are starting development on a sustainable living programme in Mata de Sesimbra, Portugal. Looking at the details, i think it looks like an interesting experiment, especially after reading this Metafilter thread regarding our use of the planets resources.
posted by darsh at 9:06 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Piperboy's Travel Scrapbook.

Piperboy's Travel Scrapbook. [flash]
posted by monju_bosatsu at 8:33 AM PST - 2 comments

I bet you they won't play this song on the radio

"Here's a little song [3.1 MB MP3] I wrote the other day while I was out duck hunting with a judge . . . It's a new song, it's dedicated to the FCC and if they broadcast it, it will cost a quarter of a million dollars." Eric Idle responds to the FCC's crackdown on the F-word. NSFW without headphones. Via Ceejbot.
posted by mcwetboy at 8:23 AM PST - 16 comments

Gotham Equinox

A little something from the gee-whiz department for all our friends in Manhattan... did you know that today is a Gotham Equinox? All I can say is enjoy it while you can.
posted by silusGROK at 7:24 AM PST - 18 comments

Soft target for patents

Euro software patent action. How can software patents become a boon, rather than a bane? Euro-mefites contact your MEP to have your say! Act now rather than snarking later!
Friday flash bonus: Hey! Hey! 16k
Via ntk
posted by asok at 6:15 AM PST - 4 comments

Love, love will keep us together... ; >

"But they don't know about us, and they've never heard of love..." A Million Love Songs--a new mp3 blog hoping to list them all. Songs stay active for a week, and you can contribute too! So far, they're ranging from Tracey Ullman to Britney to Take That to Eddie Fisher to the Supremes and Abba (send your contributions to: amillionlovesongs@hotmail.com)
posted by amberglow at 5:59 AM PST - 21 comments

May 27

WiFi in Nepal

Yak farmers in the mountains of Nepal are using WiFi to keep in touch with their families thanks to the Nepal Wireless Networking project. [Via /.]
posted by homunculus at 5:39 PM PST - 14 comments

Blood Substitute.

Loyola University has received approval to investigate PolyHeme®'s use as a blood substitute for critically injured and bleeding trauma patients at accident scenes. Blood has a very short shelf life, requires refrigeration, and matching types takes too much time too carry blood in ambulances. The blood substitute has a long shelf life and is compatible with all blood types. It's designed to furnish oxygen which will "prevent organ damage in the brain, heart, lungs, liver and kidneys," until a transfusion can be done at the hospital. - pretty damn cool. I hope it works. [cross-posted on my site]
posted by giantkicks at 5:22 PM PST - 31 comments

Got water?

The ultimate renewable energy resource - kids. Unlike Monsters inc, who harness the energy of screams, the Playpump (also discussed here) harnesses kids having fun to provide clean water. If they have to cart water, the Q-drum (also discussed here) is a very simple way to make this chore easier. In this complicated world, the best ideas are still the simple ones. via A Whole Lotta Nothing
posted by dg at 5:07 PM PST - 7 comments

Let our cities be our swamps and our buildings our jungles

Let our cities be our swamps and our buildings our jungles After witnessing the Pentagon's inconclusive retreat from both Fallujah and Najaf without achieving the "success" of pacification or elimination of the local resistance, it seems that apart from incidentally killing several thousand Iraqis, causing lots of property damage, uniting Shias and Sunnis, and promoting minor clerics into major resistance leaders, today's Pentagon forces are quite ineffectual within dense urban areas. I am reminded of the words of the ex-Deputy PM of Iraq, Tariq Aziz, on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq: People say to me, 'You are not the Vietnamese. You have no jungles and swamps' ... I reply, 'Let our cities be our swamps and our buildings our jungles.'.
posted by meehawl at 4:36 PM PST - 48 comments

Artist detained for, well, art.

Got art supplies? The police would like a word with you. Steve Kurtz, a member of the Critical Art Ensemble and a professor at the University of Buffalo, called 911 when he discovered that his wife had died of cardiac arrest. When the police saw his art supplies, however, he was detained on suspicion of being involved in bioterrorism.
posted by jennyjenny at 12:24 PM PST - 45 comments

pop vs. soda

pop vs. soda
what might the "other" terms be? you are from the far north of minnesota or south central new mexico - what do they call "pop" or "soda" in your neck of the woods?
posted by specialk420 at 11:57 AM PST - 73 comments

Clear Channel + Patents

Clear Channel Limits Live CDs. A company called DiscLive has been working with a handful of artists to sell concert-goers a live CD -- of the show they've just seen -- after the concert. However, "Clear Channel Entertainment has bought the patent from the technology's inventors and now claims to own the exclusive right to sell concert CDs after shows." More inside...
posted by sarajflemming at 11:32 AM PST - 31 comments

I am not a crook. I'm a drunk.

Today's news oddity: In October 1973, U.S.-Soviet tensions were peaking over the Arab-Israeli war, and British Prime Minister Edward Heath's office called the White House just before 8 p.m. to ask to speak with Nixon. "Can we tell them no?" Kissinger asked his assistant, Brent Scowcroft. "When I talked to the president, he was loaded." It's funnier if you read the above in Kissinger's voice.
posted by soyjoy at 10:34 AM PST - 22 comments

Malaria vaccine casues permanent brain damage

In the can-anything-else-go-wrong file, US Troops suffer from permanent brain damage after being administered malaria treatment. For as big a logistical challenge a war might be, and technological advances in mass support systems, you'd think the joint-forces would do a better job?
posted by omidius at 10:07 AM PST - 11 comments

Iran is not on the verge of revolution

Iran expelled me, but its press restrictions play into the hands of the west's fantasies about Islamism: "Contrary to the fantasies of neo-conservatives, Iran is not on the verge of revolutionand, if it was, the US wouldn't be able to orchestrate it. There is no coherent political opposition or leader able to harness public discontent. A significant number of Iranians are profiting from an economic boom and are not ready to risk their livelihood for democracy protests," writes Dan De Luce, the Guardian's reporter in Tehran who has recently been expelled by the Iranian goverment.
posted by hoder at 9:54 AM PST - 4 comments

Are you a feeder, or a feedee?

Feederism: I had no idea it had a name.
posted by archimago at 9:51 AM PST - 29 comments

Framed

Prime Suspects. Providing actors, extras and consulting services to the movie and TV industry, Suspect Entertainment is Hollywood's best source for street cred.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:03 AM PST - 3 comments

The People's Poetry

What is the current state of American poetry? Hank Lazer: Perhaps, contrary to the laments, we are now living through a particularly rich time in American poetry—an era of radically democratized poetry...In its anarchic democratic disorganized decentralization, poetry culture has developed in a manner parallel to the computer: the decentralized PC has beaten the main-frame. No one can pretend to know what is out there, or what is next. Who are some of the most notable American poets active in the beginning of the 21st century?
posted by rushmc at 8:55 AM PST - 33 comments

Storm Chaser Blogs

Storm Chaser Blogs - it's prime time for tornado hunting.
posted by Ufez Jones at 8:12 AM PST - 3 comments

Avoid such old-fashioned, time-wasting answers as

How To Make Friends By Telephone :: a useful how-to book from the 1940's
posted by anastasiav at 8:04 AM PST - 22 comments

No, this isn't The Onion...

American cult actor is an Afghan prince...
Scott Reiniger, who appeared in the 1978 movie Dawn of the Dead, is the great, great, great grandson of Josiah Harlan, the first American to set foot in Afghanistan.
posted by tomcosgrave at 4:37 AM PST - 4 comments

MTV gets cold feet, or does it?

This turns into one of those cases where researching a story gets weirder. The documentary Super Size Me centers on a documentary filmmaker's 30 day experience eating nothing but McDonalds. The film is doing amazingly well as a limited release documentary grossing more per screen than high-budget Troy. Here is the weird part, Reuters has picked up on a distributor press release claiming that MTV is refusing to air advertising for Super Size Me because the film is "disparaging to fast-food restaurants". The Reuters short seems to have quite a bit of legs. However a Hollywood Reporter article details MTVs side of the story placing the blame on the film's distributor. Is this really a case of a network getting cold feet? Or is it a case of distributor trying to pull the "too edgy for MTV" moneymaking ploy? And what is with the continually morphing Reuters clip that is just now being tossed onto doorsteps and stuffed into newsboxes across North America? (The film was previously discussed on metafilter back in January.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 3:57 AM PST - 23 comments

And you thought your mother was naughty

Racial Slurs have been around for centuries, and this website attempts to collect them all (2,295 so far) and explain their origins. May not be SFW if someone is reading over your shoulder.
posted by whoshotwho at 1:17 AM PST - 18 comments

Hookie nicked at last!

Hookie hooked... Arrested at 3am, Abu has a kennel waiting at Guatanamo Bay...
posted by terrymiles at 12:02 AM PST - 32 comments

May 26

OMG! Not to be like Mr. Bush!

Paul Martin, Canada's current Prime Minister, running for re-election for the Liberal party, suggests that voting for him will prevent us from being like the US in his latest television AD campaign (sorry, they only make a WiMP 9 version available). Will your country be next?
posted by shepd at 11:25 PM PST - 45 comments

Zoot Suit

Zoot Suit
posted by y2karl at 9:27 PM PST - 21 comments

another sham

Thought June 30th was a real handover of power to the Iraqis? In a series of edicts issued earlier this spring, Mr. Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority created new commissions that effectively take away virtually all of the powers once held by several ministries. ... The new Iraqi government will have little control over its armed forces, lack the ability to make or change laws and be unable to make major decisions within specific ministries without tacit U.S. approval, say U.S. officials and others familiar with the plan.
posted by amberglow at 9:15 PM PST - 19 comments

Tintinnabulation

PDU-1 A Novella of the Remote Future.
posted by plexi at 8:54 PM PST - 5 comments

Isn't a miniature version of a large ball of twine just a ball of twine?

World's Largest Collection of World's Smallest Versions of World's Largest Things. If you need that explained, you're in luck. Consider it the ying to this thread's yang.
posted by jon_kill at 6:44 PM PST - 8 comments

New generation lives to see another Che

New generation lives to see another Che "Che Guevara is widely remembered as a revolutionary figure, to some a heroic, Christ-like martyr, to others the embodiment of a failed ideology. To still others, he is just a commercialized emblem on a T-shirt. But for Latin Americans just now coming of age, yet another image of Che is starting to emerge: the romantic and tragic young adventurer who had as much in common with Jack Kerouac or James Dean as with Fidel Castro. The phenomenon began a decade ago with the publication of his long-suppressed memoir known in English as "The Motorcycle Diaries," which has become a cult favorite among Latin American college students and young intellectuals..."
posted by Postroad at 5:32 PM PST - 24 comments

Tracking the Threat

Tracking the Threat.
posted by hama7 at 4:51 PM PST - 14 comments

The Problem With Blogs . . .

Blog Obsessed Losers (NYT link) "It seems as if his laptop is glued to his legs 24/7," Ms. Matthews said of her husband.
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 4:29 PM PST - 17 comments

Nuclear power or global warming

James Lovelock, the creator of the Gaia theory, says that only a massive expansion of nuclear power as the world's main energy source can alleviate the effects of global warming. [Via WorldChanging.]
posted by homunculus at 4:08 PM PST - 27 comments

CAMERA/IRAQ

CAMERA/IRAQ gathers materials and perspectives about photography and the Iraq War of Images, from Abu Ghraib to moblogging soldiers.
posted by Dok Millennium at 1:58 PM PST - 2 comments

You Can't Do that on Television

You Can't Do That on Televison
posted by ColdChef at 12:46 PM PST - 56 comments

A Cheesy Cornucopia

Pizza rules broken in Brunei, slighted in South Africa, jeered in Jackson Hole; doughy donnybrooks; slice struggles; Deepdish innovation; Benedict Tony; a sad day for the great Gino's; what's your fave?
posted by dfowler at 11:45 AM PST - 35 comments

Worth Sharing

Remarks by Al Gore. Long, but worth it.
posted by mosch at 11:09 AM PST - 93 comments

Fearsome Communications Commission

Fear of the FCC forces a college radio station to go to an all-recorded format. That's right, no more live DJ's. All shows are to be taped and then reviewed by station management prior to broadcast. Not because the FCC has fined the station, but because they might.
posted by tommasz at 10:50 AM PST - 30 comments

Well, it worked in Hicksville

A guide for librarians wishing to integrate comic books into their regular holdings for young adults, and the case for it. Via Linkfilter.
posted by Hildago at 10:27 AM PST - 12 comments

NPR Study

How Public is Public Radio?
When National Public Radio was launched in 1971, it promised to be an alternative to commercial media that would “promote personal growth rather than corporate gain” and “speak with many voices, many dialects.”

Does NPR really represent the "public?"
Do those "not-advertisements" present an alternative to commercial radio?
For those who consider NPR a "liberal bastion", know that the times they are a changing. Give to Air America instead with your donations perhaps?
posted by nofundy at 10:27 AM PST - 42 comments

Hornby on pop music

Nick Hornby discusses pop music in this NY Times essay: "Maybe this split is inevitable in any medium where there is real money to be made: it has certainly happened in film, for example, and even literature was a form of pop culture, once upon a time. It takes big business a couple of decades to work out how best to exploit a cultural form; once that has happened, 'that high-low fork in the road' is unavoidable, and the middle way begins to look impossibly daunting. It now requires more bravery than one would ever have thought necessary to try and march straight on, to choose neither the high road nor the low. Who has the nerve to pick up where Dickens or John Ford left off? In other words, who wants to make art that is committed and authentic and intelligent, but that sets out to include, rather than exclude? To do so would run the risk of seeming not only sincere and uncool - a stranger to all notions of postmodernism - but arrogant and vaultingly ambitious as well."
posted by grumblebee at 10:11 AM PST - 28 comments

Anti-Bush Online Adventure

Anti-Bush Online Adventure [4.7 MB Flash; parts NSFW] The Bush Administration discovers "the ultimate method of bringing about global domination for corporate America." [via What Do I Know]
posted by kirkaracha at 9:31 AM PST - 16 comments

Bill Owners - a picture of suburbia

Bill Owens has a fascinating series of photographs depicting suburban life in the 1960s and '70s.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 8:33 AM PST - 14 comments

dissemination

Salon offers free subscription to military personnel.
posted by four panels at 6:15 AM PST - 3 comments

The Times and Iraq

Finally the NYT offers up an analysis of its pre-war coverage. "But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge."
posted by raaka at 2:29 AM PST - 33 comments

what america needs

open debates is a nonprofit that's working to reform the presidential debate process for the american election. they have some pretty big names on their board from across the political spectrum, including john b. anderson, angela "bay" buchanan, and randall robinson.

From the website:
Currently, the presidential debates are secretly controlled by the major parties, through the private bipartisan corporation called the Commission on Presidential Debates, resulting in the stultification of format, the exclusion of popular candidates, and the avoidance of pressing national issues.
The major party candidates never pay a political price for their antidemocratic practices; posing as an independent sponsor, the Commission on Presidential Debates shields the major party candidates from public criticism and public accountability.
posted by christy at 12:42 AM PST - 9 comments

May 25

Ducks, all in a row...BAM! BAM!

"They are going to attack" - but "we won't be like Spain"
posted by troutfishing at 10:38 PM PST - 86 comments

Blogging Festival in Iran

Blogging Festival in Iran: "Attempting to form a society of the web Persian content providers, this festival tries to improve the quality of the published information by the means of discussing sessions, roundtables and the exhibition. This festival, backed by the PersianBlog team, as the greatest Farsi weblog provider, and the National Youth Organization of Iran, is the first practical attempt for sponsoring the bloggers and internet magazines."
posted by hoder at 10:01 PM PST - 2 comments

All That Jazz

All That Jazz
posted by y2karl at 7:28 PM PST - 12 comments

Balance is Good

The French Pro-Nuclear Proliferation Lobby "...I have no hesitation in saying that we must consider giving the Arab side a large enough force, including a large enough nuclear force, to persuade Israel that it cannot simply do whatever it wants. That is the policy my country (France) pursued in the 1970s when it gave Iraq a nuclear force..." -- Paul-Marie Couteaux, Member of the European Parliament
posted by kablam at 4:26 PM PST - 25 comments

They come in threes

Kerry pokes fun at Bush mishap
What’s going on here? As the CNN article has changed from earlier. What I notice is that originally the CNN article said along the lines; “Mr. Kerry had his own bicycling mishap earlier this month, taking a spill while riding with Secret Service agents through Concord, Mass. Mr. Kerry fell when his bike hit a patch of sand. He was not injured.” Which if iirc this similar statment was after Kerry commented about the accident. Saying he is glad Bush was ok, then being surprised Bush rides.
posted by thomcatspike at 3:53 PM PST - 54 comments

Bugs are everywhere!

On Fornication And Genetics in The Breedster Age The site which launched a social networking app based around insect fornication and copulograms, gave rise to mass projects, insect personals, and even racist clans now presents some early findings including interesting animations of a populated world.
posted by vacapinta at 3:40 PM PST - 11 comments

Bush: The Athletic Supporter Candidate

Bush Will Win Because He's A Jock
(warning National Review filter)
Sorry, I had to post this because its about the dumbest article on why Bush will win the election that I have ever seen.

via Bush Must Go
posted by fenriq at 3:28 PM PST - 96 comments

The Day My Mother’s Head Exploded

"The Day My Mother’s Head Exploded". Hannah Palin's mother suffered an aneurysm, eventually woke, and built herself a new personality. A downloadable audio piece from Transom (thanks headless)
posted by iffley at 3:25 PM PST - 2 comments

Mass Intelligence

The wisdom of crowds and the miracle of aggregation, arguably, are the reasons why markets and democracy work as well as they do. As New Yorker James Surowiecki explains in his new book, "consider the show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. When a contestant on the show is stumped by a question, he has a couple of choices in asking for help: the audience or someone he's designated as an expert. The experts do a reasonable job: They get the answer right 65% of the time. But the audience is close to perfect: It gets the answer right 91% of the time, even though it's made up of people who have nothing better to do than sit in a TV studio and watch Regis Philbin." The new, new tipping point?
posted by kliuless at 2:45 PM PST - 24 comments

Reading an online magazine (or screen mag) has never been so realistic.
posted by Winterfell at 2:07 PM PST - 13 comments

Phish calls it quits?

An announcement from Trey: "So Coventry will be the final Phish show...For the sake of clarity, I should say that this is not like the hiatus, which was our last attempt to revitalize ourselves. We're done. It's been an amazing and incredible journey."
posted by methree at 1:58 PM PST - 19 comments

the end of phish

Phish to break up, according to CNN.
posted by reklaw at 1:55 PM PST - 57 comments

Michael Moore will release Fahrenheit 9/11 via BitTorrent

Michael Moore capitulates to demands... Ask and you shall receive
posted by jkaczor at 1:04 PM PST - 18 comments

Maternal Influence

"In the long run, motherhood is the greatest influence a childbearing woman will ever have in the human race." So says Rev. Ralph Drollinger, president of Capitol Ministries, in a recent lesson (PDF) for his legislative bible study class. [more inside]
posted by nickmark at 11:46 AM PST - 58 comments

JQKA

It's all in the cards: an interesting look at the development and design of playing cards.
Despite their global origins, playing cards are a uniquely American art form. Looking at a deck of cards provides a glimpse of social, economic, and advertising history.
posted by jazon at 11:46 AM PST - 6 comments

The Lyndie England Fan Page

The Lynndie England Fan Page It takes all kinds
posted by turbanhead at 11:22 AM PST - 13 comments

Tired of government-endorsed sin?

Would you like to live in a Christian nation with government similar to the early United States? Well, here’s your chance! Are you disgusted that the gays are stomping on the Consitution? Do you demand the return to a moral government? Become part of the solution and help to redeem the nation, one seceded state at a time.
posted by archimago at 11:10 AM PST - 74 comments

protecting ancient sites in Iraq

Protecting the Cradle Kirkuk Air Base -- US Army Colonel works with Iraqi archaeological officials to protect nearby ancient sites.

Meanwhile at more secluded mounds, looters continue to plunder the sites and to erase the tangible record of the world's earliest civilizations. "When you come here at night, it looks like a city, there are so many lights," [Archaeological official Abdul-Amir] Hamdani said, looking out over the arid scrubland where thieves swarm after dark.
posted by mcgraw at 10:41 AM PST - 6 comments

Exit Strategy

Exit Strategy How to get out of the quagmire that is Iraq:
To implement this exit strategy, we will have to practice running quickly. It is further recommended that, while running, the eyes be cast down, to avoid witnessing any last-minute people trying to kill us. We will have to establish excellent communications so that the moment that final person begins dying, we can all begin running quickly at the same time, eyes cast down, quickly, to our vehicles, to get to the airport and get out of the country.
posted by dayvin at 10:27 AM PST - 4 comments

Night Windows

"Time passes, or rather doesn't pass. It is just there, solid as a coffee mug on the diner's counter. Time hangs like the reek of old tobacco in the hotel furniture". We all think we know Edward Hopper's images, even if we've never seen his paintings. Somehow the solidity of the world -- even the sky is like a wall -- is at odds with the transience of the people in it, however long they sit and stand and wait. Hopper's people, like Manet's figures, often appear consumed by the irreducible business of being. Hopper, too, would descend into his own silences, would delay himself in self-doubt... (more inside)
posted by matteo at 10:15 AM PST - 19 comments

Bush campaign outsources campaign to India

Bush Campaign ran fundraising/vote-seeking from call centers in India. Is this the responsible way to promote jobs in the US? Even a small number as it may be. Every little bit counts.
posted by omidius at 9:30 AM PST - 26 comments

The 29% Nation of I Don't Care.

