MetaFilter

Babble - a seriously addictive hybrid of Boggle and Scrabble.
posted by Melinika at 11:59 PM PST - 14 comments

Current TV --Al Gore's new news channel, just launched. What began as an effort to challenge Rupert Murdoch and the right-wing domination of the corporate media has transformed into a business proposition to lure a youth audience with lofty rhetoric, new technology and pop-culture content, says The Nation. So, CNN for MTV viewers? or a real alternative voice? the status bar onscreen is just ridiculous, i already find.
posted by amberglow at 9:52 PM PST - 41 comments

The opening sequence of an X-files episode, or real life? There is a lot of Strange News on the internet, but I particularly like ones that could be the beginning of an X-files episode, potentially only the tip of an even stranger iceberg, yet are reliable and well documented, with photographs of the mysterious blob, or x-rays of strange events that the person in question can't shed light on. As a kid I once played in snow that, much like this, soon turned out to be silk, and similarly read urban-legend-like news articles of a home suddenly plagued by thousands of large poisonous spiders, coming up from underneath it, stumping experts as well for the species was never known to be anything but solitary. I assume that frequently, the explanation is found but never makes the news, leaving the mystery unresolved to the rest of us. Many, like Monkey-man attackers, baby zombies and strange killer grasshoppers have a death toll or leave scars, directly or indirectly. There are plenty of people trying to present themselves as real life x-files, but I'm more interested in well documented events which stand out as bizarre and creepy, without having any of that pushed upon them, and (with a bit of reckless imagination) hint at something bigger - preferably with photo goodness. You no doubt have links of your own. Why not share the better ones. (Or even make up a brief x-file-like mystery around a weird link, then post the link as if to show the story really happened :-)
posted by -harlequin- at 9:41 PM PST - 14 comments

Howard Dean Again Ratchets up Anti-Bush Rhetoric, this time blaming the President's right-wing supreme court for the recent Kelo ruling. These comments strike some as confusing, seeing as how none of the justices at the time were appointed by the President, and 3 of the dissenters are considered to be the most conservative members on the bench.
posted by dsquid at 6:40 PM PST - 73 comments

Tuesday, July 26th, 2005, was a wet day for the city of Mumbai, India (formerly Bombay), to say the least. Within 12 hours, it rained more than half the average annual rainfall. Upwards of 400 people are believed to have died, with more in adjacent regions. In many regions, the water rose as high as five feet. All transportation links to the rest of India were severed. Within the city, many commuters who left work, for home, on Tuesday evening, didn't reach home till Wednesday night. There have been substantial financial and ecological damages. The state apparatus was caught offguard and proven unprepared; the police were nowhere to be found, and the meteorological department found wanting with their warnings. The rumour-mongering of an incoming tsunami or cyclone also didn't help, as 24 people died in the resulting stampede. Alas, just as one is relieved that the ordeal is over, it appears there's yet more to come.
posted by Gyan at 5:57 PM PST - 16 comments

They dance and eat as they steal. Yomango, a counter-but-consumerist-culture of shoplifting, surfaced July 2002 in Spain. It's shoplifting as a movement—taught in workshops, choreographed, organized as missions, and executed with prankish gusto on three continents. Why? One, it's civil disobedience that believes stealing to stay alive should be permitted. Two, it takes back what once belonged to everyone. Three, there's humor in it, even with the communistic undertones and its little red book. Discussion: Dark Matter, Las Agencias, and the Aesthetics of Tactical Embarrassment. A Poliedric Debate On Collabora Art. ¿Lo quieres?¿Lo tienes? (Spanish). More about Yomango: Ten Style Tips for a Yomango Life. A gallery of promos, news, and event photos. Yomango fashion show. Yomango tango. Yomango dinner.
posted by Mo Nickels at 4:30 PM PST - 46 comments

Guantanamo trials are rigged. So claims the Australian ABC (the Aussie version of the BBC) on its webpage this morning, basing its story on two e-mails leaked to it which express the concerns of two U.S. military lawyers who were involved in the preparations for these trials. While this revelation should worry anyone who believes in a concept of justice, the presumption of innocence and of course, the rule of law, this is of particular interest to Australians, given that our own David Hicks is due to face one of these 'commissions' within weeks.
posted by Effigy2000 at 3:59 PM PST - 31 comments

Note-taking methods for students. Includes the Cornell method (details in powerpoint), and a Mapping powerpoint. [via GoBinder]
posted by iffley at 3:57 PM PST - 12 comments

Massive marionnettes in Nantes, France.
posted by mildred-pitt at 12:31 PM PST - 27 comments

Let's Save Our Environment by Dancing Butterflies. Hitchhikers are the new BitTorrent.
posted by LinusMines at 12:13 PM PST - 11 comments

Why do you stay up so late?
posted by srboisvert at 12:08 PM PST - 44 comments

Several dozen folk, popular and art songs from Hungary (in Real Audio and MP3).
posted by Wolfdog at 9:41 AM PST - 6 comments

Don't like the results of legitimate scientific research? Make up your own! Conservatives (including GW) love to quote Paul Cameron of the Family Research Council on the effects of gay parenting. This Boston Globe articles tells what everyone should know about the man and his methodology.
posted by barjo at 8:53 AM PST - 98 comments

Ethnic profiling by dummies. A group of Sikh tourists visiting New York were "identified" as "foreign looking (read muslims). They were then handcuffed with their arms behind their backs and ordered to kneel on the pavement. Maybe this Sikh man has the right idea.
posted by lowgfr at 7:05 AM PST - 54 comments

Terry Pratchett isn't a happy muggle! In a letter to the Sunday Times, Pratchett's had a go at the media for 'the continued elevation of JK Rowling at the expense of other writers'. The letter appears to be in response to a Sunday Times article from last week (sorry, archived) and possibly this article in Time magazine.

I agree that JK has had significantly more press in the last few years than any other author. I'm a Pratchett fan, however, I suspect her success is down to a mix of good marketing and the simple truth that Harry Potter is (and don't shout at me), slightly less geeky and more accessible than the Discworld series. Although I wouldn't be too surprised if, eventually, the streets of Ankh Morpork are alive with “knights and ladies morris-dancing to Greensleeves"...
posted by Nugget at 4:29 AM PST - 101 comments

‘No one should be imprisoned – not even for a second – for expressing an opinion’ Akbar Ganji announced his hunger strike on May 20 with these words.

Ganji, an Iranian journalist and writer, was arrested on April 22, 2000 following his participation in an academic and cultural conference held at the Heinrich Böll Institute in Berlin on April 7-9 entitled "Iran after the elections," at which political and social reform in Iran were publicly debated. He was sentenced on January 13, 2001 to 10 years imprisonment plus five years internal exile. He is now on 50th day of hunger-strike, weighs 52kg, is unconscious much of the day, and may die soon. [more inside]
posted by lenny70 at 2:15 AM PST - 12 comments

Glad to see that, despite all the recent tragedies, Londoners still have a sense of humour...however sardonic.
posted by randomstriker at 12:44 AM PST - 18 comments

Occasionally the folks at Snopes get asked to debunk some very unusual potential urban legends; questions so ridiculous you can only marvel at the motivation behind the asker's particular situation. Fortunately, they have collected and published the best of these questions online. found via
posted by jonson at 11:28 PM PST - 39 comments

Nothing fancy — except, perhaps, the multidimensional sacred geometry.
posted by Rothko at 11:13 PM PST - 11 comments

Atoning for World War II, 60 years later (and Japan should continue to do so) It's no news regarding Japan's role during WWII. However, unlike Germany, Japan has yet to fully apologize and repair strained relations in Asia. However, it is complete crap that U.S. Ambassador Thomas Schieffer thinks that people should glaze over the atrocities in light of Japan's monetary donation. Let's not forget that the US benefitted from the medical experiments that were conducted by the Japanese and that in the fight against communism was willing to quickly establish an outpost and let bygones be bygones.
posted by dkhong at 10:56 PM PST - 40 comments

"The explosion of suggestive images [in Chinese media and art] is partly a reflection of changes in Chinese society -- many sociologists say China is in the midst of a sweeping sexual revolution -- and partly due to market reforms...The government has not given the press free rein to publish material with sexual themes, but the way censorship is carried out means that some media outlets can get away with quite a lot. Rather than issue top-down decrees, Beijing's censors primarily react to existing material, so websites, whose content is easily removable, and publications far from Beijing, which are less likely to attract censors' attention, can take more chances. Still, articles on topics such as 'China's Janet Jackson,' a TV star who has twice revealed a breast in public, and the incidence of erectile dysfunction among China's urban men are now common in the national media."
posted by JPowers at 10:09 PM PST - 14 comments

I could have posted a bunch of different links then added a little “via” to the actual blog, but the truth is I just want to point out that Drawn! is a cool illustration blog.
posted by signal at 8:41 PM PST - 12 comments

Hour 25 Online is a science fiction radio station that's been broadcasting since 1972. They're available online now and have a very nice archive of interviews with science fiction authors and other luminaries.
posted by substrate at 6:39 PM PST - 5 comments

A new planet has been found. The new planet, named 2003 UB₃₁₃ is the farthest known object in the solar system, larger than pluto and a lousy tourist destination. Slacker Astronomy has an interview with co-discoverer Dr. Chad Trujillo.
posted by mosch at 6:31 PM PST - 39 comments

Senate proposal to ban Chimeras - How long will it take our elected betters to tank all US scientific research on moral grounds. I don't see christian ethics stopping the Chinese
posted by sourbrew at 6:08 PM PST - 47 comments

Walter Miller's homepage Picked up recently via kottke.org, this is a years-old webpage (not updated recently) detailing the miserable details of poor Walter's white trash existence. It deserves to be read by a whole new generation. The art of misspelling is taken to new heights.
posted by Holly at 2:37 PM PST - 11 comments

Alexei Sayle's writing for the Independent in the Motoring section. Occasionally it's about motoring, too! Also found was his "Imitating Katherine Walker" [html/pdf] and an excerpt from his book of short stories 'Barcelona Plates'. more inside
posted by Zack_Replica at 2:31 PM PST - 10 comments

Dad 'n Me is a new Flash game by the wacky indie game developer team The Behemoth. Their previous game Alien Hominid started out as a free Flash version that has since been ported to consoles and commercially released on consoles. Be on the lookout for a guest appearance by AfroNinja.
posted by Nelson at 2:05 PM PST - 9 comments

Coke. Guns. Booty. Beats. In the slums of Rio De Janeiro, drug lords armed with submachine guns have joined forces with DJs armed with massive sound systems and rude, raunchy singles. Welcome to the most exciting—and dangerous—underground club scene in the world.
posted by Count Ziggurat at 1:18 PM PST - 23 comments

The Pixies: rare video & interviews, plus images & video from the 2004 reunion tour
posted by jenleigh at 12:56 PM PST - 11 comments

Forgotten and derelict, the second-biggest railway station in Europe (after Leipzig), Canfranc rots quietly in a valley in Northern Spain. It lost its international link to France when a runaway train demolished a key bridge. Now the campaing to save the station has attracted hunger strikers. More info & pictures (mostly in French).
posted by gdav at 10:57 AM PST - 9 comments

White Ninja Comics are not for the weak of mind. They are a brilliant satirical commentary on controversial worldly issues.
straight to the archive
posted by Edible Energy at 7:43 AM PST - 28 comments

Coso Rock Art: "The Coso Rock Art District, a National Historic Landmark deep in the U.S. Navy's testing station at China Lake, contains one of America's most impressive petroglyphic and archeological complexes . . . . Coso rock art has become famous for its stylized representational symbolic system, a system that has intrigued—and baffled—archeologists and lay observers for decades." A guide to the rock art types here. See also A Guided Tour of Coso Rock Art and the Coso Gallery.
posted by LarryC at 7:26 AM PST - 8 comments

The Sky At Night Every episode of the BBC science series made since the end of 2001 viewable online. Anything I know about the universe I learnt from Patrick Moore.
posted by feelinglistless at 5:25 AM PST - 17 comments

Umbert The Unborn, the world's most lovable unborn baby & The wacky adventures of a fetus. Order now for Christmas
posted by growabrain at 2:30 AM PST - 83 comments

British Adidas commercial (warning QT direct link) featuring soccer players on a field made only of the chalk outlines, floating in a void. I'm guessing this won't get shown in the U.S. due to the relative low profile soccer has here, but it's a great spot. More on the "making of" here.
posted by jonson at 11:14 PM PST - 56 comments

These people are apparently unaware that the swastika was not a Nazi symbol in 1880. Is there more than one way to look at this? One Jew's perspective.
posted by spock at 9:05 PM PST - 181 comments

Mathematical proof Mathematical proof that it is impossible to find a girlfriend. "Without going into the specifics of precisely which traits I admire, I will say that for a girl to be considered really beautiful to me, she should fall at least two standard deviations above the norm." -pdf here- via
posted by bigmusic at 8:29 PM PST - 26 comments

Flaubert on Structural Unity. "I’ve just read 'Pickwick' by Dickens. Do you know it? Some bits are magnificent; but what a defective structure! All English writers are like that. Walter Scott apart, they lack composition. This is intolerable for us Latins". Extracts from the letters of Flaubert (via the very awesome book coolie)
posted by matteo at 7:56 PM PST - 12 comments

Stackopolis Some better-late-than-never Friday Flash. Addictive and challenging (translation: fun and frustrating).
posted by Robot Johnny at 7:41 PM PST - 12 comments

Bad news. Richard Posner on the News Media (NYT)
posted by semmi at 7:08 PM PST - 41 comments

What Would You Ask Supreme Court Nominee Judge John Roberts?
posted by Livewire Confusion at 6:14 PM PST - 50 comments

Pot actvist Marc Emery has been arrested in Halifax on the behalf of the US government. Emery, leader of the BC Marijuana Party, runs Pot TV, publishes Cannabis Culture magazine, and has profitable marijuana seed mail order business. It seems a lot of those seeds made it into the US.
posted by btwillig at 5:37 PM PST - 44 comments

Are we ready for the food police? "It's that they're pestering you." brandz
posted by brandz at 4:54 PM PST - 28 comments

Big object sighted... if you liked Sedna and Quaoar, you're bound to love 2003 EL61, which has been found lurking in photographs from a couple of years ago. There appears to be some speculation that this one could be larger than Pluto.
posted by gimonca at 4:19 PM PST - 19 comments

"A generation ago, adult children visiting their parents' homes might have left with a Tupperware container of lasagna. Today, many of them stealthily make off with toiletries, groceries, sometimes clothing and even furniture. It is an apparently widespread practice, born of a sense of entitlement among young adults - and usually amusedly tolerated by parents - that gives new meaning to the phrase 'home shopping.'" Guilty as charged.
posted by JPowers at 4:08 PM PST - 55 comments

Big Brother Nixes Happy Hour National Labor Relations Board Green Lights Ban on Off-Duty Fraternizing Among Co-Workers It is a regular pastime for co-workers to chat during a coffee break, at a union hall, or over a beer about workplace issues, good grilling recipes, and celebrity gossip. Yet a recent ruling by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) allows employers to ban off-duty fraternizing among co-workers, severely weakening the rights of free association and speech, and violating basic standards of privacy for America's workers.
posted by jackspace at 3:34 PM PST - 49 comments

The American Islamic Leaders' "Fatwa" is Bogus "This morning a group of American Islamic leaders held a press conference to announce a fatwa, or Islamic religious ruling, against “terrorism and extremism.” An organization called the Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) issued the fatwa, and the Council on American - Islamic Relations (CAIR) organized the press conference, stating that several major U.S. Muslim groups endorsed the fatwa. In fact, the fatwa is bogus. Nowhere does it condemn the Islamic extremism ideology that has spawned Islamic terrorism.... "
posted by Postroad at 3:28 PM PST - 57 comments

My Twinn: The one-of-a-kind doll created to look like the special child in your life.™
posted by fungible at 3:12 PM PST - 17 comments

In the pantheon of American popular music, Pennsylvanian Stephen Collins Foster (1826-1864) is a muse to all followers. He penned: "Oh, Susanna"; "My Old Kentucky Home"; "Old Folks at Home" ('Way Down Upon the Swanee River') and "Camptown Races" among a legacy of over 200 songs. Foster contributed greatly to the rise in popularity of the minstrel shows, displaying a humanitarian attitude towards blacks in his 'plantation songs', despite only visiting the south once briefly on his honeymoon. Copyright being what it was in those days, he made not much more than $9000 in his lifetime from publishing royalties. He died a pauper in New York following a head injury and was found with just 38c and a scrap of paper in his pocket book that read: "Dear friends and gentle hearts". His sketch book of songs was recently digitized and is hosted by the University of Pittsburgh. via
posted by peacay at 2:49 PM PST - 25 comments

Hope and Memory, 1801 - 2004. "This is an archive of 163 US interventions, a multi-faceted catalogue of coups, humanitarian incursions, covert actions, proxy armies, freedom fighters/terrorists and multilateral offensives. Out of this legacy, a complex picture emerges." [Via wood s lot.]
posted by homunculus at 1:32 PM PST - 18 comments

About 2 billion people live in countries that are in danger of collapse. In the first annual Failed States Index, Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace rank the countries about to go over the brink.
The Failed States Index Map and the Failed State Index.
posted by y2karl at 1:26 PM PST - 25 comments

Puzzle: If you a sour fruit transpose, a very sweet one 'twill disclose. (answer here)
Courtesty of the Old Farmer's Almanac, which has a puzzle a day on its home page along with gardening tips, advice, weather history, daily questions, and other old-timey stuff for non-flash Friday fun. Don't forget to check out the riddles in the puzzle archives, especially if you have a five year old that needs entertainment.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 1:04 PM PST - 6 comments

Mysteriously knocked up? Does your coffee taste funny? You may be infested with fairies. Let go of your skepticism and realize you have only two choices: beat ‘em or join ‘em.
posted by jrossi4r at 11:35 AM PST - 13 comments

Gödel and the Nature of Mathematical Truth : A Talk with Verena Huber-Dyson
posted by Gyan at 10:24 AM PST - 77 comments

Stanley Kunitz turns 100.
What makes the engine go? / Desire, desire, desire. / The longing for the dance / stirs in the buried life.
Biography 1, 2; interview originally published in 1997; article here and Boston Globe editorial here. Happy Birthday, Mr. Kunitz.
posted by jokeefe at 10:18 AM PST - 13 comments

Rise above the debris during your next hurricane with the HurriCraft.
posted by ?! at 10:09 AM PST - 10 comments

Teagames fun, flash and physics disguised as games [via jay bibby]
posted by jonah at 9:58 AM PST - 7 comments

In case of emergency, nuke Iran. From the folks who brought you Operation Iraqi Freedom and the "last throes" of the insurgency, the latest strategy for enhancing homeland security and US global standing is to launch a nuclear first-strike against Iran in the event of another 9/11-style attack -- whether Iran has ties to the attackers or not. As Juan Cole points out, turning a Shiite Muslim nation into the next Hiroshima could have disagreeable consequences. (First reported by the American Conservative, not your typical liberal rag, and via DailyKos.)
posted by digaman at 9:46 AM PST - 78 comments

The (Mostly Improbable) Materials Science and Engineering of the Star Wars Universe; The Reel Thing: One Editor’s List of Great Material Moments in the Movies; Toy Story: Materials Engineering at Play, featuring an MPEG of Fluffy the three headed dog from Harry Potter barking thanks to Nanomuscle; Things that Go Boom in the Night: The Art and Science of Fireworks; Built to Battle, Robots Test Designers’ Mettle; Fabricating the Weapons and Armor of The Lord of the Rings; and, finally, Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse? Science, Engineering, and Speculation. All articles from the surprisingly interesting JOM: The Member Journal of The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society.
posted by OmieWise at 9:05 AM PST - 8 comments

Internets: Serious Business! These last few months have seen an increase in the attacks on the participatory culture of the web. The mainstream establishments, both political and corporate, have been looking with a cautious eye towards this new developing place. So far we've established that blogs can get you fired, keep you from getting a job, give pedophiles a place to ruminate on snatching your children, threaten journalistic integrity *snicker*, endanger the marketing , product planning, and product life cycles for automobile manufacturers, can infect your computer with virii, and have all sorts of negative consequences. The internets (both of them) can cause your children to be charmed, seduced, and addicted by readily available porn, and can also provide access to extremist radical and fundamentalist groups, prompting Congress to discuss more restrictive legislation (NSFW), but only for the porn. It has even been claimed that the web has given "Al Qaeda wings". P2P is blamed as causing record loses by the music industry, despite their investments in local station marketing payola. The FEC has held public hearings attended by both hemispheres of the blogosphere (amazingly in near-agreement) discussing the regulation of political speech online. The figureheads of a certain political party fear that their affiliated slice of the blogosphere may be too far-left. Newspapers and TV are leading the charge, with the internet standing in for pharmaceutical scares, yo-yo diets, and missing white women. The question is, how will the libertarian-minded digerati respond to this very real attack on the essence of web culture?
posted by rzklkng at 8:55 AM PST - 33 comments

The Fantastic in Art and Fiction. The Cornell Institute for Digital Collections presents an online image-bank that "provides a visual resource for the study of the Fantastic or of the supernatural in fiction and in art" from the danse macabre to medical oddities to creatures straight out of Hell (and Heaven). The university's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections has put together a captivating little collection of the marvelous, the mysterious and the magical. You can search through all the images at once or search by book title. (Some images may be slightly NSFW.)
posted by LeeJay at 8:16 AM PST - 15 comments

"Can Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North save America from an Orwellian nightmare of ultra-leftist oppression?" In the first term of President Chelsea Clinton and Vice-President Michael Moore, Usama bin Laden, Afghanistan's ambassador to the United Nations, is hatching a nefarious plot. Only three men are brave enough to stand up to bin Laden and his liberal cronies. Silenced in mainstream discourse by the "Coulter Laws" of 2007, these radio hosts, through their pirate broadcasts, are telling America the truth about liberals. This comic (synopsis, preview pages) will undoubtedly be the most awesomest thing ever. (Via Tom Tomorrow)
posted by UKnowForKids at 7:14 AM PST - 101 comments

cursor-dodger ... don't let the little guy grab your pointer.
posted by crunchland at 7:14 AM PST - 29 comments

The Bloodhound Gang is attempting to change the state song of Pennsylvania (right in time to support their new album, of course). Is this the Bloodhound Gang's actual attempt at being clever/helpful to the peeps of PA to change this song or is it the band's shameless buzz marketing campaign? (Ooooh... Hooray for Viral! (flash)) Well, it's working for this guy at least... Listen to the song here (only mildly annoying pop up) or download it here ... /me feels dirty. Who has a Pepsi Blue? Or Green?
posted by AspectRatio at 6:53 AM PST - 29 comments

DJ Lizard Is Come And Kill Us All. Don't Hold Back: GALVANIZE!
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 5:59 AM PST - 6 comments

On Saturday, the legendary National Liquor Bar in Milwaukee will close.... And they want to tear it down so we get another Walgreens? What do we need another Walgreens for?" This spoken on a recent afternoon over a $1.75 can of Beck's by Ken Labonty, who works at a tire shop on the north side. At 47, he said he has been coming to the tavern since 1976, "Except from September 1977 to 1983, when I was in prison," and the eight or so times he's been banished
posted by Durwood at 5:48 AM PST - 32 comments

"Recognising the potential of the current situation and in order to enhance the democratic process and underlying our definitive commitment to its success, the leadership of the IRA have decided that as of midnight, August 31, there will be a complete cessation of military operations. All our units have been instructed accordingly." Sounds good until you realise this was the 1994 ceasefire statement! Sound familiar to anyone here? Now that the British police have started killing terror suspects, it would seem that the I.R.A. doesn't want to play anymore.
posted by DrDoberman at 5:35 AM PST - 33 comments

Post No Bills. At the intersection of life and advertising one may unexpectedly find art, or at least humor. Henry Ho shines a light on it. (42 pages. Or view all thumbnails together)
posted by taz at 4:50 AM PST - 15 comments

An interview with a British Jihadist. What he believes, how he came to his beliefs. An extended version of the interview from the latest issue of Prospect.
posted by biffa at 3:40 AM PST - 93 comments

Boston Chefs - Search by location or name, and view each gorgeous portfolio
posted by growabrain at 11:16 PM PST - 10 comments

上海自杀地图 (找个地方去死) — 「直达动物园可自投虎口等」。
posted by neckro23 at 10:41 PM PST - 74 comments