Political ads fail their mission. In an Advertising Age poll, 92% of respondants said the ads had not swayed them to change their prospective votes. More than half said the ads didn't influence them, and nearly a quarter found Bush's ads "not at all persuasive." Before you liberals get cocky, consider this: 29% thought Kerry's ads were totally unpersuasive.
posted by me3dia at 9:29 AM PST - 19 comments

How to speak UNIX

How to speak UNIX - interrobang's nick explained?!
posted by carter at 8:01 AM PST - 14 comments

Die Duck Die

Die DUCKOMENTA. German art gallery of Disney-centered pastiche art. The Wall Street Journal says "This Exhibit Is No Featherweight, so You Better Duck." [Stolen from waxy]
posted by riffola at 7:24 AM PST - 7 comments

May 24

MemoryNet

Modelling err.. something.
posted by Gyan at 7:00 PM PST - 11 comments

Threat of famine in Sudan

The situation in Sudan is grim. About a million people have been displaced and the threat of mass starvation is real. The Sudanese government said today that it would grant permits to aid workers to enter Darfur. One group is the International Committee of Red Cross. You can find donation information on their website.
posted by john at 6:04 PM PST - 11 comments

NickDrakeBBC

Nick Drake BBC2 Special narrated by Achilles [brad pitt].
posted by srboisvert at 4:26 PM PST - 26 comments

Opioids

Opioids past , present and future.
posted by dash_slot- at 1:33 PM PST - 7 comments

movies from asia

Pictures and movies from Southeast Asia. The gem of the site is "Traffic Ballet" (wmv file) on the movie page. The photo galleries are pretty good too.
posted by mathowie at 12:27 PM PST - 14 comments

Tick...Tock...

Poeme Symphonique - a piece for 100 metronomes.
posted by Orange Goblin at 11:48 AM PST - 5 comments

Disney on the Front Lines

Disney WWII-era propaganda An interview with Dave Bossert, the producer of a limited-edition two-DVD set of propaganda films produced by the Disney animation studio between 1941 and 1946--many of these shorts, including Donald Duck's Der Fuehrer's Face, were previously available only as nth-generation bootlegs because of their stereotypes and politically sensitive subject matter. (Also included in the collection is the previously extremely rare feature-length 1943 animated film Victory Through Air Power, designed to convince the American public that the only way to win the war was investment in long-range bombers.) [more inside]
posted by Prospero at 11:20 AM PST - 12 comments

Old Family Photos

Gallery of the Unamed. As much as i love digital cameras, i doubt that in a hundred years our descendants will rummage thru stacks of old flash cards or CD's looking for pictures. Here is almost 10,000 old photographs...not only the unknown, but Civil War veterans, railroads, fire departments...or you can search by location or surname. I've already spent hours and hours looking. Have some of your own? Go ahead and send them in...
posted by th3ph17 at 10:50 AM PST - 14 comments

Gently pump it's little stomach

Trout Stomach Pump : Summer's almost here, so you'd best start looking for clues. " Finally I observe what the fish are actually feeding on. To do this I have to catch a fish. This is frequently the hardest part, but I can usually scam one up somehow. I then pump it's stomach.....while securely holding the fish I gently insert the tube down the fishís throat as far as I can. I take particular care not to injure the fish during this process.....The suction created by the pump extracts the stomach contents. I carefully release the fish unharmed into the water (I have never lost a fish in this process). Then I squeeze the bulb and deposit the fish's stomach contents into my hand.  It is then a simple process to match the stomach contents to the contents of my fly box"
posted by troutfishing at 10:16 AM PST - 24 comments

ice photographs

ice photographs
beautiful photos from d. hirmes
posted by specialk420 at 9:50 AM PST - 16 comments

Winning is everything?

"A reversal of soldiers' fortunes" describes how the first solider to be court-martialed for Abu Ghraib is greeted as a hero, while the soldier who brought these activites to light is treated as a villain.
posted by FormlessOne at 9:00 AM PST - 68 comments

In the Mood for Rapture.

In the Mood for Rapture. "Forget the completion anxiety that attended Wong Kar-wai's new film 2046 — four years in the gestating, with scenes still being shot a few weeks ago — what 2046 makes unavoidably clear, is that Wong Kar-wai is the most romantic filmmaker in the world. Love, the playwright Terry Johnson wrote, is something you fall in. Wong's films make art out of that vertiginous feeling. They soar as their characters plummet". It is a sequel of sorts to Wong's In the Mood for Love. It is the story of a writer: in his novel, a mysterious train left for 2046 every once in a while. Everyone who went there had the same intention: to recapture their lost memories. (more inside)
posted by matteo at 8:42 AM PST - 21 comments

objects :: much more than just products of mass production

My Urban Dig :: Found Objects in Alison's House
Be sure to check out the archives
posted by anastasiav at 8:10 AM PST - 6 comments

Life In 33275

New Life Form? Doctors claim to have uncovered new evidence that the tiny particles known as "nannobacteria" are indeed alive and may cause a range of human illnesses. Other researchers disagree.
posted by mcgraw at 7:50 AM PST - 13 comments

May 23

kaliedodraw

kaleidodraw [note: flash]
posted by crunchland at 8:38 PM PST - 10 comments

Robonaut

Enter the Robonaut. A truly science-fictioney NASA robot. (Note DARPA.)
posted by kablam at 7:17 PM PST - 12 comments

Gates of Mercy

Holy Land. Unlike Orlando's, this one's courtesy of Waterbury, Connecticut. Take a tour, read the debate. A few more pics here and here. Also documented in a short video by Albuquerque resident Brian Konefsky and is on tour via the The Itinerant Cinemascape traveling film show. See if it's coming to your town.
posted by protocool at 4:31 PM PST - 7 comments

Closing in on Tenet

Closing in on Tenet "The senate intelligence Committee is getting closer to delivering a scathing report on the CIA's prewar intelligence on Iraq. Sources tell Time that the assessment, which is nearing completion, is so tough that it is sowing doubt even among longtime fans of CIA Director George Tenet. One panel member dodged a question from Time about whether the member still had full confidence in the director, saying Tenet "has done incredible things" for the CIA but adding, "This is not going to be a happy report." ...."
posted by Postroad at 2:01 PM PST - 19 comments

Don't Let 'Em See It!

Ban on Camera Phones in Iraq Q: What do you do if your troops take pictures of physical and sexual abuse in American-run prisons in Iraq? A: Ban cameras, of course. What the people can't see don't happen.
posted by dayvin at 1:22 PM PST - 73 comments

Even the SWAT team laughed.

Axis of Eve
posted by Silune at 1:07 PM PST - 25 comments

South American Dentists

"We can fix your teeth, you know. We can give you a great smile." Apparently the best way to get your teeth fixed these days is to visit a South American dentist. It's a really honest piece about a subject most people probably wouldn't open up about - and it's interesting to see something positive about going out of the U.S. for skilled services in these days where everyone is complaining about outsourcing. (free registration required, same site as Bridezilla last year)
posted by clango at 10:07 AM PST - 21 comments

Anatomy of a Refugee Camp

Anatomy of a Refugee Camp. A Flash presentation of how refugee camps are set up, and very educational for those of us in the world lucky enough to have never seen one. [via airgid.com, the designer's website]
posted by jb at 9:32 AM PST - 4 comments

The Collector.

The Collector. Sheikh Saud of Qatar, the world’s most active collector of art and the market’s biggest spender.
posted by stbalbach at 9:31 AM PST - 4 comments

Bodies in Formation

Dsicipline, Strength, Beauty, Youth 'Bodies in Formation' is a wonderful exhibition of photographs and ephemera, that illustrates Soviet-era mass gymnastics displays in eastern Europe. Via plep.
posted by carter at 5:35 AM PST - 7 comments

Now it's time to KICK SOME BACK!

The Martialist - The magazine for those who fight unfairly.
posted by Space Coyote at 1:27 AM PST - 27 comments

May 22

Trusted Computing

Trusted Computing. Microsoft and friends are proposing some major alterations to the way that computers work, the ostensible goal being to increase security. But others say that the real goals are much more insidious.
posted by bingo at 11:08 PM PST - 15 comments

Best.. Urban... Exploration.. Site.. EVER.

You've probably seen Modern Ruins, Forgotten New York, and even Lost America... but have you seen the abandoned island of Gunkanjima? [via Boing Boing]
posted by keswick at 9:23 PM PST - 18 comments

Jay Rayner's New Web Site

Sorry Is The New Screw You: Whatever happened to "Never explain, never apologize"? Apparently, it went the way of Mrs Thatcher's state banquets...
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:11 PM PST - 10 comments

Primate Poker

I'll raise you 5 bananas. What do Primate Programmers do in their off hours? Using David Sklansky's theorys to play Texas Hold'em online. As a poker-playing, programming, primate myself, I can relate.
posted by bashos_frog at 6:10 PM PST - 2 comments

These look well speckly, bit of green and blue

the rebirth of concept Mike Skinner aka The Streets is back with a new album that have critics comparing it to the best of Mike Leigh and Pulp's Different Class. A Grand Don't Come for Free. Now Mr. Skinner is touring North America with apparent heir Dizzee Rascal. A new british invasion. Coming soon to a town near you. and a call out to the blue and green in the track Blinded by the Light.
posted by grimley at 4:03 PM PST - 39 comments

shrek 2

Shrek 2: The First Five Minutes. Forget trailers; this is the future.
posted by reklaw at 3:44 PM PST - 47 comments

moore, Give me moore

Festival de Cannes update: The new Michael Moore movie received a 18 minutes long standing ovation , a couple of days ago, which was already meaningful to him and his film crew. Tonight Moore also received the prestigious Palme D'Or prize, making sure the film will receive an adequate distribution in the United States. His speech was quite powerful, beginning with him visibly stunned, looking at Quentin Tarantino (who was in tears) in disbelief, saying “What have you done? I’m completely overwhelmed by this. Merci”.
posted by Sijeka at 3:34 PM PST - 67 comments

Blunt Talk By General Anthony Zinni

Blunt Talk by General Anthony Zinni

Whose foresight was 20/20.
posted by y2karl at 3:08 PM PST - 16 comments

The Papers of George Washington

Washington's Farewell Address, from The Papers of George Washington.
posted by hama7 at 2:59 PM PST - 4 comments

They make my head hurt.

Impossible Objects
via del.icio.us
posted by thatwhichfalls at 1:48 PM PST - 20 comments

'SONS OF FUCKING BITCH-ASS GODDAMNED COCK SUCKING GOAT FUCKERS!', he elaborated.

Attacked By Thugs! - Maciej Ceglowski is accosted by young, dorky thugs in Warsaw. After flagging down a van full of police to report the incident, frenzied pursuit-driven hijinks ensue. Almost makes me want to move to Poland and become a cop. Anyone have any sort of similar, amusing, crazed police experience? (I realise there are plenty of non-amusing, crazed police stories out there too, unfortunately.)
posted by DyRE at 1:01 PM PST - 7 comments

Why $2 Gas Is Amazing

Why $2 Gas Is Amazing Gasoline is now selling at more than $2 a gallon, which, after inflation, is higher than it's been since 1981. But that's not the amazing part. Actually, there are three amazing parts.
posted by Postroad at 12:27 PM PST - 99 comments

Are you OK?

At last, "THX-1138" with green-glowing, computer-generated robot factories! George Lucas's first movie, the namesake of his sound system, is coming to a theater near you, with a new 3D effects facelift, and a chilly, incomprehensible Flash site. Will his "original vision" of this 1971 dystopia be realized at last, or will his additions clash with the stark San Francisco subway tunnels, like so much Yes music in a "Metropolis" re-release?
posted by inksyndicate at 11:44 AM PST - 27 comments

Discussion 33250

Box of Snakes 'Linked to Death' Little Rock, Ark. Police are investigating a link between a mysterious box of venomous snakes and the death of a business traveler whose body was found in a rental car last week.
posted by mcgraw at 10:47 AM PST - 10 comments

If that's true, this is a huge scandal.

Was Bush duped into war by Iran? "Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the United States through Chalabi by furnishing...information to provoke the United States into getting rid of Saddam Hussein," said an intelligence source.
posted by CunningLinguist at 9:52 AM PST - 53 comments

Rejection Phone Number

The Rejection Hotline is a number you can give out to somebody who asks for your phone number if you just don't want to give out your real number. Located in over 30 cities nationwide, and with people having cell phone numbers from all over the place, you never have to deal with telling someone no again. Get your number before you head out tonight.
posted by thebwit at 9:14 AM PST - 21 comments

unmitigated gall

US demands war crimes immunity But human rights campaigners said the Iraq prison abuse scandal proves that the US needs to be held to account. "Given the recent revelations... the US has picked one hell of a moment to ask for special treatment," said Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch. -- the annual renewal of US protection from international prosecution for war crimes when serving under UN auspices comes to a vote on Monday.
posted by amberglow at 6:58 AM PST - 32 comments

just pictures, no questionable backstory

She arranged the flowers, which were grown in radioactive soil in an experimental greenhouse.. Photographs of Chernobyl 1994-1998.
posted by pieoverdone at 6:43 AM PST - 17 comments

...as in the Dreyfus Affair, stay with me people!

Kinsley goes Zola on Brooks "In his writing and on television, he actually seems reasonable. More than that, he seems cuddly. He gives the impression of being open to persuasion. Like the elderly Jewish lady who thinks someone must be Jewish because ''he's so nice,'' liberals suspect that a writer as amiable as Brooks must be a liberal at heart. Some conservatives think so too." via A&L Daily
posted by leotrotsky at 6:07 AM PST - 6 comments

May 21

I always feel like somebody's watching me...and I have no privacy!

Barack Obama has a stalker. "For the past 10 days, U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama hasn't been able to go to the bathroom or talk to his wife on his cell phone without having a camera-toting political gofer from his Republican rival filming a few feet away." Jack Ryan, the Republican candidate for the Senate, has assigned a campaign staffer to film everything Obama, a current Illinois state senator, says and does while he's in Springfield. Ryan's spokeswoman says this is "a normal way for us to make sure that his message is being consistent in both parts of the state." (Chicago Tribune link, registration required) But isn't this going just a little too far?
posted by SisterHavana at 3:20 PM PST - 33 comments

Kung-fu Bunny

Kung-fu Bunny [Silly Flash]
posted by dayvin at 2:06 PM PST - 9 comments

Souls come and go, but an iPod Mini is forever

How much is your soul worth? I really couldn't say. Currently this dude's soul is worth 97 dollars.
posted by chunking express at 1:38 PM PST - 20 comments

Who needs a middle class anyway?

Middle-Class 2003: How Congress Voted (executive summary) Who is doing better under the a Republican White House and Congress? If you're part of the vast majority...the middle class...it isn't you. So finds a very useful new report out today from the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, a non-partisan think tank. Full report here. (PDF) The study defines middle class as Americans with incomes between approximately 200 percent of the federal poverty threshold and those of the top 5 percent of earners -- roughly $25,000 to $100,000 a year. (Which excludes Congresscritters, who have consistently given themselves raises to well over 150k a year.)
posted by dejah420 at 1:22 PM PST - 12 comments

Brain tricks

Red and green dots have never been so interesting. At least to a geek like me. I love it when my brain plays tricks on me.
posted by jeremy at 12:30 PM PST - 33 comments

A Visit to Old Los Angeles

A Visit to Old Los Angeles "A pictorial survey of downtown Los Angeles, and certain other areas, focusing on the years 1900 to 1915, though occasionally making use of images from other times. This series will follow, primarily by means of actual postcards of the era, the travels of a farming family from the great plains as they visit Los Angeles and its environs in the early years of the Twentieth Century." In 29 episodes, and with lots of postcards.
posted by carter at 12:25 PM PST - 5 comments

Yeah, it's...Organic, yeaaah that's the ticket

"The directives have not changed anything. They are just clarifications of what is in the regulations that were written by the National Organic Standards Board" Think your "organic" food is pesticide free? Not if the Bush Administration has their way. War is Peace and all that jazz... via Grist Magazine
posted by Windopaene at 12:05 PM PST - 10 comments

Chicago is sinking

Chicago is sinking at the rate of about a millimeter a year(or about 4 inches per century), and it's being caused by melting Canadian glaciers that cause the land to shift.
posted by geeknik at 11:45 AM PST - 16 comments

Lovely Arlington, MA

I hate my dumbass town. Come for the ennui, stay for the police logs.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 11:41 AM PST - 32 comments

Ginsberg's Celestial Homework

Ginsberg's Celestial Homework is the reading list Ginsberg handed out on the first day at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics as "suggestions for a quick check-out & taste of ancient scriveners whose works were reflected in Beat literary style..." Founded in 1974, Ginsberg taught at the school until his death in 1997.
posted by Satapher at 11:29 AM PST - 16 comments

Living WAY off the grid.

Father and 12 year old daughter camp undiscovered for four years in city park. A heartwarming story of love, generosity, and happy endings.
posted by karmaville at 10:56 AM PST - 38 comments

Patenting Genes

Monsanto Wins Fight to Control Plant The Canadian Supreme court sets international precedent by ruling that since Monsanto holds a patent on a gene, it can control the use of the plant. So does this mean that in the future that an engineered human gene could be patented, and therefore if you receive this gene you will have to make royalty payments? And if you renege on paying can they repo the gene?
posted by batboy at 10:28 AM PST - 32 comments

Bill Gates on weblogs and RSS.

Bill Gates on weblogs and RSS. It was inevitable, wasn't it?! Embrace and extend, baby. Embrace and extend...
posted by insomnia_lj at 10:25 AM PST - 17 comments

Robin Hood Tales.

Robin Hood Tales. Also including the Google cache because it is on Geocities.
posted by bargle at 10:04 AM PST - 1 comment

douglas feith

Douglas Feith - "What has the Pentagon's third man done wrong? Everything."
How many people know who Feith is? As the #3 man in the Pentagon, and a key architect of the war in Iraq, with many interesting affiliations more should. ,
posted by specialk420 at 8:36 AM PST - 13 comments

Chop.

"I showed them everything from a simple hook to a nonfunctioning artificial hand to a $50,000 bionic arm," Agris says. "They all picked the bionic arm." 7 Iraqi men recieve tattoo removal and a bionic arm.
posted by tomplus2 at 8:19 AM PST - 13 comments

UnPop

UnPop : Features such menaces to society/artists as Jim Goad and Boyd Rice. Most works of art and site NSFW.
posted by angry modem at 8:16 AM PST - 10 comments

Mac System 6

Remember Mac System 6? If you do, then P.dro Classic™ is for you. Relive the glory days of 1 bit-per-pixel porn (it's almost life-like if you squint) and Pong-like games with the mouse! Hey, it's Friday and this is Flash. For me, it's the Startup Sound that makes this.
posted by tommasz at 7:03 AM PST - 15 comments

Lewis and Clark Diaries?

Diaries of the Lewis and Clark Journey. American Journeys has a collection or primary source documents about the Lewis and Clark Journey across America, including the diary of Sergeant Charles Floyd (the only member of the expedition to die en route), Jefferson's letter to Clark where he suggests the expedition, and 63 engravings of Places and People. If you're into history, you might also want to vote on Wisconsin Turning Points, a ballot to determine the most interesting topics in Wisconsin History.
posted by rev- at 6:13 AM PST - 3 comments

Hey, hey LBJ! How many containers did you ship today?

Cargo cultists versus Christians. Two religions enter, one religion leaves! Differences have led to murder on an island near Oceania. Many of us learned about cargo cults from Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel. However, it seems that there's more to the story, including a Lyndon Johnson connection.
posted by Mayor Curley at 5:26 AM PST - 15 comments

Bea Arthur Kicks Serious Raptor Butt

Brandon Bird is originally from Sacramento. Bird's art serves to spread the light of truth and freedom across a nation of bitter and oppressed souls. We've seen his Law & Order coloring book, so see the rest!
posted by robocop is bleeding at 5:04 AM PST - 6 comments

A Ton o' Fats

Thomas Wright Waller would have been one hundred today! The web is filled with brief profiles, even Ken Burns has got in on the act and laid his deathly touch on him. Luckily there are some sites with a little more meat, a nice article from The Atlantic, streaming audio so you can hear some of his music, pictures, an explanation of stride piano (.au) by Billy Taylor, and a nice piece from Weekend Edition. Happy birthday Fats!
posted by Quinbus Flestrin at 4:49 AM PST - 6 comments

Know Music?