Cool Heinken ad features amazing (cgi?) dancework, catchy jingle, quicktime direct download link.
posted by jonson at 10:36 PM PST - 31 comments

Kubrick 2001: The space odyssey explained. Finally: all that monolith nonsense explained in big, bright Flash.
posted by ford and the prefects at 10:14 PM PST - 54 comments

Electronic Paper looks pretty neat, although I'm skeptical they could produce it for less than traditional paper anytime soon. Such inventions could even be better for our environment in the long run, although it appears to boil down to personal preference when it comes to Paper vs. Plastic.
posted by Guerilla at 5:01 PM PST - 15 comments

Balancing Point - A neat little piece playing with reverse motion shots. [Quicktime - via fazed]
posted by icosahedral at 4:46 PM PST - 39 comments

Shuttle Damage A nice graphic of the 15000 hits the shuttle program has had.
posted by srboisvert at 3:16 PM PST - 25 comments

Subverting childrens television shows isn't exactly new, but when did it become mainstream?
posted by tighttrousers at 3:11 PM PST - 15 comments

The Washington Nationals were one of the biggest surprises of the first half of the 2005 baseball season. On July 3, the team formerly known as the Expos had a 50-31 record. Everybody in DC was feeling good, especially the Republicans. Not only did Washington have a baseball team for the first time in decades, but that surprisingly good baseball team also featured a home uniform that had a red cap with a "w" on the front. As a result, some Republicans eagerly adopted the cap as a symbol of their party and their president. The second half of the Nationals' season has mirrored Bush's second term, however. Just like Bush has made missteps on Social Security and lost the battle to make his judicial nominees filibuster-proof, the second half of the Nationals season has been filled with miscues, too. After this afternoon's loss to the Braves, the Nationals have a 5-16 record over the past three weeks. Does this spell bad news for John Roberts?
posted by hellx at 3:09 PM PST - 47 comments

Meet Victor, a deceased, brilliant parrot whose owner recorded their regular conversations. The bird gives marital advice, demands human intervention to defend his toys, laughs to entertain his human, and much more. Imbedded audio in some links.
posted by leapingsheep at 2:54 PM PST - 17 comments

A nonist public service pamphlet. Here you will find a 6 page pamphlet meant as a public service to help educate bloggers about the growing problem of blog depression. ;)
posted by FunkyHelix at 2:07 PM PST - 14 comments

Help find Latoyia: A not-so-quiet movement is going on within the Philadelphia blog community - the movement to find 24 year old African American Latoyia Figueroa. Those involved have managed to get a front-page CNN article for the young woman. Those involved seem driven by the recent news coverage of Natalee Holloway. From Richard Cranium's post: Consider this as a social experiment. If Natalee Holloway rates a $1 Million reward, certainly, a missing mother (and mother-to-be) rates enough reward money to shake a few street rats out of the woodwork, and we should put our money where our mouth is.
posted by tozturk at 12:20 PM PST - 28 comments

Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass. Frustrated undergrad's lab report. Conclusion: pretty funny.
posted by Idiot Mittens at 11:43 AM PST - 38 comments

What if we can't afford to save the world? An interesting debate between Sierra Club’s Carl Pope and the outspoken Bjørn Lomborg. (The “saving the world” bit might seem like hyperbole, but the really interesting question this debate sparks for me is this: Hypothetically, if it really came down to it, would anyone be willing to save the world for free? And if not, what does that imply about our values system and personal priorities? What does it say about the practical utility and limitations of monetary-based economic systems?
posted by all-seeing eye dog at 11:14 AM PST - 55 comments

Mysterious Skin. After years of offending the mainstream, director Gregg Araki's controversial new film (trailer) is getting a surprising degree of critical acclaim, with an 8.3 rating on IMDB, and a 90% rating amongst Rotten Tomatoes "Cream of the Crop" reviewers. It also features a soundtrack that will delight Cocteau Twins fans, as it features a shimmering score by Robin Guthrie (who apparently has a blog) and Harold Budd, reminiscent of their work on The Moon and The Melodies.
posted by insomnia_lj at 9:43 AM PST - 49 comments

Boy Scout Jamboree vital for national security ...so that they can get around the court decision forbidding federal funds to the Boy Scouts. [via rc3.org]
posted by jperkins at 9:29 AM PST - 97 comments

Everything you thought you knew about Jean Charles de Menendez is wrong. There was no bulky fleece jacket. He didn't leap the barrier at the Tube station. He was shot seven times, not five. Is there anything in the original police reports which the Metropolitan police still considers to be "substantiated"?
posted by clevershark at 9:17 AM PST - 110 comments

How not to clean a tank car. Apparently someone steam cleaned a railroad tank car and then having finished the job closed all the valves and hatches tightly. Physics then took over.
posted by caddis at 8:53 AM PST - 93 comments

Show me DQ issue 3. I found this magazine just laying there on the web. You can flick through it at your own pace and look at the pretty bic-style illustrations.
posted by dabitch at 8:04 AM PST - 31 comments

Anniversary of B-25 Crashing into the Empire State Building: 9:50 a.m., Saturday July 28, 1945.

Today is the anniversary of the crash of an airplane into the Empire State Building.

posted by Dunvegan at 7:51 AM PST - 16 comments

Daily Mail Watch keeps an eye on some of Britain's more right wing newspapers.
posted by handee at 5:25 AM PST - 66 comments

Inventor of CTRL-ALT-DEL ridicules Bill Gates. "'I may have invented CTRL-ALT-DEL, but Bill Gates made it famous". Video clip of the episode, via TUAW, who say "The funniest part is the expression, or lack thereof, on the face of Bill."
posted by nthdegx at 4:57 AM PST - 50 comments

BBC Radio 2 -- Sold On Song The website for this show on BBC Radio 2 is pretty awesome; it's got a list of pages on various classic songs in their library (also sortable by artist), which includes song clips and (where available) clips from covers of the songs, taken from the same place -- check out the various It Must Be Loves (originally by Madness Labi Siffre) -- my favorite will always be the Madness one, but the Lyn Paul version is actually pretty cool. There's also some weird and awful covers available for the picking. I've just been spending about an hour or two picking through random songs and noting on which ones are as good as the original or ones that just fall so very short. (They've also got lots of other content, like the songwriting guide, but the real fun is in the song pages, reading about these great songs and listening to other people do their own cuts on them. [All links go to text; all sound files are in RealAudio.]
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 12:44 AM PST - 6 comments

The war in Iraq is now joining the South African War (1899-1902) and the Suez crisis in 1956 as ill-considered ventures that have done Britain more harm than good. It has demonstrably strengthened al-Qaeda by providing it with a large pool of activists and sympathisers across the Muslim world it did not possess before the invasion of 2003. The war that started out as a demonstration of US strength as the world's only superpower has turned into a demonstration of weakness. Its 135 000-strong army does not control much of Iraq. The suicide bombing campaign in Iraq is unique. Never before have so many fanatical young Muslims been willing to kill themselves trying to destroy those they see as their enemies. On a single day in Baghdad this month 12 bombers blew themselves up. There have been more than 500 suicide attacks in Iraq during the past year. It is this campaign that has now spread to Britain and Egypt...
Iraq has descended into chaos way beyond West's worst-case scenario
posted by y2karl at 11:36 PM PST - 61 comments

This guy kept his amputate foot in a bucket of formaldehyde on his porch. Occasionally he would cut off toes to give to friends as gifts. Uhhh, thanks. I guess. via SLC's own hektik.
posted by trbrts at 10:44 PM PST - 23 comments

Birth of Clinton Cargo Cult [ wikipedia: what's a cargo cult ? In short, yearning for Clinton-era economic prosperity got cultified. ]...OK. Here's the rap : Any day, Jesus Christ will return in a space ship bringing news that Bill Clinton signed a secret law in 2000 abolishing the IRS. The law, NESARA , "would expose the "Republican Party" for what they are: literally reptile space aliens posing as fiscal conservatives......And thus was a new religion born....Some people have asked, 'Why does Jesus need a spaceship'?". There's a NESARA documentary, and NESARA holds its own DC rallies. Story courtesy of John Gorenfeld, a noted authority on Lunar anomalies.
posted by troutfishing at 10:23 PM PST - 25 comments

Places and spaces is an exhibit which aims to compare and contrast the first maps of our entire planet with the first maps of all of science as we know it.
posted by dhruva at 10:21 PM PST - 5 comments

CAFTA passed in House Despite unions, NGOs, and even some hispanic organizations, CAFTA was passed by the House tonight, most likely soon to be followed by the Senate and signed by Bush. Is this a positive move, or will this "send jobs overseas"?
posted by Moral Animal at 10:15 PM PST - 25 comments

Semiotics for beginners. via Michael Bérubé
posted by kenko at 9:37 PM PST - 21 comments

"I... Forgot."

Upon the death of a possible BSE cow, "the unidentified doctor preserved the brain stem sample in formalin... but then 'simply forgot' about it until mid-July." That's the reason why we're only hearing about it now. Any questions?
posted by soyjoy at 7:45 PM PST - 50 comments

"A look at the average number of page views per title reveals that Microsoft gets about half as many page views per title as compared to Google and Apple" a strong indication of where reader interest actually resides." - ZDNet. Intelliseek's Blogpulse reveals similar numbers: #1 Google: 473K, #2 Apple: 381K, #3 Microsoft: 262K. Venture capitalist, Ed Sim, says: "While the OS is important, Microsoft has lost its complete and utter dominance as we move to a service-oriented world where broadband is everywhere, apps are in the cloud, and the browser becomes king."
posted by spock at 7:32 PM PST - 19 comments

Zora Neale Hurston's Glossary of Harlem Slang. Profiles of black writers including Audre Lorde, Chester Himes, The Last Poets and Linton Kwesi Johnson. The complete list of Coretta Scott King children's book award winners. Lots of informative off-site links. A lively forum filled with juicy gossip, among other pleasures. Just a few things you'll find at the African American Literature Book Club.
posted by mediareport at 7:29 PM PST - 11 comments

"For every Deep Roy, there are a hundred and fifty of us who are forced to do wacked-out shit on 'The Man Show.' I'd like Tim Burton to tell me to my face what is the benefit of hiring one dwarf actor and computer-generating him when he could hire seven. We're standing at the gate and we're raising our hands and saying, 'Pick me!' And then Tim Burton comes out and says, 'I'm sorry, guys, go on home. We've got this machine that can do all your jobs.'"
posted by JPowers at 7:26 PM PST - 42 comments

NSFW- Model vs. Photographer "First, I really thought that the shots would be funny. Second, it was about the only truly creative idea I had ever had. While I've often seen photographers do nude self portraits, I had never seen a male photographer try to adopt the same poses as his female models. Third, what better way to blunt the criticism that most nude art degrades women? I'm saying that I'm perfectly willing to do anything that I ask my models to do. And I really think that the more feminine the pose, the funnier the shots become."
posted by nadawi at 7:14 PM PST - 73 comments

The Wapo first reported that a security researcher Michael Lynn of ISS had discovered a critical hole in Cisco routers, was ready to present his findings at Blackhat, and then suddenly bowed out. Some began to cry "cover-up", and Cisco denied the vulnerability. Then, dramatically, Lynn resigned from ISS and gave his presentation, saying "I'm probably about to be sued to oblivion. (But) the worst thing is to keep this stuff secret."
posted by sohcahtoa at 6:05 PM PST - 12 comments

..I would like to convey the message that our system works. We did not need to use a secret military tribunal, or detain the defendant indefinitely as an enemy combatant, or deny him the right to counsel, or invoke any proceedings beyond those guaranteed by or contrary to the United States Constitution. ...We can deal with the threats to our national security without denying the accused fundamental constitutional protections. ...--U.S. Western District Judge John Coughenour, while sentencing "Millennium Bomber", Ahmed Ressam. With 60 Terror Plots foiled in the past 10 years, and pretty much none foiled due to the DHS and Patriot Act, it has to be asked-- Why isn't regular law enforcement and all the rest enough? (a little more inside)
posted by amberglow at 5:20 PM PST - 38 comments

What's That Bug? Got a bug in your house that needs identifying? These lovely people have the answers. Good to know that an Oooh! Bug is actually called a House Centipede.
posted by crapulent at 1:24 PM PST - 61 comments

Operation Bug Out. As predicted in a leaked document from Britain's Defense Ministry earlier this month, the US is planning to start withdrawing troops from Iraq as early as Spring 2006, despite President Bush's statement that there's not going to be any timetables because "if you give a timetable, you're -- you're conceding too much to the enemy." (Sometimes he thinks it's important for the president to lay out a timetable, sometimes he doesn't.) Is the withdrawal happening because we're running out of troops or because of midterm elections? Or has another mission been accomplished?
posted by kirkaracha at 12:14 PM PST - 47 comments

The Prison Policy Initiative conducts research and advocacy on incarceration policy. Some interesting data include the proliferation of prisons in the US over the last century, disenfranchisement of potential black voters, global incarceration rates and percentage of US population under control of the criminal justice system.
posted by Gyan at 10:54 AM PST - 42 comments

Will it be Marc Garneau, the first Canadian in space? Or maybe former Tory politician Joe Clark, unlucky as prime minister but inspired as foreign minister? Or the "man in motion," Rick Hansen, a paraplegic who wheeled the circumference of the earth? Step right up and wonder at the identity of Canada's next head of state: [more inside]
posted by docgonzo at 10:43 AM PST - 24 comments

Weldon Kees, bohemian and poet, disappeared at the Golden Gate Bridge fifty years ago this month.
posted by xowie at 10:36 AM PST - 4 comments

NYSE Marketrac, flash for investors.
posted by nervousfritz at 10:29 AM PST - 15 comments

Cambridge Illuminations claims to be the largest exhibition of medieval illuminated manuscripts since 1908. To see all 200 exhibits, you'll have to visit the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge; but 65 of the best, including the sixth-century Gospels of St Augustine and the recently discovered Macclesfield Psalter, can be viewed online.
posted by verstegan at 10:09 AM PST - 8 comments

A $10,000 bounty & appalling arrogance. Gary Skoien, Cook County GOP chairman, placed a $10,000 bounty on Da mare's head over by dere. Gary Skoien: "I am personally placing a ten thousand dollar bounty on the head of Richard Daley. He's the head Democrat and chief punk on that Chicago team." Jacqueline Heard: "A bounty?" Gary Skoien: "Yeah, ten thousand bucks of my own money for the first of my men who really creams that guy."
posted by Smedleyman at 10:07 AM PST - 53 comments

Bizarre child support battle in Brooklyn A Brooklyn, New York man who stopped paying storage fees for his frozen sperm after divorcing his wife has filed suit against the sperm bank, his ex, and a notary public after learning she picked up the payments and used the sperm to get pregnant. Deon Francois, who now must pay child support, says he didn't want a child and never gave consent for the use of his sperm.
posted by halekon at 9:55 AM PST - 110 comments

solipsistic :: beautiful weirdness - Old Photographs and Surrealistic Prose
posted by anastasiav at 9:44 AM PST - 11 comments

Walmart vs the free press again... other examples: the book mentioned in this thread is no longer available. This and that and the other thread too. Another point in a pattern of steadily increasing restriction of the press by this taxpayer funded mega -corp? Or simply a case of private enterprise making decisions in its own interest - nothing to see here, move along...
posted by dorcas at 7:47 AM PST - 118 comments

Kiss your son's belly button Spend six months in jail.
posted by delmoi at 7:17 AM PST - 68 comments

It's all about Customer Service. Craig Newmark on his spiritual mission...
posted by lilboo at 7:04 AM PST - 6 comments

Al Qaeda Training Manual [note: PDF files]
posted by crunchland at 5:42 AM PST - 25 comments

Meet the Robocoaster - The Robocoaster is a variation on the robot arms which are used in factories to build cars. By adding seats, designers have turned a functional machine into the fastest, most unpredictable ride you'll ever take. It can be self programmed to travel in millions of movement combinations. No ride will ever be the same. Video (Flash) 1, 2 and 3. Via Beyond Tomorrow.
posted by sjvilla79 at 5:26 AM PST - 34 comments

Have you heard of Kobe beef? How about Liechtenstein's milk?
posted by magullo at 1:36 AM PST - 33 comments

The Christian Paradox Bill McKibben in Harper's examines why America is "simultaneously the most professedly Christian of the developed nations and the least Christian in its behavior."
posted by robliberal at 1:01 AM PST - 84 comments

Catholic rebels with a cause Two days ago, on a boat on the St. Lawrence River, nine Catholic rebels did something in direct defiance of the Vatican and now face the real prospect of excommunication by the Inquisitor Cardinal Formerly Known as Ratzinger. What crime did they commit, you might ask? Were they participant in something blackhearted, vile and fully deserving of society's wrath, like, say child abuse or pedophilia? Heck no. The white-haired guys at HQ in Rome will look the other way on that business. They might even reward duplicitous attempts to cover up that sort of thing. These malcontents did something much, much worse in the eyes of the Holy See, among others. These are Catholic women, you see. And they had themselves ordained, some as priests and some as deacons. If you've followed Ratzinger's career, you'll recall his response the last time this issue surfaced, so the conclusion to this saga is all-but-foregone.

At least he's consistent in what he thinks ought to be the correct response of an individual in the face of a rigid, autocratic institution bent on order.
posted by runningdogofcapitalism at 10:22 PM PST - 91 comments

Hawaiian lava boarding (he'e holua) revival. History here and holua sleds/boards here.
posted by loquacious at 9:21 PM PST - 16 comments

Hate pays: The "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" have - it seems - never quite died, and Bartholomew's Notes on Religion details the recrudescence of the Russian Orthodox anti-Semitic right. Meanwhile, in the USA, talk show host MSNBC rewards Jay Severin for his apparent call for the slaughter of American Muslim citizens with a spot alongside bowtie-sporting Tucker Carlson. Hate pays.
posted by troutfishing at 9:20 PM PST - 15 comments

In science's longstanding tradition of stating the obvious, Dartmouth has just released a study on drinking culture that confirms everything you already knew. I'm so keeping a copy of this and giving it to my brother when he goes to college so he can show the RA. WOOOOO!
posted by saysthis at 8:21 PM PST - 19 comments

...One of the reasons truth seems so difficult to describe is that we have conflicting beliefs about it: we sometimes think it is discovered, sometimes created, sometimes knowable, sometimes mysterious. When we use the idea in ordinary life-as we do when we agree or disagree with what someone has said-it seems a simple matter. Yet the more we stop to think about it, the more complicated it becomes. It would be nice if we could sort out, once and for all, everything we thought about truth-to find out the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the truth, as it were. Nice, but practically impossible. The thesis of this book is much simpler. Of the many things you could believe about truth, there is at least one that you should believe: truth matters. Truth, I shall try to convince you, is of urgent importance in both your personal and political life..
'True to Life' and 'Who Cares About the Truth?' are two excerpts from the first chapter of True To Life: Why Truth Matters by Michael P. Lynch, about whose philosophical thought was written Lynch's Metaphysical Pluralism and about whose book was just written The Truth Wars, believe it or not.
posted by y2karl at 7:24 PM PST - 7 comments

Big Star, named after a Memphis grocery chain and arguably the most influential cult band in the pop pantheon (not to mention composers of "That '70s Show" theme song, as rendered by Cheap Trick), releases a new studio album on Rykodisc on Sept. 27. Fronted by the legendary Alex Chilton (yes, the same one) and Chris Bell (Jody Stephens and Andy Hummell rounded out the original lineup), Big Star reformed in 1993 with the Posies' Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow, and have played live off and on since -- but this is the band's first release of new material since the dark, brooding Third/Sister Lovers in 1978. O my soul! Power pop fans rejoice!
posted by scody at 6:25 PM PST - 40 comments

Meet: The Slingbox, "a compact and elegantly designed, state-of-the-art electronic device that connects to the back of your TV...[and] redirects, or 'placeshifts,' the TV signal from your cable box, satellite receiver, or digital video recorder...to your computer or laptop of choice, no matter your location."
posted by JPowers at 5:46 PM PST - 27 comments

New FCC head seeks to quietly gut independent DSL carriers. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has circulated a proposal that would eliminate the requirement of phone companies to lease their phone lines to competitors, effectively cutting the throat of independent DSL carriers such as Covad, and their customers, such as EarthLink, AT&T, Concentric, AOL, and Sprint. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 gave Baby Bells the right to sell long distance service in exchange for opening up their networks to the public. Now the Bush administration are poised to undo this, killing a multibillion dollar industry, and giving monopoly control back to the Baby Bells, who aren't quite so small anymore, thanks to corporate mergers. If you like having all the broadband choices you currently have, you may want to contact the FCC commissioners, toot sweet.
posted by insomnia_lj at 5:11 PM PST - 38 comments

Draft Russ. Some people would like Sen. Russ Feingold to run for president. I'm all for it, I mean, it'll give Obama time to get some experience....
posted by taumeson at 5:07 PM PST - 19 comments

Marketocracy is a free, handy site where you can practice building your own stock portfolio.
MOFQX is a moderately successful mutual fund driven entirely by the top 100 performers out of some 37,000 Marketocracy members. With market-beating returns and an innovative method, some think that the fund might be a great idea--perhaps the wisdom of crowds made manifest--but others are less bullish.
posted by allan at 2:51 PM PST - 17 comments

In The O Factor (Slate), Field Maloney asks if Owen Wilson was the key to the Wes Anderson phenomenon.
posted by willnot at 2:38 PM PST - 77 comments

If the president can say it, why can't Gary Trudeau?
posted by ZachsMind at 2:15 PM PST - 58 comments

The best American hamburgers? The American Hamburger is one of those things that I truly miss about the US and one of those things that we Brits try to copy but, for some reason, just never seem to get right.

Forget the golden-arches, we need some proper hamburger joints serving up half-pound burgers, real milkshakes and endless refills...
posted by Nugget at 1:59 PM PST - 117 comments

The 2005 Adobe Design Achievement Awards , which "celebrate student achievement that reflects the powerful convergence of technology and creative arts." You can also browse past winners from 2004, 2003, 2002, and 2001 [via]...
posted by tpl1212 at 12:14 PM PST - 9 comments

Droit de suite "Whenever I have met a dealer or a collector, they always seem wealthy; and whenever I have met an artist, they seem poor." -Chris Bryant, a British MP, during the discussion of a new law by which a living artists or their heirs for 70 years after their death will receive a cut of about 3 per cent whenever a piece is sold. Also here .
posted by R. Mutt at 12:09 PM PST - 31 comments

The Left's Dissection of Patriotism. via
posted by peacay at 10:35 AM PST - 154 comments

UK-based Intelligent Energy intends to put the world's first fuel cell-powered motorbike on sale next year. At 0-50 in 12 seconds and US$6000, it's not a lot of bang for the buck. And there aren't a lot of hydrogen filling stations yet (they're working on that). But it's kind of cool looking, and you can drink the exhaust, so it's got that going for it, which is nice. Interview and details via the Boston Globe.
posted by schoolgirl report at 9:14 AM PST - 23 comments

Lt. gov. crashed Marine's funeral, kin say | This story has caused quite a stir: "The family of a Marine who was killed in Iraq is furious with Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll for showing up uninvited at his funeral this week, handing out her business card and then saying 'our government' is against the war." Knoll has since apologized, as has PA Governor Rendell, but does combing through a simple Google search of the soldier's outraged sister-in-law shed some light on what influenced this 'misunderstanding'?
posted by highsignal at 9:06 AM PST - 90 comments

Liftoff! Discovery is in orbit, and STS-114 is well and fully underway. The fuel sensor problem which had previously delayed the launch was not an issue this morning. Mission timeline, mission updates, and the Wikipedia entry.
posted by brownpau at 8:05 AM PST - 36 comments

Critical Miami complaining about all things florida (duh)
posted by Thayer-P at 7:33 AM PST - 6 comments

Dad's salary is skyrocketing - on TV. (list here all averaged by profession and adjusted for inflation) "Today's TV dads average salaries of $195,000 after adjusting for inflation, according to Salary.com."
posted by jonmc at 7:32 AM PST - 42 comments

A creepy old man, known as Mr. Six, has spent the last couple of years dancing on commercials for Six Flags amusement parts. He's clearly a fake old man (a young person in makeup). So who plays Mr. Six? Six Flags won't say, many people speculate, but this guys thinks he knows.
posted by grumblebee at 7:18 AM PST - 74 comments

Microsoft wipes Apple from the face of the Earth. Virtual Earth, that is. A search for "1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA" renders only an empty field and some sort of barn. This is what it really looks like. Finding that other microcomputer company is obviously not a problem. Microsoft blames old photographs (from 1991) for the omission, but copyright notices on the images go only as far back as last year.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 7:13 AM PST - 22 comments