From Abba to Zappa
posted by davehat at 4:36 AM PST - 16 comments

Badass Test

So You Think You're Fundamentally Badass, Do You? Well...*hearty guffaw*... take the test and think again, dude! ( That is, ass if I knew what badass or kickass or even ass itself meant...)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:47 AM PST - 27 comments

May 20

A Bad Decade to Be a Railfan

It's a bad decade to be a railfan. The latest overreaction to terrorism comes at the expense of train enthusiasts. As of this week, New York is now off-limits to traingeeks. In honor of this misunderstood hobby, here's some links to some railfan photo sites I enjoy.
posted by PrinceValium at 9:50 PM PST - 18 comments

The Attack of the Giant Red Octopus

The Attack of the Giant Red Octopus.
posted by hama7 at 6:13 PM PST - 9 comments

Watch out, boogers

Captain Underpants and the Big, Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy! Every time I sit down to peruse MeFi I hear "there goes daddy on the blue again." Once they realized that some of their favorite flash sites came from the blue they wanted daddy to put up their favorite. Well here it is, my boys present to you Captain Underpants' battle with the Bionic Booger Boy, a gross interpretation of Galaxian. If you have young boys, check out the author's site and his books. Dave Pilkey has written a slew of incredibly funny and readable books for young kids, especially young boys.
posted by caddis at 4:18 PM PST - 7 comments

The truth is out there!

Viewing porn will make you want to kill, kill. KILL. And Dr, Science will prove it. He has a degree in science.
posted by Wulfgar! at 4:16 PM PST - 35 comments

Gay Marriage in Scandinavia

Scandinavia has had gay marriage for years, and surprise surprise, the institution has not collapsed. It's amazing how rarely Americans take advantage of these sorts of international comparisons...
posted by MikeB at 4:02 PM PST - 32 comments

grossest apartment dweller moves out

Grossest neighbor moves out. "About a year ago we noticed a foul smell coming through the walls of our bedroom from the apartment next door..."
posted by tsarfan at 3:00 PM PST - 43 comments

communion rights?

Communion rights? There is a lot of controversy regarding communion these days. Seems like the Church wants to hold it hostage in order to get what they want politically regarding abortion. Kerry is criticized for taking it, NJ Gov. McGreevy can't have it. But what about Pols that support the death penalty, shouldn't they abstain too? When it comes to communion, should anyone be getting in line these days?
posted by lilboo at 2:02 PM PST - 36 comments

Tuesdays with Maury

Not exactly renewing my faith in humanity. Evidently even mentioning Maury Povitch on your website will result in receiving hundreds of comments from people who believe they are writing to Maury himself. The results are predictably unpredictable. (NOTE: Have a sense of irony and 20 minutes handy before clicking)
posted by BrodieShadeTree at 12:37 PM PST - 73 comments

We know where you live!

Reason magazine uses individualized data to give its subscribers a '1984'-style surprise. The idea surfaced a year ago at a cocktail party: What if you opened your mailbox to find a national magazine with your name on the cover and the headline "They Know Where You Live!" — under an aerial photo of your house? And what if, when you turned the page, the editor's note and the advertisements included details about your neighbors? (LA Times/Reg. Rqd)
posted by ColdChef at 12:06 PM PST - 23 comments

Not eligible to donate.

FDA bans sexually active gay men from donating sperm and tissues
posted by magullo at 11:56 AM PST - 33 comments

Singing thank you, for a real good time!

The Leeching Never Stopped! Archive.org is adding the complete live catalog of the Grateful Dead. There are still a few gaps, but they already offer over 1,300 shows for download. Get early favorties, all-time classics, famous guests, the last show, and nearly everything in between, in lossless and mp3 formats.
posted by muckster at 11:28 AM PST - 37 comments

Rocks from the sky

Sure, you've seen pictures of Meteor Crater, Arizona, but are there any impact craters near you? Probably.
posted by ewagoner at 11:04 AM PST - 10 comments

A real life professor frink

Maybe the age of the individual inventor isn't over. Woody Norris is the inventor of the personal helicopter, precise Hypersonic sound emitter, and the first palm-size digital voice recorder... And never graduated from college.
posted by drezdn at 11:03 AM PST - 3 comments

Troy (the movie) in 15 minutes.

Troy (the movie) in 15 minutes. Just in case you didn't feel like sitting through the whole ten years two hours 43 minutes. via BoingBoing

Bedroom of Helen of Troy Sparta
PARIS: Hey, baby, I brought you a pearl necklace.
HELEN [weepy]: I can’t wear it because I’m sort of already married to that other guy but we’ve been doing the royal nasty for a week already anyway and you’re going to leave tomorrow and WAHHHHH.
PARIS: You could stow away and come with me and start a war that will end up killing 90% of the cast and totally be the downfall of my people and my kingdom!
HELEN: *sniff* I think… that’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.

posted by gottabefunky at 10:47 AM PST - 10 comments

"Our" man no longer

Surprise, surprise ... is Ahmed Chalabi the next terrorist in the making?
posted by mrgrimm at 9:39 AM PST - 37 comments

I kill people in my songs so I don't have to kill them in real life. -Nick Cave

NASA Fired Will Carpenter for writing a short story. "Some kind of harrassment," they said, and since Texas is an at-will employment state, there's not much he can do about it. Is this story a valid means of self-expression or a harrassing glimpse into jilted anger? I've stumbled across more and more news stories about people being fired for writing, and students expelled for writing "dark poetry" in the classroom. How much do you have to keep secret from your classmates and co-workers?
posted by keef at 8:43 AM PST - 28 comments

Well, they're not doing people yet.

Where's Thursday, May 6 ? - Nightline "disappears" show segment - OK, I've waited almost 2 weeks. Now, it's official - Nightline "disappeared" it's own show. On Thursday May 6, 2004, Nightline featured, prominently, a call for a phased US pullout from Iraq by Retired Lieutenant General, William Odom - Ronald Reagan's head of the National Security Agency. Odom recommended turning the whole mess over to the UN. Mention of Odom or the segment is kind of hard to pry out of ABC . You can buy a transcript though, so this isn't really censorship, right?...........
posted by troutfishing at 8:28 AM PST - 9 comments

Ohio Wants God in Schools

A bill currently under consideration in the Ohio General Assembly would force public schools to "display the official motto of the United States of America 'In God We Trust' and the official motto of Ohio 'With God, All Things Are Possible' in each classroom, auditorium, and cafeteria of each school building in the district." Ohio Public Radio reports here.
posted by Otis at 8:10 AM PST - 30 comments

Speech isn't free if it's critical.

Poetry isn't free speech for these students. Bill Nevins, a New Mexico high school teacher was fired last year and classes in poetry and the poetry club at Rio Rancho High School were permanently terminated because he refused to censor a student's poetry that was "un-American."
posted by agregoli at 8:00 AM PST - 39 comments

If Picasso ever painted a library, it might look like this.

Virtual tour of the new Seattle Central Library. Built from a critically acclaimed design by Rem Koolhaas, this library opens Sunday. The design makes me want to paint my staircase bright yellow, or maybe move to Seattle.
posted by profwhat at 7:08 AM PST - 29 comments

Why I made that film

Why I made that film. The Guardian gets the first interview with the unknown, female, 21-year-old American star of "the most explicit mainstream movie ever" (copyright all newspapers, everywhere).
posted by ascullion at 2:11 AM PST - 44 comments

May 19

this world:One Day at War

One Day of War "Across the world today, millions of people are caught up in conflict. BBC filmmakers follow 16 different characters in 16 different war zones over a 24-hour period."
posted by raaka at 11:22 PM PST - 5 comments

No chance for MeFites

Want to fly free? Song may accommodate you. All you have to do is be nice.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 11:03 PM PST - 5 comments

Weird Cats

Feline medical curiosities. Polydactyly, conjoined-kitty-fu, "freaks of face," cleft palates, and plain old huge. (Not safe for after lunch).
posted by digaman at 9:52 PM PST - 6 comments

Award-Winning Student Websites

Award-Winning Student Websites from a program called the Global Virtual Classroom, which has just announced the opening of applications for a repeat of the contest for the 2004-05 school year. Check out an example of the quality work these kids put together.
posted by fpatrick at 9:12 PM PST - 5 comments

Bitch Hit My Truck

Bitch Hit My Truck: Is this for real?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 6:56 PM PST - 49 comments

Faraday Wave video

This cornstarch, it vibrates. (wmv 4MB)
posted by stbalbach at 6:14 PM PST - 23 comments

Iraq's rebel cleric gains surge in popularity

Iraq's rebel cleric gains surge in popularity An Iraqi poll to be released next week shows a surge in the popularity of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical young Shia cleric fighting coalition forces, and suggests nearly nine out of 10 Iraqis see US troops as occupiers and not liberators or peacekeepers.
posted by Postroad at 5:20 PM PST - 35 comments

You thought they were only round and black!

The Internet Museum of Flexi, Cardboard and Oddity Records
posted by anastasiav at 4:17 PM PST - 8 comments

Ted Turner's Good Deed

NTI Working for a Safer World Concerned that the threat from nuclear weapons had fallen off most people's radar screens after the end of the Cold War, CNN founder Ted Turner asked former Senator Sam Nunn in the spring of 2000 to help assess whether a private organization could make a difference. After months of discussions and consultations with some of the world's most respected security experts, Mr. Turner and Senator Nunn founded the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) in January 2001. NTI is supported by a pledge from Mr. Turner and other private contributions. Although originally focused on nuclear threats, the NTI site has areas covering chemical, biological, and other WMDs. They have a well balanced Question the Candidates area. I like the site because it appears to be politically neutral with no agenda past eliminating these global risks.
posted by Red58 at 3:21 PM PST - 3 comments

The Adventure of the Wooden Spoon

"If this was Jane Austen or Charles Dickens, there would be a national outcry". Thousands of personal papers belonging to Sherlock Holmes creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, fetched $1.7 million at an auction Wednesday, with many items sold to private U.S. collectors. The auction was a great disappointment to scholars who had hoped the papers would be donated to a public institution. The archive also became entwined in a mystery worthy of Conan Doyle's fictional detective: the bizarre death of a leading Holmes scholar. Lancelyn Green, 50, was found dead in his bed on March 27, garroted with a shoelace tightened by a wooden spoon, and surrounded by stuffed toys. (more inside)
posted by matteo at 2:36 PM PST - 11 comments

.

Andy Kaufman back from the dead? With a blogspot sequel, no less -- Heartbeeps II: Back in the Habit
posted by jimmy at 2:01 PM PST - 34 comments

Decameron Web

Decameron Web: A Growing Hypermedia Archive of Boccaccio's Masterpiece.
posted by hama7 at 1:46 PM PST - 6 comments

Michael Moore Hates America

Michael Moore Hates America is a new documentary looking to discredit filmmaker Michael Moore. Moore's new film, Fahrenheit 9/11 is causing quite a stir at the Cannes Film Festival, where it has been met with rave reviews, and standing ovations lasting upwards of 20 minutes. With Moore's recent distribution problems with the film, a new project seeks to challenge Moore to distribute his film for free via the internet to prove that "the message is more important than the money," and to silence his critics, who contend that with the immense profits his controversial film is sure to garner, he is a "war profiteer" just like Halliburton.
posted by banished at 1:23 PM PST - 69 comments

Sex and violence

Sex and PsyOps. An interesting look at sexual propaganda throughout modern military history. Unfortunately slightly censored, but a good look into what may or may not have been an effective demoralization tool.
posted by eas98 at 11:53 AM PST - 25 comments

Won't someone please think of the carbs?

I Declare This Thursday, May 20th, National Carb Awareness Day. A food lover lashes back.
posted by mathowie at 9:22 AM PST - 61 comments

What do the Unitarians believe?

Unitarians denied tax-exempt status in Texas. Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn ruled that Unitarian churches don't qualify as religious organizations because they lack a single creed. In issuing this ruling, Strayhorn ignored the fact that lower courts and the Texas Supreme Court have both ruled against the Comptroller's Office in an ongoing lawsuit stemming from a similar ruling (by a former Comptroller) in 1997. Strayhorn has vowed to continue the legal fight to the U.S. Supreme Court, stating that "Otherwise, any wannabe cult who dresses up and parades down Sixth Street on Halloween will be applying for an exemption." (if you run into userid/password issues, use "bugmenot@fastmail.us" and "privacy")
posted by Irontom at 8:57 AM PST - 48 comments

Dome Photography

Domes and Cupolas From the New Yorker: "David Stephenson's photographs gaze directly up at the interiors of domes, flattening them and - through long exposure times - revealing details and colors that can't be discerned in normal viewing. The results are bright, kaleidoscopic patterns made up of the Moorish arabesques of the Alhambra, the iconic decorations of a former imperial chapel near Moscow, and the cool, almost Mediterranean blues of a Hungarian synagogue." Stephenson's work is currently on exhibition in New York. Other pages of his work can be found here and here.
posted by livii at 8:54 AM PST - 5 comments

I am convinced that the Congressional offices are full of dealers and hos.

The sensationally sordid Staff Ass sex scandal. Young DC congressional staff assistant starts juicy blog. (edited cache). Blog describes carryings on with many men, including a married Bush appointee who pays her for sex. Washington's most amusing and best read new blogger, Wonkette, links to it, picking out choice quotes. Within hours, the blog is gone, the girl is fired. Now another blogger outs the girl's boss as a Republican Senator. Fun!
posted by CunningLinguist at 8:48 AM PST - 165 comments

Google to Search Your PC For You

The John Markoff of the New York Times [registration required] reports that Google plans to roll-out a text and file search tool code-named Puffin for finding information stored on PCs. The move is seen as a defensive one; Microsoft plans to include PC searching in its new operating system, scheduled to be released in 2006 (at the earliest).
posted by tranquileye at 8:40 AM PST - 7 comments

Homestar Runner Wiki

Homestar Runner Wiki — People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like. Fhqwhgads!
posted by jdroth at 8:32 AM PST - 15 comments

Information wants to be free!

I'm done with The Onion. I trusted The Onion and read their comedy for free for years -- but after hundreds of issues of unbelievable comedy The Onion is now a "pay site" that charges $30 a year for earlier access to each week's issue, plus awesome-sounding online news radio and special election coverage! I'm mad! Oh yeah!!!
posted by josh at 7:57 AM PST - 39 comments

May 18

A kinder, gentler Critical Mass

Tonight (or tomorrow night, ymmv) marks the 2nd Annual Ride of Silence, a solemn testament to those that have been injured or killed while biking on the roads. Begun last year in Dallas in tribute to local ultramarathoner Larry Schwartz, it began as a one-time tribute. Apparently, there was enough National interest to make this an annual event, and this year more than 50 cities in the U.S. and Canada are participating.
posted by Ufez Jones at 10:09 PM PST - 19 comments

The Moral Case Against the Iraq War

The Moral Case Against the Iraq War
Also on the moral tip, Memos Reveal War Crimes Warnings
internal January 25, 2002, memo by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales (PDF)
posted by y2karl at 8:59 PM PST - 35 comments

*yawn* what else is on?

War Frames - What TV shows to a nation at war.
posted by Space Coyote at 6:17 PM PST - 6 comments

Spears is Dead

Sleep with me, I'm not too young. Backmasking in Britney Spears song?
posted by drezdn at 5:54 PM PST - 58 comments

11,500-mile Moped Journey

"In the summer of 1978 I undertook a 3-month 11,500-mile journey by moped from Toronto to Alaska (USA) and back to Toronto. This website contains a complete travelogue of this trip, with over 300 photographs and a description of the trip, plus technical information about the moped and details of the trip."
posted by stbalbach at 5:10 PM PST - 15 comments

where earlier in the day there used to be the biggest Toys R Us in the world, in its place is now a store that sells the nastiest sex toys in the world.

Choose Your Own New York You're in town to visit your wealthy and eccentric Aunt Ginny, who is spending the day having her blood replaced with Botox on the Upper East Side. Now you have the entire day to yourself to explore the most exciting city in the world! -- A Choose Your Own Adventure story, updated.
posted by amberglow at 4:55 PM PST - 11 comments

Games Without Frontiers

Games Without Frontiers It'd be much funnier if it weren't so true.
posted by Fupped Duck at 4:40 PM PST - 18 comments

The Jesus Landing Pad

The Jesus Landing Pad "It was an e-mail we weren't meant to see. Not for our eyes were the notes that showed White House staffers taking two-hour meetings with Christian fundamentalists..."
posted by Postroad at 2:18 PM PST - 69 comments

Except not every scene in Harry Potter revolves around a cell phone...

The Harry Potter series and the Left Behind series are more alike than you might think...
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 2:16 PM PST - 7 comments

Jon Stewart's (Class of '84) Commencement Address

Jon Stewart's William & Mary Commencement Address
posted by ColdChef at 2:13 PM PST - 30 comments

90 Sols in 90 Seconds

With all this talk of wars in distant countries, it's easy to forget that there's exciting things going on just 300 million km from your back porch. NASA has provided 90 second videos of the first 90 sols of the Spirit [5MB .mov] and Opportunity rovers [5MB .mov].
posted by fatbobsmith at 12:59 PM PST - 11 comments

Honking in Heaven

No longer happy and peppy. But still bursting with love, maybe. Broadway will honor the late Tony Randall tonight by dimming its lights at 8PM EDT. For those of us who can't stand pits, pits, pits in our juice, juice, juice, always remember: The world is a circus if you look at it the right way. Every time you pick up a handful of dust, and see not the dust but mystery, a marvel, there in your hand. Every time you stop and think, "I'm alive. And being alive is fantastic." Every time such a thing happens, you are part of the circus of Dr. Lao.
posted by Oriole Adams at 12:52 PM PST - 10 comments

Po' mans akamai

Welcome to FreeCache Got a huge media file you want to link to but are afraid you'll kill the user's bandwidth? The Internet Archive currently has Freecache in beta which provides free edge serving for the rest of us.
posted by bitdamaged at 11:28 AM PST - 6 comments

http://silent-movies.com/

Silent Movies.
posted by hama7 at 11:16 AM PST - 4 comments

Daily Reason to Dispatch Bush

Daily Reason to Dispatch Bush
McSweeney's fans the flames a little higher... with annotation.
posted by putzface_dickman at 11:02 AM PST - 23 comments

Too much time on their hands...

Cicadaville. We all know cicadas are on their way above ground this summer, but "Most of the information about cicadas in the media is false. Only at Cicadaville.com can you learn the real truth." Protect your children!
posted by adamms222 at 10:44 AM PST - 8 comments

Famous Unsolved Codes and Ciphers

Famous Unsolved Codes and Ciphers
posted by anastasiav at 9:54 AM PST - 13 comments

The internet guide to freighter travel.

The internet guide to freighter travel. "Traveling on a containership is not better than sex, though it does last longer."
posted by bingo at 9:21 AM PST - 29 comments

People who need people...

Friendeavor Helps you find a local activity partner. Though no matter how I searched, no one will help you bury a body.
posted by FunkyHelix at 8:49 AM PST - 9 comments

a romatic night by the fire, tossing in hamburger

Renewable energy: thinking outside the (clamshell) box. The US Dept. of Agriculture has given notice that funds are available for "developing renewable energy systems from the use of diseased livestock as a process raw material for the energy source." As in, all the cattle killed during December's Mad Cow Disease scare. Because "traditional rendering processes were determined not to effectively deactivate the infectivity of prions."
posted by bendybendy at 6:22 AM PST - 25 comments

'Eleven Twelve' by Braces Tower

One two three, four five, six seven nine ten, eleven twelve. [6.5mb .wmv]. An excellent remix video of the the Sesame Street 'Pinball Song'. Features the Pointer Sisters on vocals, apparently. The remix was done by Braces Tower, who also have the mp3 up on their site.
posted by tapeguy at 6:22 AM PST - 27 comments

Are you an Asinus Petasatus? Then you'll love this...

Arsole? Putrescine? Dickite? Moronic Acid? This list of Molecules with Silly or Unusual Names (one NSFW image) proves that scientists can be funny, as does this Stuffy Scientists page, and Mark Isaak's terribly thorough Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature (see, especially, Puns). If you are tempted to wonder what the Father of Taxonomy might have thought of the irreverence of those last two collections, keep in mind that Linnaeus himself named this plant "Clitoria Mariana" in honor of an 'acquaintance', according to this page.
posted by taz at 1:42 AM PST - 10 comments

Chika Chika Chicka BOW

And you thought that guy from Police Academy was good. As a five-year-old child, Dokaka hummed along with melodies on television, but one day plugged headphones into the TV, discovering that the sounds in his head matched those piping through the headphones. He quickly realized that songs consist of many parts like bass, drums, etc. Within a year, he began to record himself humming. (Via http://linkfilter.net/) Smells like teen spirit indeed!
posted by jopreacher at 1:00 AM PST - 28 comments

May 17

Thomas Morton

The Pagan Pilgrim: Thomas Morton and the Maypole of Merrymount.
posted by homunculus at 9:40 PM PST - 7 comments

Boop

Blog-a-Log. Nerve crosses blogging/personals with Survivor.
posted by dobbs at 9:17 PM PST - 1 comment

Get 'em while they're hot

What would you swap for a gmail account? "Everyone's talking about Gmail, but it's still only a handful of lucky ducks who have snagged an account. And while the rest of us go hungry, you can be sure that the best email addresses are being gulped down by nefarious hooligans. gmail swap tells the people with Gmail about the people without."
posted by dogmatic at 6:12 PM PST - 105 comments

New Orleans WPA Projects

The New Orleans WPA Photograph Collection exclusively shows photographs of depression-era projects from Louisiana, so there's a whole set of WPA projects -- from the world-famous Golden Gate Bridge, to venerated Doubleday Field, to the beautiful but obscure Border Station in Naco, AZ -- that you just won't see here. Nevertheless, if you take the time to explore this site you will find some truly wonderful photographs. Some are more technical surveyor-style photographs, but others are akin to the realist style being carved out at the time by folks like Walker Evans, who actually did do some photography for the Farm Security Administration (another New Deal-era project).
posted by .kobayashi. at 2:53 PM PST - 6 comments

These bodies are FREE, so get one NOW!

These bodies are FREE, so get one NOW!: Advertising and Branding in Social Virtual Worlds. [abstract / PDF]. Related to this thread.
posted by signal at 12:25 PM PST - 2 comments

Bzzzzt... thank you for flying!

Reach Out and Zap Someone. Bruce Schneier points out a link on how to turn a normal everyday disposable camera into a stun gun in his most recent Crypto-Gram. Honestly Mr. DHS it's to take pictures of the kids...
posted by togdon at 11:11 AM PST - 21 comments

Abu Ghraib: Same Service, Under New Management

Rumsfeld knew. More revelations from Seymour Hersch at The New Yorker.
posted by digaman at 9:26 AM PST - 119 comments

Sarin Gas in Iraq...

Sarin gas bomb used in Iraq... Could this be the beginning of chemical warfare by the insurgents? Sarin is a particularly nasty one too that has been previously used by terrorists. Did the CIA actually call it correctly?
posted by darian at 8:54 AM PST - 63 comments

Game Theories: Are these virtual worlds the best place to study the real one?

Game Theories: Are these virtual worlds the best place to study the real one? The Gross National Product of EverQuest, measured by how much wealth all the players together created in a single year inside the game. It turned out to be $2,266 U.S. per capita. By World Bank rankings, that made EverQuest richer than India, Bulgaria, or China, and nearly as wealthy as Russia. (by Clive Thompson)
posted by hoder at 5:38 AM PST - 11 comments

May 16

Never look at Kermit the same way again.

Things that go moo in the night. We've all heard of the possessed Raggedy Anne doll, the eBay haunted painting, and the talking mongoose. But what about the rest, the dancing cows, the evil muppets, and the Kermit-like, child-molesting frogs? Ludicrous enough to be true?
posted by lychee at 11:18 PM PST - 15 comments

Build your own wokfi system!

USB adaptors & a Spider Skimmer = Poor Man's Wifi!
posted by X-00 at 6:45 PM PST - 7 comments

MetaNanoTech

Molecular Media Project.
posted by Gyan at 5:13 PM PST - 7 comments

Punch

Punch Cartoons Punch set the standard for Victorian satirical cartooning. The Victorian Web hosts a number of cartoons arranged according to topic; see also Punch on the British Empire. Some students in Anthony Wohl's senior seminar at Vassar did a good job annotating a number of images. You can find late Victorian cartoons, as well as cartoonists' biographies, here. Of course, the current incarnation of Punch has a few things to say about its own history.
posted by thomas j wise at 4:07 PM PST - 6 comments

KidsInWonderland

Twisted Photos [via Waxy.org]
posted by srboisvert at 2:51 PM PST - 11 comments

Black, White and Brown

Black, White & Brown. A great 9-part video feature on the NYT site (registration required) featuring a discussing between Cornel West and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. commemorating the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.
posted by adrober at 1:32 PM PST - 2 comments

This is TOO close

A tornado picks up a house while a storm chaser tapes it. Later, he finds himself getting a little too close for comfort. (27 meg download - some swearing) Fortunately, no one was in that house at the time.
posted by pyramid termite at 1:23 PM PST - 37 comments

I listen to the Chieftens

So, why don't you like doing interviews? Modest Mouse's Isaac Brock takes the piss. [wmv]
posted by dobbs at 12:07 PM PST - 19 comments

We're not, I think, un-Hellenized.

C. P. Cavafy. With English translations and Greek originals of his published poems. An introduction to a collection of his poetry by Auden, and a museum exhibit about his life.
posted by kenko at 11:55 AM PST - 9 comments

Nil points!

The best bits (RealVideo) of the 2004 Eurovision Song Contest, complete with a sampling of UK's Terry Wogan's legendary commentary.
posted by Mwongozi at 11:54 AM PST - 11 comments

Robert Ingersoll

Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Great Agnostic."
posted by homunculus at 11:39 AM PST - 7 comments

I'd never sell an idolatrous wig, madam...

"A hair-raising fear of idols" - Orthodox hair crisis ".....The storm began four weeks ago, when someone told the rabbis that most natural wigs imported from Europe are actually made of Indian hair. Two years ago, rumors had begun circulating that this hair was bought from Indian priests who gathered it up after the women cut it during a Hindu religious ceremony. This would be a serious problem, since Jewish law forbids the use of objects employed in idol worship (which in Judaism means all polytheistic religions). Apparently many wig-sellers concealed the fact that their wigs, though made in Europe, used Indian hair" (Ha'aretz, Friday, May 14 2004)
posted by troutfishing at 10:32 AM PST - 49 comments

History of Kissing

History of Kissing. Swapping spit consumes about 336 hours of the average person's life.
posted by stbalbach at 9:59 AM PST - 12 comments

The Spot

The Spot is back. The mid-nineties experiment in creating an online soap returns, telling the story of some new housemates via webdiaries, photographs and videos. You can see the original site via The Wayback Machine. I'm suddenly overtaken by a nostalgic glow.
posted by feelinglistless at 9:49 AM PST - 13 comments

In policy reversal, US signals possible acceptance of theocracy in Iraq

In policy reversal, US signals possible acceptance of theocracy in Iraq Bringing democracy to the area...Ladies: do we have some surprises in store for you. Is Iran to be the model? "The United States signaled its readiness to put up with an Islamic theocracy in future sovereign Iraq, with Secretary of State Colin Powell saying the US administration "will have to accept" any government created as a result of free and fair elections there. ..."
posted by Postroad at 8:29 AM PST - 25 comments

Interactive Church Music Player

Interactive Church Music Player The LDS Church has created a cool new tool for exploring its hymnbooks: a Flash application that not only shows the sheet music, but allows transposition, tempo changes, part selection, and all kinds of other nifty things.
posted by oissubke at 8:06 AM PST - 13 comments

That's Goo-GOL

A hundred times no! The family of the man who coined the term "Googol" (well, to be honest, he swiped it from a nine-year-old kid) are angry that Google hasn't given them a taste of the upcoming IPO.
posted by baltimore at 7:27 AM PST - 23 comments

May 15

The Hillbilly Housewife.

The Hillbilly Housewife. "I am just a humble, barefoot, hillbilly woman with too many irons in the fire like most folks...You will not find nutrional information with these recipe because I do not beleive that God intends normal, everyday eating to be a burden for His children."
posted by bingo at 10:41 PM PST - 77 comments

A Case of Curiosities

Boxing squirrels, the Kitten Princess of Winter, and the Birmingham Roller Diva with mouse skeleton are some of the odder exhibits in the Case of Curiosities. Taxidermy and assemblage inspired by fairy tales.
posted by Slagman at 10:13 PM PST - 5 comments

Cooking, Seduction And National Cultures

The Food Of Love: Oh, forget about music already. What should you cook if you want to woo a lover? According to Lisa Hilton, it all depends on what nationality (s)he is and what country you're living in... P.S. Shame on The Observer for choosing the inflammatory but incidental title I've Never Had Good Sex With A Vegetarian!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:11 PM PST - 23 comments

like those helicopters at the end of Vietnam?

Leaving Iraq -- William Lind, the Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation, writes of contingency planning, and our coming escape from Iraq, while keeping as many troops alive as possible. The Wash. Post weighs in as well with "How the US can get out" listing the not-too-pleasant options.
posted by amberglow at 7:53 PM PST - 19 comments

Stalking the Bogeyman

"This time last year I was plotting to kill a man. I was going to walk up to him, reintroduce myself and then blow his balls off. I was going to watch him writhe like a poisoned cockroach for a few seconds, then kick him onto his stomach and put three bullets in the back of his head. This time last year I had a gun, and a silencer, and a plan." Westword's best writer makes a couple admissions.
posted by raaka at 7:48 PM PST - 27 comments

nicole blackman's courtesan tales

Courtesan Tales are thirteen intimate tales of the senses, designed for a blindfolded audience of one, as told by Nicole Blackman (of golden palominos, scanner, recoil and KMFDM). The tales have returned to New York for May.
posted by milovoo at 2:34 PM PST - 4 comments

MeFi Detective hats ON!

Is Elena another Kaycee? (Scroll down to posts by "dizzy') Someone who claims to have knowledge of the Chernobyl Dead Zone posted to a number of motorcycle forums claiming that Elena coloured the truth quite a bit with her highly publicized Chernobyl motorcycle trip. [More inside]
posted by SpecialK at 1:49 PM PST - 43 comments

Pitcairn Island

Fascinating article about the history of tiny, remote Pitcairn Island. [More inside]
posted by iffley at 1:17 PM PST - 12 comments

"Yeah, why should blokes have all the fun?":

"Yeah, why should blokes have all the fun?": A compendium of tech products and gadgets marketed towards women.
posted by naxosaxur at 1:07 PM PST - 7 comments

There must be somebody else there besides your wife

The orchid, I think is the most beautiful variety of flower. If not for my black thumb I'd gladly devote some time to growing this gorgeous flowers. The main link is to the Internet Orchid Photo Encyclopedia. There's apparently a cultural phenomena involving orchids that even includes tails of theft. A case of Nicaraguan theft has even been likened to rape. NOVA has done an episode on it, which sadly I haven't seen. They're an amazingly diverse species.
posted by substrate at 12:40 PM PST - 11 comments

Playing With Time...

Playing With Time uses time lapse photography and computer animation to show events that normally happen too fast or too slow for humans to perceive. (via Neat Net Tricks newsletter)
posted by Jaybo at 11:23 AM PST - 9 comments

Ebony & Ivory

Brown v Board of Education 50 years after a "landmark" decision not a lot seems to have changed in old Milwaukee.Via The Guardian
posted by johnny7 at 8:43 AM PST - 5 comments

"ON MY COMMAND—UNLEASH HELL"

Inside the shadowy world of oppo. Interesting long article from the Atlantic about playing dirty in US election campaigns. "We think of ourselves as the creators of the ammunition in a war. We make the bullets."
posted by CunningLinguist at 7:43 AM PST - 9 comments

10 Stories

Ten Stories the World Should Hear More About.
posted by homunculus at 12:14 AM PST - 23 comments

Matthew effect

The Matthew effect "It was Merton who identified and named the tendency always to assign exclusive scientific credit to the most eminent among all the plausible candidates. At least I hope it was he, though I'm sure Merton, who invented many wonderful jokes himself, would have been delighted if the credit for it turned out to be misattributed to him." Or is this called the flypaper effect? The question remains: Who popularized the phrase 'Shut up and Calculate!'
posted by vacapinta at 12:08 AM PST - 2 comments

Texas Politics

Before Enron Houston, Texas had been the locus of a stock scandal of a slightly different sort. Growing up in Houston in the 80s and 90s, I never associated the word "Sharpstown" with anything but a mall, but the area underwent a development mired in scandal.

In the late 1960s Frank W. Sharp, a Houston businessman, negotiated a deal with a few Texas House Democrats; they would help pass a piece of legislation, and in turn, he would ensure that they would make a profit from his company's stock. In 1971, the dealings came to light. Most of the public officials connected with the scandal were run out of office, but somehow one man beat the resulting karma, even it was a a few decades later. But some good did come out of this, as the Texas Open Records Act was expanded in the aftermath of the scandal.
posted by lychee at 12:05 AM PST - 3 comments

May 14

So Called Liberal Media

A choice quote, probably soon to fall down the memory hole:
More people than not believe that going to war with Iraq was the right thing to do, but that number has declined to 48 percent in this poll, compared to 53 percent in April.
Any other amusing misprints, on either side of the debate?
posted by effugas at 6:33 PM PST - 35 comments

What is the future of the US stock market?

Why Stock Markets Crash : Critical Events in Complex Financial Systems. Professor Didier Sornette of UCLA has some very interesting things to say about stock markets. In his book, he explains how his "theory of cooperative herding and imitation [...] has detected the existence of a clear signature of herding in the decay of the US S&P500 index since August 2000 with high statistical significance, in the form of strong log-periodic components." Although his timing has been just a bit early, the theory, the predictions to date and the pictures are all pretty uncanny. This is easily the most interesting book on the stock market I have ever read and provides interesting and believable hypotheses about things I never imagined could have rigorous explanations. For an overview, here is an interview with the author.
posted by muppetboy at 6:14 PM PST - 19 comments

"I once had a high that not even crack cocaine could match."

Cold Turkey by Kurt Vonnegut.
posted by xowie at 5:21 PM PST - 21 comments

U.S. Military Bars Some Iraq Interrogation Methods

U.S. Military Bars Some Iraq Interrogation Methods ...The officials said the decision was made on Thursday by the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, on the same day that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld met with him on a surprise trip to the country and visited the Abu Ghraib facility on the outskirts of Baghdad. .. Is this a tacit admission that what took place was not simply rogue actions by individuals but rather military folks following orders of some kind? And, then, why do the new ground rules apply just to Iraq and not to other places?
posted by Postroad at 5:01 PM PST - 26 comments

Poverty's palette

In our mind's eye, much of the past exists in black and white. (via gordon.coale)
posted by madamjujujive at 4:17 PM PST - 38 comments

Yes, but did you have GOSUB?

How I lost my childhood: It may seem hopelessly lame to many, but as as child I, and many others of the same time period -- the first children of the microcomputer revolution -- spent many hours in front of our shiny new home computers reverently copying in BASIC programs from source printouts in books and magazines. For some, myself included, this was the launchpad into a sexy, exciting, fascinating career as a professional geek. Now, the book that was one of my sacred texts during this time period, David Ahl's BASIC Computer Games, is available, scanned, online. [via Boing Boing]
posted by jammer at 3:34 PM PST - 34 comments

Everest is on, baby!

It's mid-May and for outdoor adventurer fans that means one thing: thanks to major weather pattern shifts, the tiny window of opportunity for climbing Mt. Everest is upon us. The first to summit this year looks to be a team from Mexico and Canada, planning to hit the top on Sunday morning. Of course, summiting Everest is a dangerous endeavor, and the crowds on the trail can often lead to disaster. In other mt. climbing news, the north face of the Eiger is unclimbable this year.
posted by mathowie at 12:52 PM PST - 16 comments

The head bone's connected to...

Having half of your skull missing isn't a disability. Here, take this hockey helmet, and have a nice day.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 12:35 PM PST - 24 comments

Gay Marriage Opponents See Fight Getting Tougher

Gay Marriage Opponents See Fight Getting Tougher ...or from a liberal view: "Whoo hoo!" The Boston Globe has a good article about the 'setback' that is about to happen to society on May 17th. No, not Brown vs. Board of Education's 50th Anniversary, but the Mass. Supreme Judicial Court's decision that gays and lesbians deserve equal marriage rights under the Mass. state constitution. ---- The Globe has an exhaustive list of links and opinions from both sides of the issue, including video clips, a full timeline of the Goodrich case, and even national news and opinions on the issue. ---- (This is my first FPP.)
posted by andreaazure at 12:01 PM PST - 19 comments

Look Magazine

Emmett Till's murder case has been reopened, nearly fifty years after the killers' acquittal. Don't I mean alleged killers? No, the cretins happily confessed all to a national newsweekly after their trial. A thousand details here, and a couple more in the subsequent letters to the editor, that will forever kill any nostalgia you might have for the "old days."
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 11:56 AM PST - 8 comments

outsource the 2004 election!!!!!

indian electronic voting vs. diebold
"Reading this article, some of you might remember that Cold war era joke, about NASA and its multi million dollar experiment with a pen that can write in micro gravity to solve the writing problems of astronauts, and the Russian solution of using a Pencil to solve the same problem."
posted by quonsar at 11:00 AM PST - 29 comments

Smarty pants!

Where do you live, among a bastion of geeks, or sea of academia-phobes? US Census released the smartest cities, states, and counties with Seattle and Raleigh topping the cities. Also for those who are politically curious, of the top 15 states with Bachelor degrees 11 went to Gore, while 13 of the bottom 15 went to Bush.
posted by humbe at 11:00 AM PST - 27 comments

genuine compassion

“Medical Consequences of What Homosexuals Do” (warning: extremely graphic verbal description; for a different perspective, here's a critique on the use of some references). "Homosexuals are sexually troubled people engaging in dangerous activities. Because we care about them and those tempted to join them, it is important that we neither encourage nor legitimize such a destructive lifestyle." Discuss.
posted by 111 at 10:29 AM PST - 188 comments

And if you look to your left

The Great Wall of China can be seen from space after all.
posted by Mwongozi at 10:26 AM PST - 11 comments

Brutally honest personals

Brutally Honest Personals. Hers: "Even though I run marathons, I still can't lose those few pounds. But I can probably kick someone to death with my legs of steel." His: "When I do have a job, it's low paying, and credit consolidators take half of what I earn. I'm behind on my rent, emotionally closed, and take medication to treat my depression." Esquire comes up with personal ads for people who are tired of being excessively positive -- will the trend ever catch on for resumes and college class notes? (Possibly NSFW due to some sexual language.) via anil.
posted by onlyconnect at 10:21 AM PST - 20 comments

CanadaFilter

Who's the Greatest Canadian? Time is running out and the voting kiosks will be closed by Sunday. Short notice, I know, but how else can we snatch the Greatest Canadian title from the clutches of The Attention Starved Nobody, The High Collared Puck Head, or The Attention Starved Hipster Pundit? In our nation where a vote for anyone but the Liberals is a vote thrown away, on whom are you throwing your vote away and who do you think is going to be crowned the Alpha Canuck?
posted by Old Man Wilson at 10:17 AM PST - 28 comments

Sounds good?

My goal here is to teach you how to create the best MP3s possible
posted by mr.marx at 10:11 AM PST - 34 comments

Home Birthing

Giving birth at home can certainly be beautiful , but is it safe? Research indicates that while it certainly is cost effective, there is no resounding consensus on safety. If you do decide to give birth at home, here’s a shopping list, ideas on what to do with the siblings, and, er, how to clean your carpet.
posted by grateful at 10:04 AM PST - 20 comments

Oval Office Space

Oval Office Space
posted by GriffX at 9:09 AM PST - 8 comments

Bang Bang Bhangra

An extensive article on the history of Bhangra. [Bhangra mp3s here]
posted by moonbird at 7:42 AM PST - 6 comments

May 13

P-P-P-Powerbook

An American Ebay seller realises a European bidder is trying to scam him out of a Powerbook (fake escrow site, hijacked ebay account), so he sends him something far better, a P-P-P-Powerbook! Now, for you non-techies here, a factory model p-p-p-powerbook weights half what it's competitors weigh, comes with an A4 screen, the latest in internet adventure software, zero boot time, a fullsize keyboard (often with Key RedundancyTM) and a state-of-the-art laser bluetooth mouse. This is technology. The seller posts to a forum and amongst the chatter people follow the package via the the Fedex tracking page and some even visit the delivery address (a barbershop/internet cafe) and take photos, video, and a seat for their hair cut. The duty tax on this particular p-p-p-powerbook is around £350 (paid for by the scammer) before he sees the package, and a few days later it's released by Customs as they watch in anticipation. A forum member arrives at the internet cafe, takes a seat and soon the package arrives. The scammer opens the box and there are angry raised voices heard. The barber doesn't understand what's wrong and asks... "Is it broken?"
posted by holloway at 7:41 PM PST - 55 comments

The DOJ invites Greenpeace to take a long walk off a short plank.