Russian spammer beaten to death.
posted by mono blanco at 2:32 AM PST - 35 comments

The First Shot of the Civil War was fired on January 9, 1861, when George Edward Haynesworth, a cadet at The Citadel, fired a handgun at the Star of the West (1861 engraving), which was attempting to reinforce Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor (1861 map, Google map). As Captain John McGowan reported, Confederate troops from Morris Island and Fort Moultrie fired 17 shots at the Star of the West, forcing it to withdraw and return to New York. President Buchanan then "reverted to a policy of inactivity that continued until he left office." Cadet Haynsworth was in the last Civil War battle east of the Mississippi and claimed to have also fired the last shot in the war. The Star of the West was later captured by the Confederates. The Citadel has a Star of the West Monument and scholarship dedicated to the cadets that fired on the ship. Also: Harper's Weekly newspapers fom the Civil War.
posted by kirkaracha at 12:24 AM PST - 17 comments

Stripped for Parts Although the blogging community has had a hunch for some time, director Robert Fiveson has just confirmed that he's considering an injunction against the further distribution of The Island, as it, ahem, very closely mirrors his own film, Parts: The Clonus Horror. Michael Bay's film doesn't credit anyone who worked on Clonus, and press materials tout its "original screenplay". I suppose, though, Bay can always claim that he's being so deliciously meta by doing a clone of a clone picture... [A sideways-update to this post]
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 11:55 PM PST - 45 comments

Truthmapping: The Ultimate Attempt to Rationalize Debate? From lofty ontological arguments for the existence of God and for the self-contradictory nature of determinism to relatively more down to earth propositions about the unconstitutionality of abortion and the justice of the war in Iraq: can many significant debates be reduced to simple sets of premises and conclusions? Should they be?
posted by shivohum at 11:01 PM PST - 49 comments

Music Hurts is a new online music magazine that looks to examine the impact of music on society and culture. The articles cover topics such as band logos, female drummers, baile funk, Old Dirty Bastard (RIP!), Heavy Metal and Rap around the globe, and Iggy Pop. Lots of great stuff here, that is if you can get past the arty flash layout. Via OneLouder.
posted by Quartermass at 10:51 PM PST - 7 comments

Real Ads of Genius. Horrible "beer", great commercials. Here they are, all the Bud Light Real Men of Genius and Real American Heroes radio spots on one site ready to laugh with on mp3.
posted by tsarfan at 9:36 PM PST - 18 comments

TED UK
(click through to What is Ted : About Ted : Highlights. You'd think a conference with Freemon Dyson speaking could afford a decent web designer)
posted by Tlogmer at 9:19 PM PST - 5 comments

The pork butts seem to actually slump upon themselves as if they can no longer support their own weight. Got a Weber Smokey Mountain? Before you waste another afternoon or cut of meat, follow the professor's five-step program. I have never been lucky enough to partake of his fare, but those who have swear he is the master. He smokes more meat than you have ever seen, unless you work in a slaughterhouse. Check out the forums for advanced techniques and further study.
posted by mzurer at 9:12 PM PST - 19 comments

Saturn's Eerie Radio Emissions and other space sounds.
posted by dhruva at 7:56 PM PST - 24 comments

"In 1970, archaeologists discovered the site of Fort Orange in Albany, New York. This fort was built by Dutch fur-traders around 1624 and was later surrounded by a growing community. " Among the findings were three human skeletons from a Lutheran cemetery. One skeleton had a skull with enough bone to attempt a facial reconstruction. Say hello to Pearl.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 7:13 PM PST - 20 comments

A news release by the american institute of physics details the "unprecedented" bullying by republican senators of scientists studying climate change. The committee's letter asks for private and public sources of Mann's research funding, location of his data, computer codes, and his response to critical reviews of his work, including "Did you calculate the R2 statistic for the temperature reconstruction, particularly for the 15th Century proxy record calculations and what were the results?" The House web site has a collection of related materials and news articles.
posted by about_time at 7:06 PM PST - 46 comments

"The biggest downside to the war in Iraq is what you could do with the money," he said. "What does the war in Iraq cost a week? A billion? Maybe a billion a day? The budget for the National Cancer Institute is four billion. That has to change... Polls say people are much more afraid of cancer than of a plane flying into their house or a bomb or any other form of terrorism. It is a priority for the American people." Does this sound like the next governor of Texas to you?
posted by docgonzo at 1:01 PM PST - 107 comments

The Shitty Tipper Database. Ever undertip, for whatever reason? Did you use a credit card? You could be famous! Or infamous. (via)
posted by frykitty at 12:25 PM PST - 200 comments

"We must remain faithful to the established principles of the scientific method and not allow theological beliefs and dogma to interfere," Pedro Chequer, director of the Brazilian government's AIDS program, said in an interview in Brasilía. [NYT link] Earlier this year Brazil was the first country to reject US aid for fighting HIV/Aids because of the provision in The Leadership Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Act of 2003 which would have required Brazil, where prositution is regulated and legal, to condemn commercial sex work. Along with the global gag rule, which prevents NGOs receiving US aid from discussing abortion with their clients (or even from advocating for safe and legal abortions with their own governments), US policies based on theological imperatives are endangering women worldwide. "Using a conservative estimate, U.S. assistance could have helped prevent 10 percent of the over 2 million deaths in developing countries from unsafe abortion over the past 30 years." Also: The Global Gag Rule Impact Project.
posted by OmieWise at 12:21 PM PST - 11 comments

The NYPD is searching passengers' bags, supposedly at random and with no racial profiling involved. Setting aside the very real question of how this makes us safer, is this legal? [more inside]
posted by Vidiot at 12:17 PM PST - 114 comments

Dr Pepper Clones
posted by the_bone at 11:10 AM PST - 52 comments

New research concludes that cats lack a functional sweet taste receptor, as reported in the new, free-access journal PLoS Genetics. Also: WaPo coverage, and the new family of Public Library of Science journals.
posted by rxrfrx at 11:05 AM PST - 40 comments

EMBO's report on Time and Aging (free access) contains an essay wherein the author, Karin Knorr Cetina, from the University of Konstanz, Germany, argues that death and aging used to be major issues that defined what it means to be human and helped us find our place in society by showing us the limits of what is possible to achieve as a human. With the advances in science, particularly biological advances in slowing aging and technological advances in extending human function, we no longer accept our fate. Instead of accepting that we all grow old and die so we should take our place in society, with the expectation that if we contribute, society will take care of us, too, we now have promises being made by science that death and aging are no longer inevitable. Where are we headed, then? If we can no longer find our place by finding the limits of achievement and accepting our place within them, how do we work as a collective?
posted by Mr. Gunn at 10:42 AM PST - 15 comments

Yahoo! acquires Konfabulator. [via] Previously trial-ware accompanied by a $19.95 fee, Konfabulator Yahoo! Widgets will now be offered as a free download. What if you purchased it? They're offering a refund. (Get your widgets right here. Konfabulator previously discussed.)
posted by blendor at 10:16 AM PST - 57 comments

What is really going on?
posted by jeffburdges at 9:11 AM PST - 57 comments

Boss Hogg’s Blog agrees: Jessica Simpson ain’t no Daisy Duke. Cooter tends to agree. Daisy Duke, Rosco, and Boss Hogg soundboards as well. ..Can’t wait for the prank call recordings:) Who needs a new movie anyway?
posted by thisisdrew at 9:04 AM PST - 11 comments

Canadian phone company and ISP, Telus, has blocked access to the website of the striking union. Here's what Telus, the phone company/ISP, has to say.
posted by theora55 at 8:05 AM PST - 35 comments

youngman, there's no need to feel down.

Originally rejecting a ghetto-tag of 'gay writer', John Rechy's early work describes aspects of US gay subculture, pre-Stonewall, and pre-HIV, that was necessarily a closed book to outsiders at that point in time

Rechy is still writing, and today, his website features blog-like commentary and interesting thoughts on writing.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 8:02 AM PST - 11 comments

He broke all the rules... because there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide and no way out... He's a one-man army... He's the voice over king Don LaFontaine. [link to MP3 interview in case you want to skip all the text]
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 7:05 AM PST - 10 comments

Sci-fi writer and Marine Biologist Peter Watts puts his first two novels, Starfish and Maelstrom online under Creative Commons license. Behemoth to follow shortly. The most original and starkly vivid account of a dystopian future that I have read for years, made all the more enthralling by Watt's scientific background and knowledge. You will find some of his short stories at the link as well. Via BoingBoing
posted by lucien at 4:05 AM PST - 28 comments

"It has always been as if I carry chaos with me the way others carry typhoid. My purpose in writing is to transcend my existence by illuminating it."
Crime novelist Edward Bunker, who died last Tuesday at age 71 (LATimes obit), became at 17 the youngest inmate at San Quentin after he stabbed a prison guard at a youth detention facility. It was during his 18 years of incarceration for robbery, check forgery and other crimes that Bunker learned to write. In 1973, while still in prison, he made his literary debut with "No Beast So Fierce", a novel about a paroled thief James Ellroy called "quite simply one of the great crime novels of the past 30 years" and that was made into the movie "Straight Time" starring Dustin Hoffman. Also a screenwriter ("Runaway Train"), Bunker appeared as an actor in nearly two dozen roles, most notably as Mr. Blue in "Reservoir Dogs." (more inside)
posted by matteo at 3:05 AM PST - 9 comments

The Suicide Bridge. Sitting in the sun, waiting for her ride, Babcock recounts the story of one Thanksgiving. As she placed the turkey on the dinner table, she heard the sirens. Before she could stop him, her teenage son, Larry, ran outside to find the body. When he returned, he refused to eat.
"The guy's head was splattered all over the place," she says. "It was a younger fella that had jumped off the bridge. It shook us all up -- someone that young. He was only 20 or 21."
The All America Bridge in Akron, Ohio is built over a lower-class neighborhood; unfortunately, it's also a popular suicide spot. Often times bodies will land in people's yards, in business' parking-lots, and even through the roof of a building. A sad, disturbing article about people who have grown used to the sight of people dying on their property.
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 11:54 PM PST - 28 comments

Fellow Americans: Tired of feeling ignorant of where our own states are? Have some fun doing something about it.

The rest of you aren't off the hook either:
Canada, Mexico, Africa, Asia, Europe, South America, Middle East, Australia, Other/Oceanic

Warning: Educational flash games.
posted by rubin at 11:07 PM PST - 47 comments

Are your co-workers single? Are you bored? How about surprising them a billboard and a website? Thats what happened to Lance. But is this really so altruistic? Or just a clever way of getting publicity for a company that needs employees?
Morgan Lynch, co-worker and CEO of LogoWorks: I knew the first time I met with Lance that I wanted to hire him, but that he'd be the only person on our marketing team without a significant other. I thought, What can I do to help Lance find true love? Out of our concern grew DateLance.com. We hope it helps him out. If you think Lance sounds cool, but you rather work with him than date him, click here to see what positions we've got available. Maybe you'll get your own billboard someday.
Noelle Bates, co-worker and Director of Corporate Communicatons, LogoWorks: I didn't meet my husband until I was 30, so I know how hard it is to walk in Lance's shoes. I also know that when we conceptualized DateLance as a team, I was so glad I was married. Lance is the greatest guy and deserves to end up with someone as stellar as he is. He's the kind of guy that you'd want to set up with your sister, and the kind of guy who won't kill you when he sees a billboard like this for the first time.
posted by zia at 9:48 PM PST - 18 comments

Identical quotations and the truth, as disseminated by the US Military ...Following a car bombing in Baghdad on Sunday, the U.S. military issued a statement with a quotation attributed to an unidentified Iraqi that was virtually identical to a quote reacting to an attack on July 13. ... (quotes inside)
posted by amberglow at 9:19 PM PST - 85 comments

$ rm -r bin/laden
bin/laden: No such file or directory
posted by swift at 8:07 PM PST - 20 comments

"...I don't know who you are. Or whether you're a man or a woman. I may never see you or cry with you or get drunk with you. But I love you. I hope that you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better, and that one day people have roses again. I wish I could kiss you."