Shiver me illegally-harvested timbers! Why dust off a law used only twice, most recently 114 years ago? Because you have a grand jury and you can. The alleged sailor-mongerers have issued a statement on their website.
posted by trondant at 5:38 PM PST - 47 comments

Uncovering the rationales

The 27 rationales... There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but a graduate student in Chicago found and tracked 27 different rationales used to justify the war in Iraq. Gathering over 1500 statements from the Bush cabinet, US senators, and from news stories, Largio even throws in some time series graphs in appendices, so you can see which rationales were hot, and which were not from Sept 2001 to October 2002.
posted by jasper411 at 4:06 PM PST - 16 comments

Naked guy in a maze

Naked guy in a maze
posted by dhoyt at 3:33 PM PST - 12 comments

The joystick is you.

The Wild Divine Project. "Kurt Smith and Corwin Bell have designed a computer game that teaches players to use biofeedback sensors worn on three fingers to help them control various events... By using breathing techniques to stimulate or soothe their biological responses, players can start an onscreen fire, juggle brightly colored balls and direct the flight of birds."
posted by homunculus at 2:06 PM PST - 8 comments

Nicholas Berg

The Orange jumpsuit, couch potato Al Quida members, flawed timelines, the freepers connection, and the outspoken father. Nicolas Berg conspiracy theories abound on the Internet.
posted by thedailygrowl at 1:45 PM PST - 98 comments

movieblogging

Salam Pax gets a movie deal. The Baghdad Blogger has previously taken his posts to the book format and a company has just bought the rights to make a movie out of it. I can't say there are many blogs that would ever work as a movie, but this is certainly a new milestone for blogging.
posted by mathowie at 1:05 PM PST - 11 comments

Blah blah BLAH blah BLOGS! BLOGS!

Yackity yackity, choo CHOO!, Yackity yackity.....BLOGS! Self proclaimed Blogoholic George Packer, at Mother Jones, shits on blogs everywhere, joins bemused chorus - FOX, journalism grad students, and so on - blathering on blogs. What are they? What do they mean? Quoth Packer : "Blog prose is written in headline form to imitate informal speech, with short emphatic sentences and frequent use of boldface and italics. The entries, sometimes updated hourly, are little spasms of assertion, usually too brief......All of this meta-comment by very bright young men who never leave their rooms is the latest, somewhat debased, manifestation of the old art of political pamphleteering.....if blogs are "a new way of doing politics," there is also something peculiarly stale and tired about them — not the form, but the content......So far this year, bloggers have been remarkably unadept at predicting events.... Above all, they didn't grasp the intensity of feeling among Democratic primary voters — the resentments still glowing hot from Florida 2000, the overwhelming interest in economic and domestic issues, the personal antipathy toward Bush, the resurgence of activism, the longing for a win. The blogosphere was often caught surprised by these passions and the electoral turns they caused." Packer even gets paid for this, plus starring appearances on snooty public radio talk shows! [ Kevin Drum makes an appearance ].....I can excrete lightly digested opinions with the best of them. Where do I apply ?
posted by troutfishing at 12:58 PM PST - 24 comments

The nice kind of propaganda

Better Propaganda is a site with hundreds of free (and legal!) mp3 downloads by independent musicians. The range is pretty impressive, going from TV on the Radio to Dizzee Rascal. Good times.
posted by acornface at 12:51 PM PST - 5 comments

Goodby Sunshine?

Global Dimming?!? In the second half of the 20th century, the world became, quite literally, a darker place. Defying expectation and easy explanation, hundreds of instruments around the world recorded a drop in sunshine reaching the surface of Earth, as much as 10 percent from the late 1950's to the early 90's, or 2 percent to 3 percent a decade. Has anyone been following this? Heat I might do without for a while, but I've grown very fond of light.
posted by ahimsakid at 12:48 PM PST - 18 comments

Democracy triumphs over conventional wisdom in India?

'In the event, it was a near-unanimous verdict for the politics of inclusiveness - economic, social and cultural - and against the rhetoric of divisiveness and xenophobia.' The 'stunning' victory of Sonia Gandhi's Congress (I) party in the world's largest democracy may force us to reconsider some of our preconceptions about India. To the headline writers in Britain and the US, it's the place that's 'stealing' jobs from the West (itself a simplification); to most Indian voters, though, the BJP's economic miracle doesn't extend beyond the major cities, serving to accentuate rather than alleviate the poverty gap. The verdict on the ground? That this is a vote against the limited capacity of globalisation to bring real change to developing economies. Some might accuse Indian voters of cutting off their noses to spite their faces, but for hundreds of millions of them, the BJP's promise of a 'Shining India' spoke of an entirely different world.
posted by riviera at 12:46 PM PST - 14 comments

Going Poston!

Going Poston! - This is a Flash parody about the NFL's most notorious player agents, the Postons, Carl and Kevin. This article from a month ago, pretty much sums up why they're becoming so infamous.
posted by Witty at 12:04 PM PST - 7 comments

Tigers bite back

Tigers bite back. Endangered Sumatran tigers have taken the destruction of their habitat into their own mouths by killing three & mauling several other illegal loggers.
posted by i_cola at 11:33 AM PST - 12 comments

The (Publishing) House That Blair Helped Close

"Burning Down My Masters' House" Indeed!
Jayson Blair, noted fraud and liar, is about to be liquidated along with all of the other titles in New Millenium's catalog. The publisher of such quality books as "Nicole Brown Simpson: The Private Diary of a Life Interrupted" by Faye Resnick and "Burning Down My Master's House" by Jayson "Truth? We Don't Need No Stinking Truth" Blair.
Its not known if Blair's memoir had a specific hand in the demise of the publishing house but it couldn't have helped. Selling a whopping 1,386 copies through March 18th.
Is there such a thing as the Anti-Midas Touch? Wherein, everything you touch turns from gold to lead or dust?
Continuing these threads to their karmic conclusion.
posted by fenriq at 10:04 AM PST - 13 comments

People's Glorious Redistribution of Web Pages

Let us say you are the premier of Alberta. Let's say you made some ill advised statements suggesting that public car insurance is the kind of socialist claptrap the forced Pinochet to stage a coup in Chile. Let us further posit that you were pursuing a degree at the time and had recently turned in a paper (word .doc) on that very topic, and presented it in the provincial legislature to back up those statements. Would you not then want to be pretty sure you hadn't plagiarized large chunks of your essay from the web?
posted by Capn at 8:41 AM PST - 42 comments

Leaking self-doubt

Leaking self-doubt ...Tracing how the photos [of Abu Ghraib prison] became such hot public property reveals something striking, not only about the torture scandal, but about the coalition itself. This is a story, not of investigative journalism or antiwar activists exposing imperialist America to the world, but rather of America exposing its own uncertainty for all to see. The photos appear to have come from within US military or political circles; they were effectively volunteered for public consumption by elements within the military or higher up in the Pentagon, seemingly as part of a process of internal unravelling and deep disagreement over aspects of the war. In a sense, the publication of these photos to international outrage can be seen as the externalisation of America's own self-doubt about Iraq, and about its own mission in the world...
posted by Postroad at 8:28 AM PST - 42 comments

Movable Type RIP

I'm done with Movable Type. After months of little useful communications about their plans, Ben and Mena have for all intents and purposes ditched the free version of their once-shining weblogging software. Now, MT is a "publishing platform" that costs at least $69 (with limited functionality). Lucky for us that, while MT slept, we have discovered a much improved and free Blogger, a truly open source WordPress, and a similarly priced but more powerful ExpressionEngine.
posted by johnnydark at 7:37 AM PST - 191 comments

That's no moon, it's a space station

ISS-Jupiter Transit tonight. Notable space station flyover tonight for you skywatching East Coasters: the ISS will pass quite close to Jupiter, and some of you lucky ones [coordinates|map] will even see the station briefly eclipse the planet. (Side note: Remember those days when everyone was using its radio call sign "Alpha?" Now the media just say "space station." Sigh.) East Coast, 9:30pm, I'll be outside, looking up.
posted by brownpau at 7:15 AM PST - 9 comments

MetaCreativity

What is the modus operandi of creativity? According to two cognitive scientists, Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, the subconscious operation of conceptual blending. The formal theory, known as the Network Model of Conceptual Integration (CI), seeks to explain how creative insights are derived from pre-existing knowledge and understanding.
[More Inside]
posted by Gyan at 6:45 AM PST - 10 comments

Classic Rhetoric and Persuasion

Peitho's Web: Classic Rhetoric and Persuasion.
posted by hama7 at 6:43 AM PST - 6 comments

Virtual church

Church of fools No time for church? Like sleeping in on Sunday? Worship the virtual way with Church of fools. Wander the crypt and sanctuary, chatting with Ned Flanders looky-likey's. For real, and sponsored by the Methodist church. Shockwave required. via linkdup
posted by backOfYourMind at 6:15 AM PST - 5 comments

1,3,7-trimethylxanthine gives you wings.

1,3,7-trimethylxanthine (sometimes used as a pesticide to kill frogs) also happens to be one of the world’s most popular drugs.

Users find that it improves attention and concentration, and slightly decreases their heart rate at low doses. It is habit forming however and has been known to cause agitation, anxiety, insomnia, disorientation, nausea, delirium, hallucinations and tinnitus. Some people report involuntary tremors or even convulsions. Overdoses can cause seizures, respiratory failure and cardiopulmonary arrest. Withdrawal from regular use can cause symptoms including headache, nausea, nervousness, reduced alertness and depression.

The metabolic half-life of the drug is usually somewhere between three and seven hours so a typical user will take somewhere between fifteen and thirty-five hours to process 95% of their initial dose. How many milligrams have you taken today?
posted by snarfodox at 5:55 AM PST - 42 comments

ad aspera per astra

Ad Aspera Per Astra - an interview with Brother Guy Consolmagno, one of several full-time Vatican astromomers at the Vatican Observatory. He talks about the Church's take on astrobiology and the eventuality of encountering an alien race. The idea of the Church's mission beyond the Earth is something that's come up in a few good books, like The Sparrow and A Canticle for Leibowitz. Interesting to hear an actual Jesuit's take on the matter. [Via BoingBoing]
posted by ubersturm at 5:11 AM PST - 8 comments

Next step, X-ray specs!

Opacity no match for technology! A CS grad student comes up with a technique for restoring words that have been blacked out in classified documents.
posted by nomis at 12:35 AM PST - 12 comments

May 12

Do Be Evil

Google To Start Selling Banner Adverts From the that-didn't-take-too-long-department, Google's ad sales VP Tim Armstrong says Google will now start selling graphical banner adverts. One concession to their old mores is that, for now, the banner adverts will only appear on affiliated websites running their AdSense referral program (as does MeFi), and there is an opt-out. However... "We have no plans to show images on Google.com", said Mr. Armstrong "but we are not opposed to it".
posted by meehawl at 11:31 PM PST - 26 comments

not so junk DNA

not so junk DNA the idea has always made me uncomfortable. now scientists are taking a closer look at base-pair sequences that have been generally overlooked till now.
posted by jessica at 11:04 PM PST - 8 comments

Our glowing undersea friends.

Cuter than a fangtooth. Beautiful images of bioluminescent sea creatures. Learn the difference between fluorescence, phosphorescence, and bioluminescence, as well as the science behind the amazing chemical reaction. (I like the floppy-eared one the best--okay, the plastic bag looking one is nifty too.)
posted by lychee at 11:01 PM PST - 4 comments

Toxic livers vs. toxic minds

Reading With the Enemy - "Inspired by Supersize Me: What if you spent one month reading, listening to, and watching only right-wing media. No New York Times, no NPR, no network news, no CNN, no lefty blogs, no liberal novels. Nothing left-wing or centrist, and nothing ‘objective.’ Nothing that makes up the world you currently inhabit."
posted by Space Coyote at 10:34 PM PST - 55 comments

Vertical Farm

VerticalFarm. Highrise Urban Farm (conceptual).
posted by stbalbach at 9:47 PM PST - 10 comments

for want of a pen a kid was lost?

The pen is mightier than...? Remember Afghanistan? Terry, former Nitpicker, is now a public affairs specialist in Kandahar. He's learned that the children of Afghanistan want nothing more than they want a pen. Maybe we can help them out by sending some?
posted by amberglow at 7:55 PM PST - 14 comments

On online resource for sound design theory

Don't know ADR from THX? Filmsound.org is for you. Check out their cliches section, and much more besides.
posted by WolfDaddy at 6:32 PM PST - 7 comments

19th century Parisian Avant Garde

“Counter Culture: Parisian Cabarets and the Avant Garde, 1875-1905. Underdiscussed art movements from the 19th century, such as the Hydropathes and the Incohérents, that intellectually resembled Dada and prefigured it by a considerable amount of time. [Via 2 Blowhards]
posted by dgaicun at 6:01 PM PST - 5 comments

'I hope Fox News viewers will understand the computer has to be on.'

Blah Blah Blogging :: "The following is a meticulously detailed recap of a news segment that appeared on the Chicago FOX news affiliate on Wednesday, May 5th, 2004." -- Intelligent blogger agrees to appear in puff piece about blogging for FOX news. These are the results.
posted by anastasiav at 4:55 PM PST - 43 comments

Something Positive Comics

So good, I can't believe this hasn't been posted before: Something Positive Comics
posted by ColdChef at 3:33 PM PST - 13 comments

For sale: 1 arts community.

Chicken John is quitting! (SanFranciscoFilter) It looks like the Odeon is looking for new management. Does this mean the end of good/bad/scary performance art in SF, or is it just a new beginning?
posted by badstone at 2:31 PM PST - 4 comments

Kareem Abdul Jabbar

He is a Muslim, a coach of Native Americans, a noted Jazz expert, a Kung-Fu star, a prescription pot smoker, and a best-selling author whose new book is the story of the 761st Tank Battalion, known as the Black Panthers, the first all-black armored unit to see combat in World War II. Who is he? The man that some say is the greatest Basketball player of all time, Kareem Adbul-Jabbar.
posted by chaz at 2:22 PM PST - 21 comments

International ME/CFS/Fibromyalgia Awareness Day

May 12th is International ME/CFS/Fibromyalgia Awareness Day. If you aren't aware of these afflictions, then it's time to become so. "Fibromyalgia (FM) is an increasingly recognized chronic pain illness which is characterized by widespread musculoskeletal aches, pain and stiffness, soft tissue tenderness, general fatigue and sleep disturbances." The WebMD description. For those who live with chronic fatigue, systemic immunity problems, and long term pain, I think the rest of us, at least, owe our awareness of what these people cope with every day. Again, via the always excellent Watermark, who writes movingly of her relationship with Fibromyalgia.
posted by Wulfgar! at 1:47 PM PST - 19 comments

I spy in the night sky, don't I...

Best evidence yet (maybe) for keeping the Hubble around: Hubble snaps first photo (maybe) of extrasolar planet (maybe).
posted by 40 Watt at 1:07 PM PST - 13 comments

Modern Ruins

Modern Ruins are a window into human histories, they tell the stories of the past through the stark presence of objects and architectures. Perhaps the most powerful aspect of ruins is the subject that is missing in the photographs; the people who once worked, lived, walked, talked, slept and dreamed in these spaces.
posted by papercake at 12:37 PM PST - 5 comments

The Vaults of Erowid

Don't Get High Without It. Interesting article about The Vaults of Erowid and the people behind it. [Via Hit & Run.]
posted by homunculus at 12:12 PM PST - 26 comments

"I'm fat but healthy!" Not for long, you aren't.

Scientists know that being fat reduces your lifespan, making you more susceptible to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and a host of other bad things. However they are only beginning to understand why. "Fat tissue is now recognized to be the body's biggest endocrine organ," producing 25 known signaling compounds and a variety of proteins.
posted by ilsa at 11:11 AM PST - 37 comments

Mefite pens book, is better than the rest of us (save Miguel).

Remember dong_resin? Of course you do. He's a lovable rapscallion--an affable sort (I don't actually know him but play along). Well, some months back, Mr. Resin penned (in the virtual sense) a blog entry entitled Tink Hilton : One Dog Screaming, a piece about Paris Hilton told from the perspective of her dog. You may, if you're a fan of "the resin" (as I've never called him), have noticed he hasn't been around Metafilter (or his blog) all that often lately. Apparently, he has an explanation: it seems that someone from Warner Books saw the entry and asked him to write a short novel. The result? A short novel with a long name, The Tinkerbell Hilton Diaries : My Life Tailing Paris Hilton, which goes on sale in September.
disclaimer: I do not know the donger in any way, shape, or form, and my shilling (if it is perceived that way) is born out of unadulterated, likely unreciprocated, and clearly unnatural love (or maybe I just thought it was interesting: you decide).
posted by The God Complex at 10:03 AM PST - 35 comments

WiFi (Networks) Against Bush

WiFi Against Bush is an interesting twist on viral marketing aimed at our neighborhoods and the occassional warchalker — let everyone in within range of your router know what you _really_ think of the President.

Via the venerable Shifted Librarian.
posted by silusGROK at 9:57 AM PST - 11 comments

Nazis, UFO's, aliens, Oh my!

Secrets of the Third Reich...UFO's? "...As Sir Roy Feddon, Chief of the Technical Mission to Germany for the Ministry of Aircraft Production stated in 1945. "…I have seen enough of their designs and production plans to realise that if they (the Germans) had managed to prolong the war some months longer, we would have been confronted with a set of entirely new and deadly developments in air warfare.".....upright, vertical take-off aircraft.....a saucer-shaped craft with enclosed twin rotors.....Cruise missiles....the V-2....[predecessor of the Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles]....a rocket-powered fighter, the ME 163...These then, were some of the known German advances. However there were also hints of darker technologies not fully understood." Woo woo! So begins the four part "Secrets of the Third Reich" - where does fact merge into fiction? It's such a great read that it almost doesn't matter. A version with pictures lives here (go to menu, "Book 4"). Then, there's The Hunt For Zero Point We have met the aliens, and they are us ?
posted by troutfishing at 9:38 AM PST - 10 comments

Founding Father

"He could separate personal honor from political convictions. A recurring theme of his career? The superiority of forgiveness over revenge". Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton puts "the father of American government" -- the illegitimate orphan from the West Indies who rose to become George Washington's most trusted adviser only to be snared in a sex scandal and killed in a duel by Vice President Aaron Burr -- under a new light. Thomas Jefferson after all, his great adversary, foresaw a nation of independent yeomen farmers. It was Hamilton who foresaw a powerful nation of cities, banks, stock, exchanges. When Jeffersonians favored congressional power, Hamilton argued vigorously that the executive branch was the chief engine of the government. When the Constitution was ratified over the objections of anti-Federalists, Gore Vidal relates, “a parade featuring a ship called The Hamilton, on a float, sailed triumphantly along Wall Street as its ghost still does today. Anecdote: during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Franklin suggested that there be a pause for prayer. Many delegates supported the move, except for Hamilton. "He did not see the necessity of calling in foreign aid." (.pdf file)
posted by matteo at 9:05 AM PST - 11 comments

Drunken Temple Boxing! Lion Claw Technique!

Drunken Temple Boxing! You may have defeated my Southern Hook Palm technique, but can you defeat the 1000 styles of Rumsfeld?
posted by kirkaracha at 9:01 AM PST - 2 comments

May 11

Fallujah, Sadr, and the Eroding US Position in Iraq

Fallujah, Sadr, and the Eroding US Position in Iraq (PDF)
Why the US Has Already "Lost" Some Aspects of its Battles in Fallujah; A Negotiated Solution Means Limiting the Scale of Defeat; No Military Solution Can Now Work and What the US Should Do Now   by Anthony Cordesman
posted by y2karl at 11:47 PM PST - 19 comments

The Face That Launched A Thousand Ships

The Face That Launched A Thousand Ships Just in time for "Troy Story", a lyrical evocation of the Iliad.
posted by rdone at 7:58 PM PST - 19 comments

Run for the hills!

Will humanity come together to overcome our space enemies? Or is this a publicity stunt for Signs 2:Electric Boogaloo? Or is it nothing at all? Still, what the heck is Mexico doing telling everyone about this? I mean seriously now:

“Hundreds of videos (of UFOs) exist, but none had the backing of the armed forces of any country.... The armed forces don't perpetuate frauds.” Mr. Maussan said Secretary of Defence Gen. Ricardo Vega Garcia gave him the video April 22.
posted by loquax at 7:11 PM PST - 38 comments

Florida town changes MLK street name

Florida town changes MLK street name What's in a name, asked Shakespeare. Everything, it seems.
posted by Postroad at 6:28 PM PST - 41 comments

we've no money for butter...