--Valerie
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 7:44 PM PST - 37 comments

Forget love letters, it's love texts that are all the rage now! "I turned off the phone, dumbfounded. How had we managed to speed through all the stages of an actual relationship almost solely via text message? I'd gone from butterflies to doubt to anger at his name on the screen, before we even knew each other. That was it, I decided: no more text-message flirtations for me. From now on I'd stick to more old-fashioned ways of getting to know a guy. Like e-mail."
posted by JPowers at 3:21 PM PST - 23 comments

Does concert music have a place in our digital future? These musicians are making a strong case in the affirmative-- Aphex Twin at Lincoln Center? Listen to samples here (I particularly like this one), and a whole track here. Concert music (live music, composed mostly in advance, played mainly on acoustic instruments) has had a hard time this past century, adjusting to all of the paradigm shifts that technology has brought, from player pianos all the way to iPods. Classically trained musicians are branching out in some divergent, clever ways….A few interesting examples can be heard here, and here (from this album), and here (I especially like this one).
posted by LooseFilter at 2:04 PM PST - 22 comments

Coke Tux. Yeah, I made my prom tux out of coke cans... because I'm just that cool...
posted by srboisvert at 12:37 PM PST - 38 comments

Bloglash Blogger: Term used to describe anyone with enough time or narcissism to document every tedious bit of minutia filling their uneventful lives. Possibly the most annoying thing about bloggers is the sense of self-importance they get after even the most modest of publicity..." and so it goes. Might bruise a few egos, but it is a very funny bit of ranting - with a few home truths.
posted by rhymer at 12:21 PM PST - 60 comments

Bird's Eye Views : Hand drawn panoramic maps of 44 Texas cities circa 19th century in high resolution. Aerial mapping minus airplanes and cameras.
posted by Orb at 11:44 AM PST - 14 comments

It was only a matter of time before someone built a Philip K. Dick Android. And blogged about it. Don't you just love it when literature and meatspace collide?
posted by signal at 11:36 AM PST - 14 comments

The world's first photograph was produced in France in about 1826. Joseph Nicéphore Niépce rendered a bitumen-on-pewter image of the view from his summer house in St-Loup de Varennes with an exposure time of ~8 hours. He dubbed the process, which used a camera obscura effect, heliography. Before he died in 1833 he worked for a few years with Louis Daguerre (yes, him) who incidentally invented the diorama, examples of which are among these other vintage optical toys.
posted by peacay at 11:22 AM PST - 15 comments

21 story tall statue of an American Indian to tower over the central US. Builders believe it will be as significant a monument as the St. Louis Arch, Seattle Space Needle, Mt. Rushmore.
posted by jmccorm at 10:03 AM PST - 45 comments

Virtual Earth from MSN While I'm familiar with Google Maps it was fun again to play around with Microsoft's response that was just released. In summary, allows you to pan/zoom around the US, and with a click of a button, see aerial/satellite imagery. This stuff is just soooo cool! ;-)
posted by RonZ at 11:11 PM PST - 46 comments

"A world within a store": For decades, JL Hudson's was the soul of downtown Detroit. A commercial giant housed in a mammoth structure, the legendary store was a symbol of the city's heyday and a Midwestern icon, but much more to the millions who shopped there. The growth of suburban malls killed Hudson's flagship store in 1983, and thousands of nostalgic Detroiters lined the streets to see it demolished fifteen years later. "The store is a habit, an institution, a tradition, an emotion, or all of these, depending on which Detroiter you talk to. It's regarded as a member of the family in countless homes." Macy's, eat your heart out.
posted by sellout at 9:15 PM PST - 16 comments

The Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary region is under the ocean, off the coast of Massachusetts. For 11 years geologist Paul Valentine has been mapping this area. Sea floor maps are available. Also, there are many images of features such as glacial valleys and moraines. Other photographs show underwater life.
posted by pyramid termite at 7:01 PM PST - 1 comment

Faulkneresque White House. Down the hall, under the chandelier, I could see them talking. They were walking toward me and Dick s face was white, and he stopped and gave a piece of paper to Rummy, and Rummy looked at the piece of paper and shook his head. He gave the paper back to Dick and Dick shook his head. They disappeared and then they were standing right next to me. Hemispheres Magazine's Faulkner Parody Contest (Hemingway too) via RobotWisdom
posted by publius at 5:48 PM PST - 5 comments

Stupidest. Awards. Show. Ever. The results are in for the 2005 World Stupidity Awards, hosted by Daily Show Guy Lewis Black and presented as part of the Just-for-Laughs Comedy Festival, and Host Country Canada was the upset winner of "Dumbest Government", beating out the U.S., Iran, North Korea and the whole damn United Nations. All the nominees are here, but don't bother voting, because the awards have been awarded, and that would be stupid.
posted by wendell at 4:39 PM PST - 25 comments

Here we GROW again... A little late for Flash Friday perhaps, but... for those of you who remember and enjoyed GROW from the fine Flash folks at Eyezmaze. (Sort of like Orisinal with fewer, but deeper, things.)

The new game is exactly like the old game, if a little easier in that there's only eight things to place instead of twelve. But there's a weird RPG sequence afterwards, beyond your control, where the fate of a little demon-slaying dude is influenced by your planet's configuration.
posted by JHarris at 3:00 PM PST - 31 comments

A guest from a Daily Show joke piece was fired from the Broward Art Guild (which still lists her as the exec. director). The strange thing about this story is that in the original piece, the artists involved in a guild show were the source of controversy (for this (NSFW) and this), the director was simply subjected to a few goofball questions from Ed Helms. She was fired in a secret session because, I assume, from the bad press.
posted by mathowie at 2:58 PM PST - 18 comments

Happy Paul Reubens (Pee-Wee Herman) Day • "PRD was created by the sex-positive group of redheaded friends, the Drunken Redheaded Sluts, as a hilarious way to denounce the 'bum rap' that self-gratification got Paul Reubens, while honoring the man’s erotic curiosity and zany character." The celebration will start with a pub crawl, followed by a Pornographic After-Party to benefit the The Center for Sex and Culture, and climax with a Midnight Mass with Peaches Christ (NSFW).
posted by dhoyt at 2:39 PM PST - 15 comments

"Israeli technology firm Blue Security has set up a scheme to batter spam websites with thousands of complaints. The plan is to fill order forms...offering pills, porn and penile health tonics with complaints about the products advertised for sale in junk messages." I signed up.
posted by JPowers at 12:01 PM PST - 27 comments

Yahoo provided "evidence" to prosecute Shi Tao QUOTE (June 30, 2005)In the court statement againt Shi Tao on June 2nd, the second evidence was provided by Yahoo. The Statement said: User information provided by Yahoo(HK) shows that the IP 218.76.8.201 (active at 23:32:17 on April 20, 2004) is used by: Tel.:0731-4376362, user's company is....., user's address is.... (boxun.com) This is the first case that shows publicly that Yahoo helps China government to prosecute an Internet user - journalist. END QUOTE
posted by hank at 11:14 AM PST - 25 comments

Friday, an innocent man was shot five times by London police.
posted by four panels at 11:09 AM PST - 412 comments

Calculator Haiku
posted by Speck at 9:52 AM PST - 9 comments

tru_m4n: NUKES! HOLY **** I GOT NUKES -- If World War II were a multiplayer real-time strategy game.
posted by brain_drain at 9:12 AM PST - 38 comments

La Pâte à Son. "Pipe Dream" for musical types. [flash, via LFI]
posted by Johnny Assay at 8:52 AM PST - 1 comment

The Golden Girls Sing
posted by srboisvert at 4:07 AM PST - 6 comments

Stones of the World. Photographed by Yoshida Tatsuya.
posted by kenko at 12:51 AM PST - 18 comments

Solve your Rubik's cube online. Are you lacking a Lego cube solver [discussed here]? No problem. This site will tell you the exact moves for solving the cube. Of course it will also teach you how to do it on your own.
posted by caddis at 12:02 AM PST - 14 comments

Testimony of former CIA case officer James Marcinkowski on the Plame Affair, via David Corn. Now that the US government has exposed a CIA case officer and endangered her contacts, it will be much more difficult for CIA officers to recruit informants in the future. Any undercover officer, whether in the police department or the CIA, will tell you that the major concern of their informant or agent is their personal safety and that of their family. Cover is safety. If you cannot guarantee that safety in some form or other, the person will not work for you and the source of important information will be lost. ... What has suffered perhaps irreversible damage is the credibility of our case officers when they try to convince our overseas contact that their safety is of primary importance to us.
posted by russilwvong at 7:20 PM PST - 79 comments

http://www.ritualabusetorture.org/ Personal stories and cartoon self-help tools. "maps" link to adobe bbs
posted by longsleeves at 6:59 PM PST - 22 comments

To witness the decline of the Enlightenment in American culture, one could do worse than to begin by examining the case of Jane C. Rider, the "Springfield Somnambulist." With the decline of the Enlightenment rose the pseudo-science of mesmerism, both as a way to cure the mentally ill and as a stage attraction. Given the submissive nature of mesmerism, it occasionally led to abuses, both real and imagined. [more inside]
posted by strikhedonia at 6:02 PM PST - 4 comments

Defense Department Refuses to Turn Over Abuse Photographs

Today was the day the government was supposed to process and redact photographs and videos relating to the abuse and torture of prisoners held abroad. Raising new arguments on the eve of its deadline, the United States government refused to release the materials to the public.

June 1, 2005, court order [PDF]; statement from the Center for Constitutional Rights.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:46 PM PST - 104 comments

Explosions rock Sharm el-Sheik Apparently the Ghazala Gardens hotel was heavily damaged in what appears to be a bomb attack, closely following 2 other bomb explosions in the well-know tourist city.
posted by elpapacito at 4:20 PM PST - 37 comments

Steuard Jensen for Prom King! Three nerds get the resident high school science geek on the ballot for Prom King, and...well, you'll have to read the story to get the answer. Like in fiction, sometimes in real life the protagonist/hero comes from the most unexpected position.
posted by Kickstart70 at 4:15 PM PST - 14 comments

In summertime, the arms that pass near my lit cigarette are bare. A collection of Japanese smoking etiquette signs, some haiku-like, some heart-rending, and some just strange. (via Mimi Smartypants)
posted by Kat Allison at 4:11 PM PST - 32 comments

"New Mexico, Cleaner than Regular Mexico" This isn't the first time that Urban Outfitters has crossed the line of good taste. Two years ago, [Urban Outfitters] stopped selling a game called "Ghettopoly" after protests by black civil rights leaders. Last year, it halted sales of a T-shirt that read "Everyone Loves A Jewish Girl," surrounded by dollar signs, after the Anti-Defamation League objected. As could be expected, not everone finds this stuff funny.
posted by billysumday at 4:09 PM PST - 45 comments

IRAQ DRAFT BILL OF RIGHTS LEAKED IN ENGLISH The al-Mada newspaper on June 30 published what is apparently a draft version of the equivalent to the Bill Of Rights that is being worked on by a subcommittee in the Iraqi legislature. Omar from Iraq The Model first reported this on that day and provided his commentary on the document, but ultimately it was too large to translate. Nathan J. Brown of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace provides a valuable public service by translating the entire document, so a big hat tip to him. Let’s take a quick look at some of the features of this bill, as it is very promising although there are some provisions that need much deeper looking into (and others not so much). Nathan also makes thorough observations. You can read it in full here.
posted by Postroad at 3:59 PM PST - 14 comments

He was the patriarch of the British Invasion. In 1962, he released Britain's first blues album. Before they hit it big, the Rolling Stones opened for him. He was on the Beatles first television special. Later, he was in the memorably-named band The Hoochie Coochie Men with Rod Stewart on lead vocals. His next band, Bluesology, featured one Reginald Dwight, who later changed his name to honour his mentor. Moving to Canada in the 1970s he eventually settled in Vancouver, where he died today after suffering from a chest infection. Ladies and gentlemen: "Long John" Baldry has passed.
posted by docgonzo at 3:21 PM PST - 9 comments

Mei Wah: Eating in Chinese So I started to learn some Chinese. I never did learn much. I still can't read a newspaper in Chinese, nor a non-food-related sign, nor hold a conversation in it. But I can read a menu in Chinese. And here I'm going to attempt to show you how to do it too. [via LII More New This Week]
posted by mlis at 3:11 PM PST - 18 comments

Oh great merciful heavens! Who, oh who, will protect the dear children from the rampant sexual content that lies buried in... The Sims 2? According to Miami attorney Jack Thompson, it's worse than the now-infamous Hot Coffee mod for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas that Hillary Clinton has made such a fuss about.