The Red Hat Society With an inspired purchase of a red fedora and a reading of the poem Warning by Jenny Joseph, one woman created what is fast becoming a movement around the world for women over fifty.
posted by FunkyHelix at 2:53 PM PST - 40 comments

Keystone Cops...oh, wait that's the FBI

Reclusive millionaire planning to attack? Ah, the FBI. Raid raid high schools to stop file sharing...absolutely. Tracking down real terrorist threats, well, that's a bit caper of a different color. It would seem that "reclusive but evil millionaire" Don Emilio Fulci, the dastardly bastard, "had formed a terrorist group that was planning chemical attacks against London and Washington, D.C." The threat was considered so great that it was listed in their daily "threat matrix" and FBI director Robert Mueller was briefed. The problem? Don Fulci is a character from the video game Headhunter. | via TechDirt
posted by dejah420 at 1:56 PM PST - 16 comments

Google's blog is highly dynamic indeed!

Today's entry on the Google blog was altered in a subtle way. The earlier entry boasted of their Bangalore data center, but the afternoon's version now features the Zurich center more prominently and relegates Bangalore to a footnote. Could it be that the company is a little less boastful in their handling of the outsourcing debate than they thought they could be?
posted by clevershark at 1:38 PM PST - 16 comments

People taste like green

Are you on drugs without your knowledge? Take the quiz and find out! I scored high!
posted by shepd at 1:33 PM PST - 31 comments

all-photo.ru

The Most Various Russian Photographs.
posted by hama7 at 12:49 PM PST - 2 comments

Fox New now classified

Memo to soldiers: Do not read the Taguba report on the Fox News website, it is classified. I didn't know the Pentagon had a sense of humor.
posted by caddis at 12:37 PM PST - 23 comments

A Tale of Two Soldiers

A tale of two West Virginia soldiers: one named Jessica, one named Lynndie. Both are on opposite sides of the propaganda war. One is a hero, one is a monster. No, wait - actually, one is a fraud, one was just following orders. No wait, one is perky and blonde, the other is kind of butch and ugly. Now I'm all confused. Help me Metafilter, you're my only hope.
posted by PrinceValium at 11:37 AM PST - 19 comments

The Cycle Continues

Video Seems to Show Beheading of American in response to the Abu Ghraib torture photos. I wonder if Sen. James Inhofe will continue to be "more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment." [more inside, via kos]
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 11:14 AM PST - 242 comments

Jodie Dallas LIVES!

If you're in New York City or LA between now and June 27th, the Museum of Television and Radio is presenting "Not That There's Anything Wrong With That --The History of Gay and Lesbian Images on Television" (via the Queer as Folk section of Showtime's site) (Anyone else remember Robert Reed playing a transsexual on Medical Center?)
posted by WolfDaddy at 11:06 AM PST - 14 comments

street art?

graffiti? street art?
the beautiful artwork and website of ernest pignon-ernest. (flash required) via heavy-backpack
posted by specialk420 at 10:31 AM PST - 7 comments

It's Kerry's election to lose

Zogby calls the election for Kerry
John Zogby goes out on a limb and predicts John Kerry will be the next POTUS.
posted by wsg at 10:24 AM PST - 38 comments

And one for yourself?

Passport to the Pub Initiate yourself in the strange and subtle rules and customs of the British pub. (via The Old New Thing, strangely enough)
posted by Capn at 10:14 AM PST - 17 comments

All about Wa

Researching the Way of Wa
The 1400 year-old Japanese concept of "Wa" is derived from the ancient meaning of peace and harmony. When applied to business practices, it incorporates mutual trust between management and labor, harmonious... relations among employees on all levels...
I continued forward to learn of Wa Shin Ryu, "the system that harmonizes the spirit," which I followed onward to Toki no Wa. Only then did I know that "I will see you again where the loops of time touch together."
posted by mcgraw at 10:12 AM PST - 4 comments

Beautiful Agony

facettes de la petite mort No nudity, but not safe for work. I love it when eroticism is found where you might not expect it. Like, simple facial expression, for example.
posted by travis at 10:03 AM PST - 18 comments

Twenty Years of Legend

Marley's 'Legend' turns twenty:

"Legend'' is unique because it's become more than just music. It's an idea, a lifestyle, a web of cultural touchstones spun in a delicate vortex. In the realm of musical-taste-as-statement-of-personal-identity, "Legend'' says: I generally care about world events. I favor cotton clothing. I think stress is bad. I want to stop injustice. I'm all for love. I wouldn't say no to the herb, if you get my drift.
posted by moonbird at 9:47 AM PST - 28 comments

the wrong morons

The Wrong Morons. (from the Army Times) "Around the halls of the Pentagon, a term of caustic derision has emerged for the enlisted soldiers at the heart of the furor over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal: the six morons who lost the war...But the folks in the Pentagon are talking about the wrong morons."
posted by Ty Webb at 9:46 AM PST - 23 comments

cuddly flash fun

I can't believe this hasn't appeared here already... practice your psychiactric skills on a couple of cuddly animals. It's worth it for the dream and drugs sequences alone. [Flash][via monkeyfilter, via userfriendly. probably.]
posted by twine42 at 1:02 AM PST - 17 comments

Mammal Gene Memetics

Analysis Uncovers Critical Stretches of Human Genome.
posted by Gyan at 12:27 AM PST - 9 comments

May 10

Cicadamania

Cicadamania
Periodical Cicada Page
Brood X (17-year)
Cicada: The Other, Other White Meat
Invasion of the Brood - The 17-year cicadas are about to emerge in force
posted by y2karl at 10:32 PM PST - 17 comments

Tempered over burning witches

HOLY GRAIL FOUND AT LAST. In Yorkshire, amongst sheep. Tastes pretty good.
posted by Shane at 6:43 PM PST - 11 comments

Happy 144th birthday, Anton

Meet Anton Chekov - The famous Russian playwright is now appearing at your local Barnes & Noble.
posted by Space Coyote at 6:07 PM PST - 18 comments

The Philosophers' Magazine

Interactive Philosophy Games :: Construct a God, explore your morals, take a new look at what it means to be alive, plus Shakespeare vs. Britney Spears. Or, you can just read it for the articles.
posted by anastasiav at 5:44 PM PST - 13 comments

Osama bin Lotto

Osama bin Lotto [Flash.] What's your bet on when bin Laden will be captured? Some oddsmakers suggest the last ten days of July. I think the winner should get 22 pounds of tinfoil, and the runner-up some cologne.
posted by homunculus at 5:12 PM PST - 11 comments

Is this a good post, are you already familiar with these methods and if so did you learn anything new and finally if you didn't did you expect to?

The Power of Good Questions - what the White House press corps could learn from the methods of interviewing mastermind John Sawatsky.
posted by mr.marx at 2:07 PM PST - 14 comments

''Allow me to remove my mask for you...''

The Human Face of Pedophilia (A Pedophile Unmasked). "I am not afraid of who or what I am, because I have nothing to hide. I have always abided by the laws of the countries in which I have resided--even the laws with which I have not agreed. I have no desire to hurt or take advantage of anybody. I invite any others who share my ethos and my commitment to refuting the onslaught of disinformation about us to join me on this site."
posted by reklaw at 1:50 PM PST - 114 comments

Too good not to share

To all who wondered about this Man Vs. Grizzy -- the answer needed this grizzly bear suit from ebay . The thread, by the way, was one of the funniest Ask MeFi threads I've ever read. And the bearsuit? Well, that's just crazy-insane.
posted by filmgeek at 12:58 PM PST - 21 comments

IraqPhotoblogs

Frontline Photoblogs. Images direct from the troops in Iraq. Demolished Hummer. Night Vision. Chopper Dust. Barrel of Monkeys. Plus Albanian Commandos!
posted by srboisvert at 12:56 PM PST - 7 comments

Are we winning?

International Terrorism at a 35 year low, says U.S. Department of State. So - does that mean that the war on terror is being won? (via Anxiety Culture)
posted by Pericles at 12:35 PM PST - 37 comments

Have Cut, Will Travel

Vasil "Chuck" Bodak, Al Gavin, the poet Tom Smario, the great Jacob "Stitch" Duran: Legendary Cutmen.
posted by dfowler at 11:37 AM PST - 2 comments

More prison abuse

More Prison abuse. How un-American! Inmates were raped, starved and beaten. Some beaten to death, forced to perform oral sex on other prisioners... The list goes on and on. But this didn't happen in Iraq; it happens in America every day. How un-American, indeed.
posted by eperker at 11:08 AM PST - 44 comments

Chat Rm 33006

The Great American Feud. Hatfield - McCoy timeline and photo gallery. 2003 VA news report on a truce between descendants of both families. Also, Congress has appropriated nearly $500,000 to improve feud sites for tourism. You can even help one of the families win a Reunion Marathon this June.
posted by mcgraw at 9:59 AM PST - 9 comments

Do not operate heavy machinery...

Forklift training video. Poor Claus just can't get the hang of this furshlugginer contraption. WMV file, German language--things start getting interesting around 2:30. (via, via)
posted by adamrice at 8:26 AM PST - 23 comments

Streakdome 97 outtake?

Local news gets interesting. Meet my new hero! (.wmv file-- only a few seconds long but NSFW.) I'd elaborate, but I don't want to wreck it.
posted by Mayor Curley at 6:22 AM PST - 33 comments

May 9

New Blogger

It's New Blogger, launched today at 3pm, with a retooled interface, more rounded corners, single entry archives, comments, user profiles, more template tags, mail-to-blog, knowledge, and more. (Farewell, good ol' black. We'll miss you.)
posted by brownpau at 7:51 PM PST - 83 comments

Avalokitesvara

Avalokitesvara.
posted by hama7 at 4:22 PM PST - 26 comments

Holy cow!

This wonderful life
posted by magullo at 3:43 PM PST - 37 comments

Andy Kaufman - Dead or Alive?

Has it been 20 years already? "Andy himself stated that were he to fake his death, he would return 20 years later to the day. MAY 16TH 2004 IS THAT DAY."
posted by ric at 1:21 PM PST - 24 comments

Slashdot posts Megway parody 3 years later.

Slashdot just a bit late?
posted by hobbes at 12:24 PM PST - 32 comments

Chain Of Command

Chain Of Command
(More Inside)
posted by y2karl at 12:04 PM PST - 36 comments

That was then...

A Report on Mesopotamia by T.E. Lawrence, August 2nd, 1920.
posted by homunculus at 11:57 AM PST - 13 comments

Conversations with America

Studs Terkel: Conversations with America (in Real audio).
posted by nthdegx at 11:25 AM PST - 1 comment

Stargazing

The National Optical Astronomy Observatory gallery of images. 'Cuz sometimes you just need to see dozens of pictures of Spiral Galaxies. Or maybe planetary nebulae. Or even telescopes and observatories. From the website of the NOAO, the national center for ground-based nighttime astronomy in the United States.
posted by Shane at 11:17 AM PST - 4 comments

School sucks...

Monroe County Family Court Judge Marilyn O'Connor ruled March 31 that two parents "should not have yet another child which must be cared for at public expense."
Unconstitutional? Maybe. But not sufficiently so for the NY ACLU to say much anything about it. Maybe the Judge could have recommended the same sex-ed scheme that shows, in parts of England and Wales where it [called A Pause] was trialled in 104 schools, sexual intercourse among 16-year-olds fell by up to 20 per cent. Now that may mean we have to have more discussion of oral and manual, with less genital-genital emphasis. Anything that promotes the right to say 'no' amongst vulnerable young folks is alright by me.
posted by dash_slot- at 11:12 AM PST - 19 comments

The Scandal's Growing Stain

The Scandal's Growing Stain Time Magazine: "Abuses by U.S. soldiers in Iraq shock the world and roil the Bush Administration. the inside story of what went wrong—and who's to blame"
posted by Postroad at 11:12 AM PST - 18 comments

Collaborative Novel Writing

The Great Mahakali Write-A-Thon.
posted by Gyan at 10:11 AM PST - 2 comments

Macedonian Interior Minister fights helps in War on Terror.

Innocent Victims in the War on Terror Macedonian police gunned down seven innocent Pakistani and Indian illegal immigrants, then claimed they were terrorists, in a killing staged to show they were participating in the US-led war on terror. "It was a monstrous fabrication to get the attention of the international community" (via Halfway Down the Danube)
posted by zaelic at 9:09 AM PST - 15 comments

Blaschka

Sea-creatures in glass. In the late 19th Century, Dresden-based glass-artist Leopold Blaschka, together with his son, Rudolf, made scores of beautiful and intricate glass models of marine invertebrates. [First link via an e-mail from Alex Vaughan.]
posted by misteraitch at 12:14 AM PST - 10 comments

May 8

Poison and Profits

Ling Chan gave up everything to come to America. "Chan arrived in the United States with no knowledge of English, no support network, and a dependent child...she was happy to land a janitorial job with AXT Inc., a Fremont, California semiconductor manufacturing firm...on a four-person cleaning crew, scrubbing the boxes used to ship semiconductor wafers around the factory...after a few weeks, her colleagues -- mostly Chinese immigrants, like herself -- whispered that this was no ordinary dust: It could give you cancer." [via Fark, of all places]
posted by mr_crash_davis at 11:02 PM PST - 17 comments

Smile

Smile!
Looks like somebody's got a case of the Mondays!
posted by Voivod at 9:06 PM PST - 46 comments

How old do I look?

How old do I look? This is a fascinating project -- almost like an intellectual's HotOrNot, that plays with our perception and societal ideals of age and beauty. I was close to right only about half the time, otherwise I was waaaay off.
posted by mathowie at 4:56 PM PST - 64 comments

Kahn & Selesnick

Kahn & Selesnick. Surreal photography, some possibly NSFW. [Via Giornale Nuovo.]
posted by homunculus at 10:24 AM PST - 6 comments

Metroid Metroid Metroid

Metroid Cubed Now you can enjoy a classic NES game as "volumetric isometric 3d graphics using a Voxel Sculpting tool," which means is in some weird 3d now, and more confusing.

In other Metroid news, a brand new speed run of Super Metroid was released a while back, 58 minutes with 100 percent completion. And unlike those "time attack" videos that have come with some controversy, this speed run was played on a SNES console and recorded the old fashion way. For more speed runs and time attacks, please see here.
posted by bob sarabia at 10:21 AM PST - 10 comments

Tibetan Buddhist art of Sichuan, China

Tibetan Buddhist art of Sichuan Province, China.
posted by hama7 at 10:16 AM PST - 4 comments

PervertFilter

If the Marquis de Sade were alive today, would he have a web site? (Front page OK, rest of site: make up your own mind).
posted by Gyan at 9:40 AM PST - 3 comments

Heathers

David Neiwert writes a thoughtful piece about how utterly corrupt the press is and adds to the long running mefi discussion about why "framing" works for conservatives: "But even beyond the bias is the way this framing really corrupts and trivializes the national debate, so that we find ourselves constantly arguing about the "morality" or "character" of politicians, an issue that is by nature a product of spin and propagandizing. This has never been more clear than in the current election, when the "character" of a pampered fraternity party boy who couldn't be bothered to serve out his term in the National Guard and who went on to fail miserably at every business venture he touched is successfully depicted as that of a sincere and patriotic regular guy, while that of a three-time Purple Heart winner who voluntarily left Yale to serve in Vietnam, and whose ensuing three decades of public service have been a model of principle and consistency, is somehow depicted as belonging to a spineless elitist."
posted by McBain at 9:02 AM PST - 37 comments

Photographs by Stephanie Sinclair

Excellent photographs by Stephanie Sinclair. Some from Iraq, some from Cuba, and some of courthouse weddings (a few are mildly NSFW).
posted by iffley at 8:55 AM PST - 8 comments

Mistreatment of Prisoners Is Called Routine in U.S.

Mistreatment of Prisoners Is Called Routine in U.S. "Physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, similar to what has been uncovered in Iraq, takes place in American prisons with little public knowledge or concern, according to corrections officials, inmates and human rights advocates..."
posted by Postroad at 7:27 AM PST - 34 comments

Rockfish: You're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat

A fishing story. (Large QuickTime short from Blur Studio. Slightly smaller.)
posted by steef at 7:27 AM PST - 10 comments

The Diamond Sutra

A few days ago we had the Gutenberg Bible from the 1450s. Feh. The British Library now presents the oldest printed book in the world, the 868AD Diamond Sutra, in Shockwave format.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 6:33 AM PST - 10 comments

Best Friends

Social software for the party animal.
posted by timeistight at 1:48 AM PST - 7 comments

May 7

Let Her Dance, Let Her Dance, Ket Her Dance All Night Long....

Bobby Fuller was a Texas based rock and roll singer best known for the immortal rebel anthem "I Fought The Law,". Considered by many to be the heir to Buddy Holly as the king of Texas Rock, he built on Holly's style with songs like the aforementioned "...Law," "Jenny Lee," "Love's Made A Fool Of You," and the 2 1/2 minute masterpiece "Let Her Dance." And then it ended, at age 22, in very weird circumstances. Over the years, interest in Fuller and his work has ebbed and flowed, and plenty of archival material surfaced, but the mystery of his death remains unsolved, although many have speculated. Ann odd end for a footnote character in rick history, but who was bound for more
posted by jonmc at 8:23 PM PST - 16 comments

...

Fools for Communism: "the world’s final redoubt of communism is not Havana or Pyongyang but American college campuses. 'The nostalgic afterlife of communism in the United States has outlived most of the real Communist regimes around the world....A sizable cadre of American intellectuals now openly applaud and apologize for one of the bloodiest ideologies of human history, and instead of being treated as pariahs, they hold distinguished positions in American higher education and cultural life.'" Here's also History News Network's interview with the authors of "In Denial: Historians, Communists and Espionage": "The facts of history that they [communist sympathizers] got wrong can be, in their view, rationalized, redefined, minimized, or otherwise set aside in service to the idealized future they seek. Many have learned no lessons from the failure of communism; they will ardently pursue the same goals by the same means, albeit under new names."
posted by 111 at 5:26 PM PST - 124 comments

McAsian

"We're Asian and Pacific Islander Americans 'living on the rim,' where our diverse cultures and the everyday American lifestyle become one...Whether we're sipping green tea or enjoying a Big Mac® sandwich, we're helping make the magic mix called America become even richer. And McDonald's is right there with us, everyday!" Learn more at i-am-asian.com
posted by punishinglemur at 3:57 PM PST - 21 comments

a bunch of crap and one great link

DR: So much to confess. I have a sinking feeling those responsible will never speak to this man.
posted by dfowler at 12:54 PM PST - 8 comments

What if Kirk had a three-way with Leia and Xena?

If you can't get enough Sith-on-Sith sexy slashfiction action, you could check out the entire category of such work, broken down to what types of character interaction takes place and who is involved. It's just a tiny sliver of the work indexed by The Slash Page Database Project. Oh, the creativity of sexless nerds...
posted by mathowie at 12:39 PM PST - 54 comments

OMG ITS SO GROSS EWWW!!1!

Warning: this is possibly the worst story ever told. Ever wanted to know what it's like to have a beef tapeworm? (Fun fact: they're the kind that fills your whole intestinal tract!) A storyteller on The Fray helpfully clues us in to the experience of living with, and eventually destroying, his li'l parasite buddy. Don't read it if you don't want to wish for death at the end. (Blessedly, there are no photographs, though there are some toon-like illustrations.) Via Boing Boing.
posted by logovisual at 11:29 AM PST - 38 comments

Oh, and don't pack your camera.

You too can apply to become a private interrogater in Baghdad! [Via Randi Rhodes on Air America]

Assists the interrogation support program team lead to increase the effectiveness of dealing with Detainees, Persons of Interest, and Prisoners of War (POWs) that are in the custody of US/Coalition Forces...
posted by moonbird at 10:35 AM PST - 44 comments

Ye Olde Writings

AncientScripts.com : discover introductions to more than 70 ancient and modern writing systems, from LinearB to hPhags-pa to Cherokee. View languages by type, family, or region. Many links to further reading on each subject, plus other goodies.
posted by falconred at 10:34 AM PST - 3 comments

Raid floppies

A RAID array of floppy disks Because you can.
posted by Mwongozi at 10:10 AM PST - 5 comments

Gode Cookery

Gode Cookery: Medieval & Renaissance food & cookery, and more.
posted by hama7 at 9:32 AM PST - 8 comments

Chat Room

Microscopic fragments of plastic are a "major pollutant", floating in the ocean, settling on seabeds, and washing up onshore - with unknown consequences for marine ecosystems, according to a new study. "We've found this microscopic plastic material at all of the sites we've examined," [lead researcher] Dr Richard C Thompson [of University of Plymouth, UK] said. "Interestingly, the abundance is reasonably consistent. So, it suggests to us that the problem is really quite ubiquitous."
posted by mcgraw at 9:30 AM PST - 15 comments

We bought it to help with your homework

Hey, Hey, 16K! What does that get you today? Perhaps the best bit of nerd nostalgia since the NESBuckle? Catchy song, dodgy animation, and the disembodied floating head of Clive Sinclair... what more could you ask for? Other than your old C64 back... [via AccordionGuy]
posted by krunk at 9:20 AM PST - 8 comments

Ladies & Gentlemen! Brood X!

The Brood is Back. No, not that Brood. This brood.
posted by grabbingsand at 8:54 AM PST - 14 comments

Drums of the bohicans

The great studio drummer Steve Gadd is of the most important musicians of the 1970's. Gadd brought bassist Tony Levin (Buddy Rich, Paul Simon, John Lennon, Peter Gabriel, King Crimson) into the business in New York 30 years ago, and that alone is enough to secure a place in history. You may remember his unforgettable groove on "50 Ways To Leave Your Lover", one of many brilliant contributions Gadd made to classics of the 70's pop charts
posted by crunchburger at 12:13 AM PST - 30 comments

May 6

NeuroFilter

Interesting papers in neuroscience. From Wellcome Laboratory of Neurobiology.
PDFs
posted by Gyan at 9:54 PM PST - 6 comments

Weightless Animals

Weightless Animals: soundtrack to space.
posted by anathema at 8:25 PM PST - 5 comments

Electorometrics?

More Election Predictions. Not based on ideological politics, but on the way they speak, or perhaps on the way the economy moves, on top of futures markets. Are we moving toward Electorometrics?
posted by weston at 7:28 PM PST - 19 comments

Moore admits Disney 'ban' was a stunt

Michael Moore admits Disney 'ban' was a stunt.
Less than 24 hours after accusing the Walt Disney Company of pulling the plug on his latest documentary in a blatant attempt at political censorship, Michael Moore has admitted he knew a year ago that Disney had no intention of distributing it.

"Almost a year ago, after we'd started making the film, the chairman of Disney, Michael Eisner, told my agent he was upset Miramax had made the film and he will not distribute it."
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 7:07 PM PST - 124 comments

Knowledge is power

Ever wondered about Islamic law? This site hosts a series of essays and papers on various areas by Mohammad H. Kamali and others on topics such as Freedom of Expression in Islam and critiques of contemporary attempts at huddud implementation. All nicely indepth and referenced, some good, some not so good, but all intriguing.
posted by Mossy at 5:06 PM PST - 21 comments

NES Controller Belt

The Nintendo Controller Belt. (via waxy)
posted by Ufez Jones at 4:06 PM PST - 13 comments

"to avenge honour"

Pakistani council aproves rape to avenge honour. "A village council in Pakistan permitted a landlord to rape the sister and sister-in-law of a man he accused of an illicit relationship with his daughter, police said Thursday. (...) The council members, all of them landlords themselves, ruled that Ghaffar, who uses only one name, could avenge his honour by having sex with the farmer's daughter, who is 16, and daughter-in-law, who is 22." (BBC version here). "An estimated 80 percent of women prisoners in Pakistan are in jail because they failed to prove rape charges".
posted by 111 at 3:59 PM PST - 34 comments

Why choose the lesser Evil?

The Most Important Press Conference of This (US) Election Cycle! (It's not quite Friday, but it's Flash. Really flash)
posted by bonehead at 3:18 PM PST - 16 comments

For Sale: Your very own ready room!

Where does Number 1 go? Interior designer/nerd gives his apartment the "Away Team Eye" once over and manages to make something pretty darn interesting. Sure it makes a great conversation piece, but could you live there? More photos make the "future perfect" world of Star Trek look a little too busy for actual living.
posted by raygun21 at 2:49 PM PST - 26 comments

Buddhist Art and the Trade Routes

Buddhist Art and the Trade Routes. [Flash, via plep.]
posted by homunculus at 2:06 PM PST - 10 comments

Roaring 78s, Roaring '20s

Joe Bussard is the self-proclaimed king of record collectors (pre-war 78s, of course). He'll even make you a tape. According to Bussard, jazz died in 1933. Were the '20s America's golden age? Great art, architecture, movies, and even coins.
posted by hyperizer at 1:33 PM PST - 24 comments

Allah forgive them--they're imbeciles

Have You Prayed Today?*
Today is the National Day of Prayer in the US (I had never heard of it). Oliver North!?! is the honorary chairman this year. Here are the President's remarks today. Meanwhile, Larry Flynt is calling for a different sort of prayer today.
*Muslims and Mormons need not apply.
"We're in an election year, and we believe God cares who's in those positions of authority," said Mark Fried, spokesman for the National Day of Prayer Task Force. "But we're not endorsing a candidate, just praying that God's hand will be on the election." The private task force, which operates from the Colorado headquarters of the Christian organization Focus on the Family ....
... since the mid-1980s the ceremony has been organized by the nonprofit task force headed by two prominent evangelical women: Vonette Bright, widow of Campus Crusade for Christ founder Bill Bright, and Shirley Dobson, wife of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson. She also made no apologies about the task force's exclusion of Muslims and others outside of the "Judeo-Christian tradition" from ceremonies planned by the task force on Capitol Hill and in state capitals across the country. "They are free to have their own national day of prayer if they want to," she said. "We are a Christian task force."

posted by amberglow at 1:32 PM PST - 24 comments

F.A.A. Official Scrapped Tape of 9/11 Controllers' Statements

F.A.A. Official Scrapped Tape of 9/11 Controllers' Statements Shit happens? Or does it? " At least six air traffic controllers who dealt with two of the hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, made a tape recording that day describing the events, but the tape was destroyed by a supervisor without anyone making a transcript or even listening to it, the Transportation Department said today."
posted by Postroad at 1:09 PM PST - 28 comments

Lions, tigers and bears. Oh my.

Polar bears of Churchill, Manitoba. Wildlife photographer Ken Bereskin has a nice collection of polar bears frolicking in the snow. This itchy bear is so frustrated, he's using the rippled ice of a frozen lake to scratch himself. If you need a change of temperature, he also has over 500 images of wildlife from Uganda and Kenya, including big cats (a mother cuddling with her cubs, a cheetah chomping down on a gazelle, and a young lioness shredding a skeleton to pieces), great apes, and other wildlife (the lowly hyena eating the cheetah's leftovers, a black-headed heron eating a venomous boomslang snake, and a scary-looking vulture taking it all in from above). He also has a smaller collection of desert wildlife from the dunes of Etoshia National Park in Namibia. (His real job is working for Apple, and he has a Panther blog that hasn't been updated in eons, but evidently that's not as much fun as chasing after hungry carnivorous animals in the sweltering heat, or risking frostbite in the snow).
posted by invisible ink at 11:08 AM PST - 5 comments

Increasing the vote virally

Strive for Five wants to infect the US with a voting virus.
posted by liam at 11:08 AM PST - 2 comments

ups and downs and all-arounds

Will they call Rosie courageous? Will she be as compelling and nuanced as Benny Stulwicz? Can this sort of portrayal come anywhere close to the real thing?
posted by dfowler at 11:03 AM PST - 5 comments

one if by land, two if by sea...

Cirque de Sore Legs may have won the people's choice award, but the competition [including a giant poodle, a bird's nest, and Kafka mid-metamorphosis] wasn't half bad. Baltimore's annual Kinetic Sculpture Race, an unholy amalgam of engineering and art, occurred last week. Created by Hobart Brown in 1969, kinetic sculpture races require participants to build human-powered vehicles that can traverse a racecourse over land and sea, not to mention mud and sand. And they have to do it in style. Don't live near the Chesapeake? Then visit similar races in Arcata, Boulder, Ventura, Corvallis, and even Perth, Australia. Too tame for you? Perhaps you'd like to try a flugtag or the Providence or Bognor birdman competitions.
posted by ubersturm at 10:44 AM PST - 9 comments

A leash to shake the White House ?

"Pull out, pull out", she cried, "Before it's too late!" - Sex sells. Amidst the ongoing PR conflagration - as newly released imagery of the psychosexual humiliation, by US guards at Abu Ghraib, of imprisoned Iraqis (a naked Iraqi man on a leash held by a female American soldier, notably) provokes widespread outrage (and the Red Cross says things are much worse than those pictures show), the BBC reports on informed speculation that the perfect storm of a growing insurgency, political reversals, and a PR debacle will lead to a hasty coalition pullout from Iraq. A frustrated and tense "Machine Gun Cheney" achieves release, via his wheelbarrel load of 30 guns (including a Thompson), blasting away at a Secret Service gun range. His aim, they say, is very good. But will Cheney bite the bullet and level with the American public about what it will now take for the US to prevail in Iraq ?
posted by troutfishing at 9:45 AM PST - 152 comments

Morons for Bush?

2000 Election results ranked by avg statewide IQ. Shame on me for even posting this here in this slavering den of liberal fervor, but if it's true, it certainly is kinda fascinating.
posted by jonson at 9:37 AM PST - 74 comments

........

Walking DNA Scientists have created a microscopic walking robot using only the building blocks of life. The robot’s DNA legs move along a DNA footpath, taking a nanostroll in a bath of a liquid called a "nondenaturing buffer", which stops the DNA from falling apart.
posted by mcgraw at 9:26 AM PST - 10 comments

May 5

algorhythms of the meaningless.

The Collected Works of Racter: "A tree or shrub can grow and bloom. I am always the same. But I am clever."
Or, perhaps more useful than poetry, "A Method for Sorting Cows."
Have I read this before, or merely something like it? "A piece that is essentially the same as a piece made by any of the first conceptual artists, dated two years earlier than the original and signed by somebody else. "
In our confusion, we can settle for simple non-sequitor: The Ubuweb Anthology of Conceptual Writing.
posted by kaibutsu at 9:56 PM PST - 7 comments

Mashin of The Christ

The Mashin of The Christ "Earlier this month a hacker broke through Negativland's UMN mainframe firewall and stole the final version of Negativland's top-sacred for-internal-use-only "Mashin' of the Christ" video project. Negativland prayed that their in-house project would not make it into the hands of the unsuspecting public, but we all know how hard it can be to stop those "peer to peer" criminals from illegally sharing the property of others."
posted by bob sarabia at 5:35 PM PST - 37 comments

Afghans for Civil Society

From reporter to relief worker in Afghanistan. An astonishing documentary, Life After War, follows NPR correspondant turned relief worker Sarah Chayes as she struggles to help rebuild a rural Afghani village destroyed in the war. Here is an article she wrote expressing her frustrations with the American media post-9/11 and describing how and why she made this drastic life change. Her organization is Afghans for Civil Society.
posted by callmejay at 5:34 PM PST - 4 comments

Al Hirschfeld's Portraits

The Hirschfeld Follies: A charming and generous gallery of Al Hirschfeld's portraits from The New York Times, spanning from 1928 to 2002 (registration required), indexed by date, person and show. Are there any outstanding young contemporary caricaturists out there who are doing good work (not necessarily in the theatre) we old-timers should know about? [Be sure to accompany with plep's great post on American cartoon and caricature and PeteyStock's January 2004 obituary post. And while you're at it, if you'll excuse the immodesty, my own David Levine post, with a (superb) still-working link.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:30 PM PST - 7 comments

Gutenberg Bible

The Gutenberg Bible: On this site you will find the British Library’s two copies of Johann Gutenberg’s Bible, the first real book to be printed using the technique of printing which Gutenberg invented in the 1450s.
posted by hama7 at 4:55 PM PST - 10 comments

Internet smut for foodies!

Food blogs and online foodie journals gained a cyber-foothold with the now defunct Julie/Julia project. Now, even Gourmet Magazine and Forbes have sung their praises. But all is not just decedent descriptions of cooking in France, culinary adventures in the far east, musings and experiences of the gastronomic variety. Foodie blogs can help an expat cope with food in England, procrastinate law school, learn to make your own chocolate (or if you don't want to go to the effort, find out which chocolates are the best. Some foodies are going through culinary school, some have recently finishes, and some are rather familiar to food network addicts. But whether you're looking to learn all about cheese, compete in the community-wide Is My Blog Burning?, or just enjoy simple beautiful reflections on food and related botany, there's plenty of food porn out there for you.
posted by jearbear at 3:51 PM PST - 11 comments

Friends, with Joey as a serial rapist?

The One where the Writers Totally Got Themselves Uninvited from Any Parties at Courtney Cox or Jennifer Aniston's House. In the midst of all the dry-as-kindling "Friends" stories being published, there's been one spark: Amaani Lyle's sexual harassment suit against the show's writers. While it's easy to be distracted by the actual meat of her complaint — making Joey a serial rapist (#74), a fill-in-the-genitals coloring book (#56-#58), the importance of spelling "penis" (#59-#60), the twigs in Courtney Cox's uterus (#91), a missed opportunity to bugger Jennifer Aniston (#88-#90) — their defense is even more interesting: Such talk is a necessary creative element of their job. Writes Joanna Grossman: The defendants admitted that many of Lyle's allegations were true. They testified in deposition that they did many of the things she complained of, but argued that the conduct was justified by "creative necessity." The writers' job, defendants argued, was to come up with story lines, dialogue, and jokes for a sitcom with adult sexual themes. To do this, they needed to have "frank sexual discussions and tell colorful jokes and stories (and even make expressive gestures) as part of the creative process." An interesting new permutation in how we classify inappropriate workplace behavior with major ramifications for the creative class, or a big ol' weaselly dodge?
posted by blueshammer at 3:07 PM PST - 75 comments

zoomies

The Jammin Fighter Jocks
posted by konolia at 1:02 PM PST - 13 comments

Nailed!

Man Survives Bizarre Nail Gun Accident
Six huge nails accidentally fired into Isidro Mejia's head after he tripped and fell on a nail gun.
More pics at Sun UK.
posted by fenriq at 12:19 PM PST - 21 comments

New York, Viipuri, sailing ships, and Trini Alvarado

iNetwork calls itself "an in4mation network by E.T.D." I discovered it through its amazing New York Skyscrapers subsite:
In addition to individual building entries and background info, it contains links to other resources, NYC webcams, clickable maps of locations of NYC skyscrapers, a forum for NYC skyscraper-related discussion and more.
But it's also got sections on Functionalism and the city of Viipuri ("a study of the 1930s Functionalistic architecture in the city of Viipuri in pre-war Finland"), the development of the square-rigged sailing ship from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 19th Century, and, uh, Trini Alvarado ("an amazingly underrated NYC film and stage actress"). Something for everyone!
posted by languagehat at 11:58 AM PST - 2 comments

Ed Meese for President!

Ed Meese for President! The Yes Men attended the Heritage Foundation's annual Resource Bank meeting. [Via Disinformation.]
posted by homunculus at 11:41 AM PST - 2 comments

Cinco de Monkey!

Cinco de Mayo, monkey style! Queso, guacamole and nachos, and fun ways to celebrate the Mexican holiday with your favorite terrycloth primate. Also, a little dueling Kahlo haiku for good measure. Viva de Cinco de Mayo!! Ay yiy yiy!!
posted by sparky at 10:24 AM PST - 9 comments

Gawk'n Hawks

Gosh, hawks! A live feed of 100% Naked Chicks at the MIT HawkCam. They preen, they sleep, and they watch you watching them. Now to settle in for a long afternoon waiting for Mom to show up.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 9:34 AM PST - 17 comments

........ .........

Scientists have created a miniature medical computer out of DNA that can detect cancer genes in a test tube and respond by releasing a drug. However, an injectable version [of the nanoscale robots] would have to work inside cells, and that accomplishment could take decades. Says Shapiro: "I'm not sure it will be within my lifetime."
posted by mcgraw at 8:34 AM PST - 11 comments

Ernie Barnes - Artiste

You might know Ernie Barnes from Sports Illustrated, or from a Marvin Gaye album cover. He has a powerful 9/11 painting. This past February he was named “America’s Best Painter of Sports” by the Board of Trustees of the American Sport Art Museum.
posted by ashbury at 8:18 AM PST - 11 comments

2–for–1 Voting

Electoral slight of hand is suggested by NYT columnist Bruce Ackerman in his opinion piece for May 5th, where he suggest that Nader choose Kerry's electoral slate when filing for the November election. It's a clever idea, and I'd be interested in seeing if it has any traction.
posted by silusGROK at 8:00 AM PST - 51 comments

The stand

Camilo Mejia is the first US soldier serving in Iraq to run away and proclaim himself a conscientious objector. The Pentagon says another 600 people have done the same, and for the same reasons: they find this war immoral and illegal.
posted by acrobat at 7:57 AM PST - 41 comments

Photofilter

The Visual Record.
posted by Gyan at 6:08 AM PST - 8 comments

Herbs and Spices

Gernot Katzer's spice pages - everything you need to know about herbs and spices - 117 of them, in fact, indexed in multiple languages. It seems some Metafiltarians (among others) have a low opinion of coriander...It's my favourite herb, and I was suprised that some people can't handle it, but this site suggests repulsion against it may be genetic! Lots of great stuff to be found, including plenty of herbs you've never heard of.
posted by Jimbob at 5:52 AM PST - 17 comments

Disney blocks new Michael Moore film

Disney is blocking its Miramax division from distributing a new documentary by Michael Moore that harshly criticizes President Bush. The New York Times reports that Disney head Michael Eisner "expressed particular concern that [the film] would endanger tax breaks Disney receives for its theme park, hotels and other ventures in Florida, where Mr. Bush's brother, Jeb, is governor."
posted by tranquileye at 4:26 AM PST - 55 comments

Bananaphone

Ring ring ring ring bananaphone [flash, via Raffi] Warning: contains badgers.
posted by moonbird at 4:06 AM PST - 20 comments

Water,water,everywhere

The big bird race. Will they survive the long-lines? Will I get a return on my investment? Not the first use of the technology but a worthy effort.
posted by johnny7 at 2:36 AM PST - 1 comment

May 4

What would Jesus download?

Holy illegal downloads, Bibleman! Christian music fans are pirating songs, too! What would Jesus download?
posted by wfrgms at 10:37 PM PST - 25 comments

Make Love, Not War

Conservative Web site claims hardcore pornography from U.S. is being used as anti-American propaganda in Arab countries From WorldNetDaily: "Graphic photos appearing on Arabic websites of U.S. servicemen raping and sexually abusing Iraqi women were actually taken from American and Hungarian pornography sites." ...Just another day in the 21st century, it seems. (via Fleshbot) (NSFW, as if you need to be told)
posted by Down10 at 10:34 PM PST - 10 comments

Sea Launch

Sea Launch successfully put a 5-ton television satellite into orbit yesterday from a 400-foot long mobile platform in the central Pacific Ocean. It was the 12th successful launch for the firm (run by a consortium that includes Boeing and Energia), with the equatorial position in the mid-Pacific allowing the rocket to carry a heavier payload to orbit with less fuel.

Slowly but surely, spaceflight is becoming commercialized even as the U.S. has renewed efforts to militarize it.
posted by QuestionableSwami at 9:19 PM PST - 12 comments

The Man and the Moon

I'm Congressman Danny K. Davis, and I approved this crowning of the messiah. [more inside]
posted by punishinglemur at 8:06 PM PST - 3 comments

Congratulations to the new American Messiah!

"They have declared to all Heaven and Earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent. This resolution has been announced on every corner of the globe." That includes the corner housed by the Dirksen Senate Office Building, where your tax dollars kept the lights on for Moon's coronation as King of Peace. Bow to your new leader, Americans! (via two doors down)
posted by PrinceValium at 8:00 PM PST - 47 comments

Treadathalon

Treadathalon: 154 miles in 24 hours. [via tenyearsofmylife]
posted by anathema at 7:51 PM PST - 4 comments

A sextillion ways to say I wanna bone you.

1,300,925,111,156,286,160,896 ways to say Viagra.
posted by eyeballkid at 6:06 PM PST - 19 comments

a bygone internet era

RFC 1855: Netiquette Guidelines. "Never send chain letters via electronic mail. Chain letters are forbidden on the Internet. Your network privileges will be revoked... Remember that many people pay for connectivity by the minute, and the longer your message is, the more they pay.... Don't point to other sites without asking first."
posted by reklaw at 5:03 PM PST - 6 comments

You'd say I'm putting you on

Now GQ magazine isn't one I'd normally turn to—for anything, really, let alone a serious story such as this. But a writer has interviewed Colin Powell, Condi Rice, various Pentagon insiders and some unnamed friends of Powell, and they all (save Condi, whom one of the GQ writer's sources calls "a jerk") agree: Colin's tired.
posted by emelenjr at 4:28 PM PST - 18 comments

An American Classic

Creative, probably not on purpose, trailer trash.
posted by Recockulous at 2:55 PM PST - 25 comments

Korean Slavery

Korean Slavery - Mark A. Peterson [pdf]
posted by hama7 at 2:35 PM PST - 3 comments

The other shoe drops.

The other shoe drops. The L.A. Times releases details from Major General Antonio M. Taguba's findings into prisoner abuse in Iraq, including evidence that convinced him that a U.S. soldier had sex with an Iraqi female.