His claim is that behind the pixellated screen placed by the game in front of nude characters is full, anatomically-correct, genital detail, and a cheat code can remove that easily. Electronic Arts maintains that behind the screen is only Ken-And-Barbie smoothness. (Should be easy enough to check out, anyone?)
posted by JHarris at 2:18 PM PST - 77 comments

It's a popularity contest. Aimfight is essentially Google pagerank for your buddy list. Compare yourself against your opponents and see who's on more people's buddy lists. Via slashdot.
posted by condour75 at 2:11 PM PST - 14 comments

Last of WWII Comanche Code Talkers Dies Charles Chibitty, the last survivor of the Comanche code talkers who used their native language to transmit messages for the Allies in Europe during World War II, has died. He was 83. More info on the Code Talkers
posted by edmcbride at 1:59 PM PST - 9 comments

Washington Secures Long-Sought Hemispheric Outpost, Perhaps at the Expense of Regional Sovereignty This press release from the Center for Hemispheric Relations is just about the only reporting I've found about the establishment on July 1 of a new US military base in Paraguay. There was a short article in Prensa Latina on July 11, only 3 days after it first published a story that Paraguay had denied the establishment of the base.

There are a very few stories here and there online, but nothing in the American press about this development. You have to know the story exists to find out anything about it. Which is more disturbing, that the US military is on the verge of establishing a new foothold in another sovereign nation or that the US media is not reporting it at all? I really can't decide what I think about this.
posted by elgoose at 1:21 PM PST - 3 comments

What turns you on? On September 1, a new [Texas] law will go into effect that aims to better label the most dangerous sex offenders, and the method is unconventional, to say the least... (Link goes to a news article; it's SFW)
posted by tippiedog at 1:09 PM PST - 70 comments

The Teastick. The ultimate infuser for tea connoisseurs.
posted by yoga at 1:07 PM PST - 29 comments

This War is About So Much More. Compelling conspiracy for the people.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 11:52 AM PST - 19 comments

The Very Best Kind of Coupon (Ananova)
A brothel took a full page ad out in a German magazine with a coupon offering a half hour of free sex with a lady of the bearer's choice. Not surprisingly, the issue of the mag sold out in a single day.
posted by fenriq at 11:47 AM PST - 18 comments

Picking up girls can be as easy as opening a beer! The pick up system no girl can resist, apparently.
posted by punilux at 11:43 AM PST - 48 comments

The avatar versus the journalist. Ant farms, Bombay, the neolithic revolution, and Wikipedia.
posted by Tlogmer at 10:53 AM PST - 17 comments

The Sound of a Distant Rumble: Using monitoring devices originally intended to pick up the sound of nuke launches, researchers track the underwater noise generated by the December 26 (tsunami) earthquake. Eerie audio file of the slowly-building roar is included on the page. (More info here as well)
posted by numlok at 10:07 AM PST - 9 comments

We Introverts make up 40% of the population. So we make up a large portion of the market. We learn differently than extroverts (NSFW). We appear calm, but that may be an illusion. In fact, we need special care and attention. We like to read, write, and test software, but we're afraid of networking. We have spiritual needs (scroll down). If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you smile at us, we may surprise you. Some of us read Metafilter.
posted by grumblebee at 9:59 AM PST - 56 comments

It's Friday of course, which means it's time to build very cool bugs and construct things isometrically.

(Check out the rest of Adrian's web site too. Or not. It's Friday. Ta.)
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 9:26 AM PST - 7 comments

While My Ukulele Gently Weeps Kick off the weekend with some crazy uke playing from Jake Shimabukuro.
posted by Robot Johnny at 9:09 AM PST - 24 comments

Robert Parry disentangles the Plame game. He uncovered the Contra/Cocaine story. Now he's got a very sensible hypothesis on Plame. Lots more good stuff at Consortium News.
posted by warbaby at 7:58 AM PST - 63 comments

Sugar Crash! Happy friday, kids!
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 7:12 AM PST - 12 comments

The Science Creative Quarterly. Not technically a 'quarterly,' but a 'fortnightly'. with both news/educational content (Hollywood vs. Science: How Far Are We From Intarstellar Travel?; Asparagus, Stinky Pee, and Scientific Curiosity) and creative content (Sexy Universe; African Lion Family Objects to Their Portrayal in Recent Discovery Channel Documentary; Trash Talkin' at the Aquarium.)
posted by Melinika at 6:52 AM PST - 3 comments

A former carpenter/construction worker has figured out the secret to Stonehenge and The Pyramids. Discovery Channel Canada has more (WMV, sorry). [via MoFi]
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 5:21 AM PST - 40 comments

Man shot 5 times in London. Around 10am, suspected suicide bomber runs into a tube station and is shot and killed at close range by plain-clothes police officers. News still developing, high risk of further incidents.
posted by Acey at 3:45 AM PST - 247 comments

Scary Sci-fi inspired riot control being discussed in the New Scientist. I did check to see if this had been posted before...
posted by lerrup at 11:22 PM PST - 29 comments

Attention Citizens of New York: The illegal searches begin tomorrow. And Congress also voted to keep the PATRIOT ACT indefinitely. I can't say I'm not surprised, but I have to say I'm very disappointed.
posted by Tlahtolli at 11:16 PM PST - 165 comments

Psymbiote: Hybrid Apparatus for Social Interface [via]
posted by moonbird at 8:48 PM PST - 11 comments

Under an agreement signed between Ireland and the US last week, US investigators, including CIA agents, will be allowed to interrogate Irish citizens on Irish soil in total secrecy. Suspects will also have to give testimony and allow property to be searched and seized even if what the suspect is accused of is not a crime in Ireland.
posted by Mr_Zero at 6:50 PM PST - 31 comments

Hotornot meets google maps. The best web services mashup of all time?
posted by ph00dz at 6:44 PM PST - 22 comments

Costco pays its workers 42 percent more on average than its closest rival, Wal-Mart's Sam's Club. Even though this is Newsfilter, I was amazed to find that 'Wall-Street" may pressure businesses about their labor practices, and found Costco's approach encouraging these days.
posted by semmi at 6:10 PM PST - 37 comments

I didn't know there were POW camps in the US during World War II, let alone so many of them. The list of camps is extensive, but not on any list I've seen so far is the former Wright Field (currently Wright-Patterson Air Force Base). The base is preserving the walls of the former mess hall where German POWs left a cool set of freaky demonic murals filled with old germanic folklore. The story behind them is a interesting read.
posted by Dome-O-Rama at 6:07 PM PST - 24 comments

Seattle man dead after having sex with a horse. But that's not all of it: The horse was the active party, and the man was passive. However, it wasn't rape; as Dan Savage puts it, this took place at an alleged "bestiality brothel". While Washington State doesn't outlaw Bestiality, investigators are examining whether or not animal cruelty occurred in forcing smaller, weaker animals to have sex with people. [via SLOG]
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 5:42 PM PST - 127 comments

Augmented Maps: dynamic, paper-based displays.
posted by signal at 5:38 PM PST - 3 comments

Iran executes two teenagers. Their crime? Making love. Homosexuality is a crime under Sharia law. Meanwhile, newly "liberated" Iraq moves closer to embedding traditional Islamic laws in its new constitution, reducing rights for women. Will Iraqi gays be the next to suffer the wrath of "Allah's law" after years of secular oppression under Saddam Hussein?
posted by digaman at 12:34 PM PST - 109 comments

Countdown To Annihilation
Follow the Lancasters and their adventures with the marvelous Origins bomb. next, next, next, next, next.
You'll have to wait until Friday for the conclusion. Hope you enjoy the story and still believe in the best of the web.
posted by nofundy at 10:07 AM PST - 28 comments

From Marine Doom to America's Army to...Starcraft? A community of military games and game developers. Eerie or excellent?
posted by sandking at 9:04 AM PST - 17 comments

China ends (sort of) Yuan dollar peg. The People's Bank of China announced that it has formally ended its peg of the Yuan against the US dollar. Instead, it will be fixed within a narrow band against a basket of currencies (PBC statement here). Interestingly, the PBC declined to provide details of this new scheme, including which currencies are in the new basket. A slow move away from being tied to the pathological US economy? What are the implications for the US's ability to maintain enormous trade and budget deficits? Already, this has relaxed the pressure on other Asian economies to keep their currencies low (by buying US dollars and securities). Congressmen may have been raging against "unfair Chinese trading practices", but we may yet get nostalgic for the days when the world financed the US's prolifigate ways.
posted by bumpkin at 6:37 AM PST - 64 comments

Early report of further terrorist incidents in London Looks like a bomb may have failed to go off...
posted by runkelfinker at 5:32 AM PST - 204 comments

The Ashes Starts Today
You can listen live online and get more background here, and in case all you folks in the US are feeling a little left out, here's an interesting article about how, until the late 19th century, you used to play as much cricket as baseball!
posted by johnny novak at 2:16 AM PST - 68 comments

The ESRB changes GTA: San Andreas rating from "M" (Mature) to "AO" (Adults Only). This following a brief media blitz surrounding the "Hot Coffee" mod, a fan-made workaround that allows players to access what amounts to a "dry humping" minigame in the code which was not made directly available in the game. In the PC version, the mod adds nude models. [more inside]
posted by Target Practice at 1:02 AM PST - 111 comments

You like-a da mashups? Here, I give you mashups (about 40 of them to be exact).
posted by mathowie at 11:43 PM PST - 56 comments

The personal instrument collection of John and Rudy Dopyera is for sale. John and Rudy are the inventor-craftsmen behind the resonator guitars that made the National and Dobro (DOpyera BROthers) guitar companies famous. No, you can't afford the collection, but it is pretty to look at (my personal favorite).

Bonus string link: Chordie (previously discussed) has added chord diagrams for ukulele, banjo, mandolin and lefty guitar!
posted by etc. at 10:49 PM PST - 28 comments

The art of Skip Williamson! via: pcl linkdump
posted by onkelchrispy at 9:36 PM PST - 1 comment

Research finds that 87% of internet users are unfamiliar with "podcasting" and 91% have never heard of "RSS". The study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project also found that only 3% of users still don't know what spam is. Here's a PDF of the findings.
posted by tapeguy at 9:25 PM PST - 59 comments

Frustrated artists (and bad ones) unite! Now you can create your own virtual flipbook.(flash req)

(Here's mine. Operators are standing by)
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 8:44 PM PST - 18 comments

Strange Curiosity The island seems to be Mexico's largest. Shows up on Google satellite but not on the map. Google Earth yields a few placenames, leading to finding the true name of the island: "Isla Tiburon" presently an ecological reserve with the nickname "Shark Island". Aside from surrounding shark tours and an occasional visit by kayak, it seems this place is lonely and untouched.
posted by thisisdrew at 8:11 PM PST - 19 comments

Interesting NPR segment on a Shakespeare production at The Globe done in the Original Pronunciation. Apparently, this makes it easier to understand. I don't know. To me, it sounds like a combination of Welsh and something else - and it's not even September 19...
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 7:52 PM PST - 30 comments

Lucky Baby (CNN): Not only did this baby survive a collapsed building because her Mountain Buggy stroller protected her, but it was the same type of stroller that was recalled by the CPSC on the same day. Coincidence?
posted by CG at 6:40 PM PST - 30 comments

Learn to Swim or just refine your mad aquatic skillz with the cool multimedia instruction of the BBC Sport Academy. How's your Front Crawl?
posted by Dr. Zira at 6:39 PM PST - 5 comments

Archive for the History of Economic Thought
posted by Gyan at 6:36 PM PST - 7 comments

Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession. In the late 1970s to the end of the 1980s, LA's Z Channel was a pay-TV cable channel that would play loads of esoteric films. It'd been credited with starting the trend of "director's cuts", bringing passed-over directors and films to the public's attention, and in some cases, was directly responsible for Oscar Nominations -- and was basically the work of one man, Jerry Harvey. Unfortunately, Z Channel folded shortly after Jerry Harvey killed his wife and then himself. Xan Cassavetes' film tells the story of Jerry Harvey and Z Channel through interviews with filmmakers and those involved, including an archival interview with Harvey himself.
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 5:38 PM PST - 6 comments

Joel Osteen's new Lakewood Church in Texas recently became the first in the U.S. to average more than 30K worshippers a week. This is the kind of news that gives many lefties with a fear the god-fearing the heebie-jeebies. But then, on closer inspection, the brand of Christianity Osteen is offering, if shallow, also seems rather mild: a kind of dim-witted boosterism simply designed to get you through the week. He has been called "prosperity gospel's coverboy," and been viciously attacked for it on Larry King. What to make of this new capitalist mutatation in Christianity?
posted by Hobbacocka at 5:30 PM PST - 40 comments

Mind May Affect Machines . Weird. No, seriously: WEIRD.
posted by ford and the prefects at 12:37 PM PST - 75 comments

Republican to Evangelical to English via Babylonfish. What Bush said about Supreme Court nominee Bob Roberts John Roberts:

"In my meetings with Judge Roberts, I have been deeply impressed. He's a man of extraordinary accomplishment and ability. He has a good heart. He has the qualities Americans expect in a judge: experience, wisdom, fairness, and civility. He has profound respect for the rule of law and for the liberties guaranteed to every citizen. He will strictly apply the Constitution and laws, not legislate from the bench....He's also a man of character who loves his country and his family."