(Can we all agree that she didn't ask for it...?)
posted by insomnia_lj at 2:27 PM PST - 106 comments

How Kerry Earned His Decorations

How Kerry Earned His Decorations For all the loud mouths who shout out that Kerry is a traitor, a guy who did not earn his medals, read this and then compare your medals with his! Did he turn against the war? Sure. Many soldiers did too. The nation also turned against the war and, finally, some responsible for getting us into the war admitted their mistake. "Kerry is one of the Senate's most decorated veterans — though he has far fewer medals than friend John McCain — and his record is impressive for an officer who spent just 10 months in Vietnam. Each of the medals below came with a matching ribbon. Kerry wore his ribbons when he testified before a Senate committee in 1971; the next day, joining hundreds of other vets, he lobbed them at the Capitol. "
posted by Postroad at 1:01 PM PST - 77 comments

Verely ah say untuh yuh...

Does the left hand know what the right hand is doing?
posted by dfowler at 12:44 PM PST - 12 comments

Heeeere's...Oolong?

The Shining in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:34 AM PST - 29 comments

Brutal Honesty

Pat Tillman's memorial ceremony was going as planned: John McCain spoke, American flags waved, the Army and the NFL stood together, all mourning their lost colleague. It was going as planned until Pat's brother spoke: "Pat isn't with God,'' he said. "He's f -- ing dead. He wasn't religious. So thank you for your thoughts, but he's f -- ing dead.''
posted by falconred at 9:20 AM PST - 113 comments

It's a sign!

Baby Sign Language. Hearing children can learn to sign before they can talk. Parents can use ASL, or make up their own language.
posted by Karmakaze at 8:48 AM PST - 67 comments

Hunting Stories : Colon : noloC seirotS gnitnuH

Hunting the Stanford University Lion Stanford University is now debating whether to send hunters into the hills surrounding campus to kill a mountain lion that may have mauled two horses pastured on university land. ................ ................STATE HUNTING REGULATIONS: Create mourning dove season for Minnesota Thirty-nine states allow hunters to take the most popular game bird in the nation, with Michigan set to become No. 40. .................... ................Cult Land Not for Hunting The polygamist cult that bought 1,300 acres of land near San Angelo will not be using it as hunting retreat after all.
posted by mcgraw at 8:19 AM PST - 18 comments

Thou shalt

Bush pretended that he didn't even know us, like Peter denying Jesus. Roy Moore looks toward a Presidential candidacy.
posted by four panels at 7:59 AM PST - 22 comments

The New Deodands?

The new deodands? You too can enjoy the spoils of law. To be clear: it isn't the person that they're prosecuting, it's the cash, the house, the boat, the clothing... hence case names like 'United States v. $242,484'.
posted by snarfodox at 2:30 AM PST - 14 comments

May 3

Everyone in Seattle has one or two Richard Peterson stories--he is well known and well loved.

Richard Petersen a Seattle street musician... an emotionally impaired savant with encyclopedic recall who taught himself the trumpet and piano by studying a production LP of musical cues from the obscure early-fifties television show Sea Hunt has been a touchstone in many Seattle lives for years. He has played trumpet outside of concerts, sporting events and blockbuster movie premieres with a can labeled "No Canadian Coins" at his feet for at least three decades. He is ubiquitous--apart from agoraphobics, the bedridden and those chained to a basement wall, everyone in Seattle has one or two Richard Peterson stories: he is well known and well loved. Here, Irwin Chusid, on an Incorrect Music Hour entitled Music everyone at work can agree on, eternally plays--albeit on RA--Peterson's The Enemy (Is on the Radio Singing My Song) and After The Gold Rush from Richard Peterson's First Album. His first album did well--he was big in Japan. He has four albums out. His My Second Album is the hidden song on the Stone Temple Pilots Purple. He has put four albums out. And now there is Big City Dick: Richard Peterson's First Movie--a well received documentary.
posted by y2karl at 11:33 PM PST - 8 comments

Something you would need a TV to understand

If you get all your news from watching Weekend Update or The Daily Show, you might find FootnoteTV helpful. The site comments and expounds on the newsworthy topics that often crop up in television shows. The parent site, newsaic, has subsites that examine comics and popular culture, among other things, as well.
posted by EatenByAGrue at 11:30 PM PST - 3 comments

What Is Fascism?

Can Compassionate Fascism Be Far Behind? It's only a short book review but Terry Eagleton - who could be defined as a playful and disobedient neo-Marxist literary theorist - manages to give us, propelled by Robert Paxton's universally praised The Anatomy of Fascism, a pithy and workable definition of fascism and its opposition to conservatism, as well as some depressing, very provocative misgivings about the future of capitalism and the increasing appeal of authoritarianism. Just what is, in the 21st century, the danger and chance of revisionist fascism, in the style of a dubious, unctuous political I Can't Believe It's Not Democracy margarine? [Via .]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 10:50 PM PST - 17 comments

MetaFilter: Mr. Fusion ate my baby!

The War Against Cold Fusion. Are our scientists selling us short? Is there a conspiracy? Are we addicted to large, expensive and ungainly projects? Are our scientists blinded by the almighty dollar, the grandiose, the overtly kinetic?

If it seems too simple or too good to be true, are we even capable of accepting proof if it isn't? Is free - well, almost free - a dirty word? Are we getting screwed in the interest of profits yet again?

Via The Institute for New Energy.
posted by loquacious at 10:35 PM PST - 13 comments

The domain name says it all

BadAssMovieImages.com features rare stills and artwork for viewing, with a healthy (but not exclusive) emphasis on cult cinema, and only occasional reviews and comments to compete with the goodness and/or bad-assedness. A movie fan shares his wealth with the world.
posted by LinusMines at 10:28 PM PST - 9 comments

cold fish

Frozen seas. A brief but kind of amazing collection of photos of the deck of a fishing trauler in fridgid conditions, where every exposed surface has layers of frozen saltwater accumulated. This condition can cause the boat to become topheavy and capsize, as well as just plain making life more miserable for those that work on the deck.
posted by jonson at 10:12 PM PST - 12 comments

Biodiversity Hotspots

The 25 richest and most threatened reservoirs of plant and animal life on Earth. Of the 25, here are the hottest of the hotspots. An interactive map. And the latest news about how companies like Office Depot are helping Conservation International protect threatened animals who don't get to vote in even the world's [cough] most enlightened democracies.
posted by mediareport at 9:44 PM PST - 3 comments

Gallery Filter

The Hammond Gallery.
posted by Gyan at 9:34 PM PST - 1 comment

Bob Schneider Music

I wasn't doing so good, but now that I'm dead... He had me sold on just the commentary, but the music is great too. [via Styleboost]
posted by jb at 9:15 PM PST - 4 comments

That's All Right, Baby Boy

50 moments that shaped popular musical history in the last 50 years --from Elvis walking into Sun Studios 50 years ago to last fall's entirely non-white Billboard Top Ten for the first time ever. Anything missing?
posted by amberglow at 9:12 PM PST - 38 comments

10.5

10.5 If you're like me, you probably just finished watching 10.5, and are still giggling at the "disastrous" screenplay and campy drama. Well, the science is in: Magnitude 10.5 is impossible, brick buildings would collapse long before the Space Needle, fault lines don't follow train tracks, California will not slide into the sea, bottomless pits do not swallow up unfortunate red-shirted extras, and for crying out loud, Lex, don't use nuclear warheads either to blow the tectonic plates apart or weld them shut.
posted by brownpau at 8:51 PM PST - 28 comments

Rethinking Zionism

Rethinking Zionism. "Although embattled nationalistic movements are a commonplace, no nationalistic cause is as entwined with the larger issues and fault lines of global politics as modern Zionism is. Not least, the crisis of Zionism has implications for the ability of America to achieve its policy goals in the Middle East and in its wider confrontation with Islamic militancy."
posted by Ty Webb at 7:54 PM PST - 22 comments

Tab A, meet Slot B

Origami Underground :: expert origami with adult, erotic and some scatological themes. Diagrams included. NSFW
posted by anastasiav at 5:27 PM PST - 10 comments

Great Photos Fill

Great Photos Fill
posted by sgt.serenity at 5:24 PM PST - 6 comments

a hole

a hole
posted by crunchland at 3:01 PM PST - 129 comments

Kiwihenge

Stonehenge Aotearoa will be a full-scale working adaptation of Stonehenge in Wairarapa, New Zealand, intended to inspire interest in ancient technologies and basic astronomy.
posted by homunculus at 1:18 PM PST - 8 comments

$4/gallon, here we come!

The gas shortage won't get better. Paid more at the pump recently? I hope you don't drive an SUV -- things could get really painful really fast. Demand is always increasing for gasoline, but now we're hitting a point where refineries can't actually refine enough gas to meet demand, and very few places in the world can supply gasoline that meets our environmental standards.
posted by SpecialK at 12:42 PM PST - 120 comments

wakka wakka wakka

Pac-Manhattan is a large-scale urban game that utilizes the New York City grid to recreate the 1980's video game sensation Pac-Man. Oh yes folks, and it's a NYU grad school project.
posted by archimago at 12:42 PM PST - 7 comments

some you win, mcgraw's a loser

Cough. Yeeowtch! Wow, Lou. Puppies! What a head!
posted by dfowler at 12:32 PM PST - 13 comments

SNAMSPAM!

More on the boom of Friendster, Orkut, Tribe, et al:
  Meet "snam," the junk email generated by social networking.
It's sort of a snowball effect. I just wonder if the name will catch on (?) (It's not as catchy as "spam," is it?) Social networking within organizations is briefly mentioned but interesting: Companies such as Contact Network, Spoke Software, Interface Software, and ZeroDegrees collect individual contact data from a company's employees, then merge it with those workers' past employment histories...
posted by Shane at 11:29 AM PST - 10 comments

Media Matters for America

Media Matters for America Welcome to Media Matters for America, a new Web-based, not-for-profit progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. Because a healthy democracy depends on public access to accurate and reliable information, Media Matters for America is dedicated to alerting news outlets and consumers to conservative misinformation -- wherever we find it, in every news cycle -- and to spurring progressive activism based on standards and accountability in media. In the mid-1990s, as a conservative media insider, I saw firsthand (and participated in) the damage done to our democracy when conservative misinformation masquerades as journalism. In my book Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative (2002), I revealed how this misinformation -- deliberately bought and paid for by covert political forces -- enveloped the media, poisoned public discourse, and nearly toppled a president
posted by Postroad at 10:42 AM PST - 35 comments

The Myth of the Beginning of Time

Alright, ruling out the ice caps melting, meteors becoming crashed into us, the ozone layer leaving, and the sun exploding... we're definitely going to blow ourselves up figure out a way to transform ourselves into strings and plunge through a black whole into the next universe.
posted by MzB at 10:31 AM PST - 5 comments

The Patriot Act? Scarry indeed

A thorough analysis of the Patriot Act's effects on civil liberties by author Elaine Scarry. "Ashcroft dismissed the idea that the Justice Department could conceivably care about librarians or library records... [however,] a University of Illinois study... found that by February of 2002 (four months after the Patriot Act was passed) 4 percent of all U.S. libraries, and 11 percent of all libraries in communities of more than 50,000 people had already been visited by FBI agents requesting information about their patrons' reading habits." [via Harper's magazine]
posted by digaman at 9:54 AM PST - 11 comments

Forthright's Phrontistery

Forthright's Phrontistery: English word lists and language resources.
posted by hama7 at 9:25 AM PST - 4 comments

Which part of your soul did you want to sell?

Cynicism recapitulates fundraising: Direct mail leads to doctrinaire commitment; PACs lead to legislative co-option; hit-and-run media leads to uninformed polarization. Will blogvertizing be any better? Stirling Newberry on the ontology of political fundraising.
posted by alms at 7:00 AM PST - 6 comments

Comments on Bomb Crap

Advanced methods of bomb detection and investigation. New equipment developed to scan cars and people, such as a parking lot device which quickly bathes the car's trunk in invisible neutrons, a procedure that makes materials inside the trunk emit gamma-rays that would indicate the presence of explosives. Also, a bomb disposal robot which take[s] fingerprints before blowing [a] package up.
posted by mcgraw at 6:56 AM PST - 17 comments

Conflict

World Conflicts, 1899-2001 The Nobel e-Museum Group has put together a nifty little Shockwave app that shows more than 200 "wars". An excellent use of technology to distill massive amounts of information into an easily digestible (and illuminating) starting point (obligatory explanation of exceptions and methodolgy can be found here).
posted by Irontom at 6:53 AM PST - 4 comments

Tool Use in Animals

Tool Use In Animals, a tidy little informative set of pages from Dr. Robert Cook's much larger “Animal Cognition & Learning Website” at Tufts University. See also (worth repeating because it’s the coolest thing ever) the previously featuredBetty the Crow”.   ◊via milovoo in Ask MetaFilter
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 4:12 AM PST - 5 comments

Cyberstream Poem

Poem in the cyberstream Still trying to figure this one out.
posted by Niahmas at 2:32 AM PST - 12 comments

Break in the Road

Take one part virtual minidisk, one part crazy dream, stir it all together with a dash of creativity and maybe you too can find a Break in the Road. It's actually kind of fun to play with. I couldn't produce anything that sounded to my ear like music, but I'm sure you lot can do better.
posted by willnot at 12:09 AM PST - 7 comments

May 2

Crazy or Contrite?

The facinating story of Seti Scanlan - After a mental meltdown, he went on a crime spree of robberies, in the process killing 2 victims. He fled from California to Oregon where he... gave himself up. Since then, he has pled guilty to all charges and waived his right to a trial. He attempted to wave his sentancing trial and accept the death penalty, but the judge would not allow it. Scanlan himself says that he just wants to stand up and face the consequences of his crimes.
posted by falconred at 11:44 PM PST - 12 comments

Dog you're the man now

We're all the man now dog and I'm Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the U.S.S. Enterprise.
posted by angry modem at 10:11 PM PST - 28 comments

a conversation with marianne pearl

A conversation with Marianne Pearl
is one of the more moving interviews I have ever heard and was certainly a highlight of the weekend. She is a beautifully calm person with seemingly the right approach to an awfully violent world.
posted by specialk420 at 8:39 PM PST - 3 comments

The fix is in

My advice is unbiased. Pay no attention to that cash sticking out of my pocket. A little MetaFollowup. You'll recall the 52 British diplomats who sent that letter to Prime Minister Blair saying his policies sucked? It turns out that a number of them are getting paid off - directly and indirectly - by pro-Arab organizations. [more inside]
posted by mojohand at 7:58 PM PST - 34 comments

They That Go Down To The Sea In Ships

They that go down to the sea in ships, a really hauntingly beautiful collection of images of seafarers from the past. Some of the images have handwritten notes on the back as well. It's good to get a glimpse of the people and decades lived in by most of our grandparents. Who knows where all those digital images we all take will end up one day.
posted by rhyax at 7:00 PM PST - 7 comments

Diabold in hot water

Diabold touchscreen voting has suffered a setback. The Sec. of State of California (Kevin Shelly) has just decertified 14,000 Diabold AccuVote machines and ordered an investigation of whether or not to charge the company with fraud. Main story here (Washington Post reg required). A few .pdf related documents include the decertification order/finding and what must be done to be recertified including allowing voters a strictly paper vote option. (more inside)
posted by edgeways at 4:54 PM PST - 14 comments

Hukka!

Project:Multiverse! AtariAge has a collection of scans of comics included with 1980's Atari console games.
posted by Snyder at 12:37 PM PST - 6 comments

Heads are gonna roll...

Heads are Gonna Roll • Ford Motor Co. is pissed at ad agency Ogilvy & Mather after O&M leaked a viral marketing ad for the Ford Sportka depicting "a realistic-looking orange cat climbing on top of the car and curiously poking its head into the open moon roof...The roof slides closed and the cat struggles briefly to escape before its headless body slides to the ground." Apparently Ford never authorized the commercial's (.mpg) release.
posted by dhoyt at 12:36 PM PST - 33 comments

Could we actually lose the war on terror?

Lesser Evils

The chief ethical challenge of a war on terror is relatively simple -- to discharge duties to those who have violated their duties to us. Even terrorists, unfortunately, have human rights. We have to respect these because we are fighting a war whose essential prize is preserving the identity of democratic society and preventing it from becoming what terrorists believe it to be. Terrorists seek to provoke us into stripping off the mask of law in order to reveal the black heart of coercion that they believe lurks behind our promises of freedom. We have to show ourselves and the populations whose loyalties we seek that the rule of law is not a mask or an illusion. It is our true nature.
posted by y2karl at 12:30 PM PST - 41 comments

karaoke John Kerry

Sing your current administration blues away at a Kerryoke.
posted by thedailygrowl at 11:34 AM PST - 9 comments

Ghomeshi for PM!

Screw The Vote! The CBC is taking an unusual approach to the looming Canadian election. Follow host Jian Ghomeshi as he travels around the country encouraging not to vote, in a fascinating attempt at reverse psychology. Comes with its very own propaganda kit, too! [more inside]
posted by krunk at 11:32 AM PST - 15 comments

Hanafuda and Go-Stop

Hanafuda, also known as Go-Stop. [more]
posted by hama7 at 8:36 AM PST - 6 comments

No Images Were Harmed...

CSS Pencils is probably the most hardcore use of CSS I've seen - no images at all, but hey - what's that? A picture? And you can manipulate it? Live? Yep - all with the power of CSS!
posted by benzo8 at 7:46 AM PST - 34 comments

The story of Ohh!

The story of Ohh! For men it is quick, easy and essential for reproduction. For women, it is slow, difficult and purely for pleasure. Yet despite such differences, it brings the sexes together and is the basis of the monogamy that distinguishes us from other animals. In his new book, Jonathan Margolis examines the phenomenon of the orgasm
posted by Postroad at 5:21 AM PST - 74 comments

Sex and propaganda

Some say yes, some say and no, some say yes to those who say no.
(Contributors to this post have been: #mefites b1tr0t and esmerelda, as well as y2karl.)
posted by wobh at 12:12 AM PST - 8 comments

May 1

Johnny Cash Monkey

Johnny Cash Monkey
posted by ColdChef at 10:08 PM PST - 9 comments

arc buster

arc buster
posted by crunchland at 8:36 PM PST - 3 comments

coolass mp3s

Browse MP3it's collection - Some free music for fans of gybe!, Black Heart Procession, Rumah Sakit, The Champs, Sea and Cake, and others.
posted by dobbs at 8:23 PM PST - 7 comments

mmmmmmmmmm...........

"touch my tra-la-la" - Mefi falls in love with Günther.
posted by sgt.serenity at 7:30 PM PST - 21 comments

art by request

"Learning to Love You More is both a web site and series of non-web presentations comprised of work made by the general public in response to assignments given by artists Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher and various guests."
posted by kickingtheground at 4:54 PM PST - 8 comments

Human Beatbox

The Human Beatbox (Video). I meant this to be a follow-up to another previous thread about this specific ability, but the search page won't give me my results. At any rate, this guy amuses, entertains and scares the bejeezus out of me all at the same time. Good enough for me!
posted by Dark Messiah at 3:18 PM PST - 16 comments

Tetsuo!!!

Man's stomach 'fell out' after op - Abdominal surgery can be incredibly gross.
posted by Space Coyote at 3:12 PM PST - 20 comments

Early fires

Remains of primordial flames
posted by magullo at 3:06 PM PST - 4 comments

Total Rekall of the Scharzenegger doll

CNN reports that Arnold Schwarzenegger is threatening to sue Bosley Bobbers seeking to stop production of a charity bobblehead doll. The doll shows the former action-actor turned Governor of California posing in a business suit, ammo belt and assault rifle. Arnold is arguing that he owns the marketing rights to his likeness. The creators argue that he lost those rights when he became a political figure. However, this seems to be a repeat of Hustler v. Falwell. And courts lately have been skeptical of trademark rights trumping satire. On the other hand, there seems to be a fine line between editorial use and commercial exploitation.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 10:22 AM PST - 11 comments

Happy Birthday BASIC!

Happy Birthday BASIC! On May 1 1964 two Dartmouth College professors, John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz ran the first BASIC programs; and BASIC went on to become many peoples' first introduction to computer programming.
posted by carter at 9:14 AM PST - 31 comments

Beltane People

A post-modern bestiary of quasi-traditional May Day characters from Edinburgh's Beltane Fire Society.
posted by moonbird at 6:20 AM PST - 4 comments

The Fair Tax

The FairTax is a consumption tax designed to replace the entire federal income tax system, including personal, payroll, corporate, self-employment, capital gains, gift, and inheritance taxes. [more!!]
posted by hama7 at 6:07 AM PST - 139 comments

British soldiers in Iraq torture photos

British soldiers in new Iraq torture photos. Brutal photos and story in today's Daily Mirror.
posted by iffley at 5:18 AM PST - 143 comments

Hooft

Essence of Everything? According to Zuse, cellular automata (PDF). He's not alone.
posted by Gyan at 3:48 AM PST - 9 comments