What it meant to conservative fundamentalist Christians (in comments):
posted by rzklkng at 11:55 AM PST - 72 comments

Oh my (nasty and bizarre but not graphic or pornagraphic, in that it isn't intended to stimulate... or isit?) A male dolphin could snap your neck in an accidental thrust, and that would be the end of that relationship.
posted by Phantast at 11:12 AM PST - 63 comments

Lula is in trouble. Brazil's progressive president (he even supports open-source!) and the poster politician for a funky, sensible 21st century development (though not everyone is so enamored) is mobbed with corruption allegations.
posted by Coherence Panda at 10:43 AM PST - 11 comments

porn for sock puppets
posted by If I Had An Anus at 10:00 AM PST - 15 comments

The world needs more pirates, bei meinem Haken! The world's pirate population is declining. As one could surmise from my previous post, this could be devestating for the environment (but possibly good for the ninja population). Either way, it's not too late to volunteer! (even if you're German)
posted by analogue at 9:30 AM PST - 19 comments

James Doohan passes away at 85. The cause of death was pneumonia and Alzheimer's. He was best known for his role as Star Trek's Engineer Montgomery Scott.
posted by mrbill at 9:11 AM PST - 126 comments

Transcript , published in English, German and French, is a review of European literature and books. (Their double issue on Welsh literature is particularly nice.) Archipelago is another online journal dedicated to literature in translation. And despite persistent troubles with getting World literature translated into English (The Complete Review covers this issue well.), there are many sites with translated literature on the web: Albanian, Arabic Malay and Urdu, Armenian, more Armenian, Bengali, Chinese, Czech and Slovak, Dutch, Hungarian, Korean, Japanese, Pan-African, Polish, Ukranian, Welsh, "World," Yiddish.
posted by OmieWise at 8:03 AM PST - 10 comments

Robot Camel Jockeys!
story here.
posted by Edible Energy at 7:50 AM PST - 10 comments

The Boy Who Cried 'Wolf' On the day after a survey finds upwards of 25,000 civilian deaths in the Iraq War; and days after the War on Terror arrived on British shores, amidst the inevitable "how did we get here?" navel-gazing, Manic of the Bloggerheads weblog re-writes a popular fable. The continued invocation of the spectres of terrorism and the ghost of 9/11, he argues, slowly erodes the liberties and freedoms of hundreds of years, while fighting a war against an unconventional enemy beyond our borders does not necessarily guarantee security.
posted by scaryduck at 6:30 AM PST - 11 comments

Photomuse - a searchable (and growing [NYtimes]) collection of "masterwork photography" combining the collections of the George Eastman House and the International Center of Photography... [via]
posted by tpl1212 at 5:33 AM PST - 3 comments

UK bans 'magic mushrooms' (except the poisonous ones), rendering them class A like heroin and crack. Shroomers fight back. Mushroom have been used for a while and we have a lot of information about their effects and safety, just as we do with alcohol - but facts schmacts, right? You can't be too careful.
posted by Drexen at 3:26 AM PST - 61 comments

Put up or Shut Up. The case of Joseph Padilla, an American citizen, arrested on U.S. soil, accused - but not charged - of planning a dirty bomb attack, designated by President Bush as an "enemy combatant," held for three years in a military prison at the Charleston Navy Base, denied access to a lawyer for two years, denied review of his habeas corpus complaint by a slippery US Supreme Court has reached the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals - considered the most ideologically conservative court in the circuit. The US government is appealing the decision of the U.S. District Judge Henry Floyd that the government had 45 days to formally charge Padilla or release him. Andrew Patel, Padilla's lawyer wryly observed, "I may be the first lawyer to stand here and say I'm asking for my client to be indicted by a federal grand jury."
posted by three blind mice at 3:10 AM PST - 44 comments

Google Moon - Google Maps gets the Lunar treatment, in honor of the first manned moon landing. No directions, though, so you won't be able to plot the best route from Tycho Crater to Mare Imbrium. (Fun Hint! - try the maximum zoom level)
posted by nervestaple at 12:36 AM PST - 39 comments

In this graduate seminar we will investigate the world -- the "Jossverse" or "Whedonverse" -- of Joss Whedon (1964- ), third generation television writer (both his father and grandfather wrote for the medium), creator of three television series (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly), script doctor for a variety of films (including Speed, Toy Story, Alien Resurrection), and comic book author (Fray, Astounding X-Men).
posted by BackwardsCity at 10:58 PM PST - 25 comments

"I, for one, welcome our new alien overlords" - in what looks like a thinly-veiled attempt at viral marketing, a company claims to be giving bloggers the opportunity to send a piece of their lives into space to potentially connect with extraterrestrials. Let's just hope that future generations will not have to endure this kind of thing, next time a blogger decides to quit ranting on about themselves.
posted by UbuRoivas at 7:48 PM PST - 9 comments

Estimated civilian casualties in Iraq: 25,000. A new study by the Oxford Research Group and Iraq Body Count estimates that 1 in 1000 Iraqis have been killed since the US invasion began. They further estimate that 37 percent of these deaths were caused by coalition forces, and 9 percent were killed by the insurgents. Estimated civilian wounded: 42,500. Over 1700 US troops have also died, and over 18,000 have been injured.
posted by digaman at 7:28 PM PST - 39 comments

Fingertips! They Might Be Giants get the Fanimutation treatment.
posted by Robot Johnny at 7:24 PM PST - 30 comments

The “Vinegar Boy” Saga, as told by Aaron The tale about how one bottle of malt vinegar caused an uproar of controversy
posted by bluehermit at 5:54 PM PST - 30 comments

man spoils harry potter ending - "funny"
posted by jimmy at 5:47 PM PST - 90 comments

the Supreme Court Short List --read it and weep, or not. CNN is already reporting it's John Roberts, and not Edith Clements. Bush announces at 9pm est. Roberts worked for both Reagan and Bush 1, btw.
posted by amberglow at 4:51 PM PST - 183 comments

The Air Car. A car that runs on compressed air. While not a new idea, or unique, the MDI car can reach a speed of 68 mph and has a claimed range of roughly 124 miles. To recharge the tank, the car reportedly needs to be plugged into the grid for 3 to 4 hours or attached to an air pump in a gas station for only 2 minutes. Is the wind of the future about to break? Will this technology pass gas as our urban fuel of choice?
posted by Floydd at 3:25 PM PST - 46 comments

"Square America is a site dedicated to preserving and displaying vintage snapshots from the first 3/4s of the 20th Century. Not only do these photographs contain a wealth of primary source information on how life was lived they also constitute a shadow history of photography, one too often ignored by museums and art galleries." via
posted by peacay at 2:21 PM PST - 20 comments

Metacrock is a Texan warrior-academic who's well-known as an apologist on many Christian and atheist forums. I've had hours of fun trying to rebut the modal ontological arguments he promotes. Lazy atheists who are used to arguing with more naive flavors of Christianity will soon find themselves overwhelmed by Metacrock's relentless logic and philosophical scholarship. However, he's the furthest thing from right-wing fundamentalism you can find among Christians and you might find yourself agreeing with his points much of the time or at least being surprised by them. (pardon the spelling, it's not his strong suit)
posted by fleetmouse at 2:03 PM PST - 117 comments

"Please don't FUCK the pigeons." You'll never look at signs the same way again.
_{(probably nsfw - but I guess I already blew that...)}
posted by bk at 1:55 PM PST - 43 comments

So help me Allah The Koran is not Holy Scripture, according to a North Carolina judge, who says a Muslim can't swear to tell the truth on it, citing a 1777 law.
posted by teaperson at 1:19 PM PST - 88 comments

The next stage of evolution for social networking AlwaysOn, a social networking business site, is working on an ambitious new project, GoingsOn (screenshot), that encompasses most of the hot features that are all over the web, like photos, videos, and dating info. More in comments...
posted by rzklkng at 11:39 AM PST - 27 comments

An LSAT game a day until the October 1st Test - Interesting and maddening/unique visual puzzles for preparation of the upcoming LSAT, posted one a day throughout the summer. From Jesse Fuchs, NYC LSAT tutor who also created the equally maddening and very fun Spooneye! The Card Game.
posted by Peter H at 10:01 AM PST - 27 comments

There are two central problems in today's Iraq: the first is the insurgency and the second is an Iranian takeover. The insurgency, for all its violence, is a finite problem. The insurgents may not be defeated but they cannot win. This, of course, raises a question about what a prolonged US military presence in Iraq can accomplish, since there is no military solution to the problem of Sunni Arab rejection of Shiite rule, which is now integral to the insurgency. Iraq's Shiites endured decades of brutal repression, to which the United States was mostly indifferent. Iran, by contrast, was a good friend and committed supporter of the Shiites. By bringing freedom to Iraq, the Bush administration has allowed Iraq's Shiites to vote for pro-Iranian religious parties that seek to create--and are creating--an Islamic state. This is not ideal but it is the result of a democratic process.   Iraq: Bush's Islamic Republic
posted by y2karl at 9:24 AM PST - 46 comments

justcurio.us AskMeFi for the curious masses. Not nearly as helpful, but can be amusing.
posted by o2b at 9:22 AM PST - 19 comments

Flip-Flop faux-paux at the White House. On a recent visit to the White House, the 2005 national champion Northwestern women's lacrosse teams choice of footwear is causing quite a stir. Let the Kerry jokes begin.....
posted by cpchester at 8:08 AM PST - 72 comments

Who else has Khan worked with? As far back as 2003, there have been strong indications of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia building a strategic alliance based upon an exchange of nuclear technology, funding and natural resources, after a worsening post-9/11 relationship between the United States and the Saud family. Concerns deepened after Saudi Arabia requested a change in its relationship with the IAEA in May.
posted by Rothko at 7:09 AM PST - 12 comments

The Situationist International (this is a punk rock introduction from 1984, published in Maximum Rock 'n' Roll), a group of artists, writers and filmmakers from Europe, were active as a group from 1957-1968. Their influence extended beyond those confines, though, as Greil Marcus outlined in Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century. Ken Knabb has released online his indispensable Situationist International Anthology, and has collected many other crucial texts, including many about San Francisco Situationist groups, at The Bureau of Public Secrets. A more recent appropriation of Situationist rhetoric and strategies can be found in Ulysses Speaks (previous MeFi link here), the organ of the DC punk rock band Nation of Ulysses. More information and Situationist repositories here and (including a detailed timeline) here.
posted by OmieWise at 6:11 AM PST - 27 comments

US Army re-enlistments are exceeding goals. Amid earlier stories of how the Army (and the Marine Corps) are struggling to enlist enough new troops, here's a surprise -- thanks largely to bonuses, a lot people who are in are electing to stay in. (Found via the blog of an editor of my hometown paper.)
posted by alumshubby at 6:07 AM PST - 43 comments

Answering the "Glass Mecca" Strategy. Regarding the comments by Rep. Tom Tancredo offering the nuclear terrorist attack response of "nuking Mecca.” …More inside
posted by Dunvegan at 5:13 AM PST - 175 comments

Neil Gaiman 1997 essay on the myth of artistic inspiration
posted by Pretty_Generic at 2:53 AM PST - 26 comments

Where's Raed's brother? Iraqi weblogger Khalid Jarrar has been abducted by the mukhabarat -- Iraq's secret police. Khalid Jarrar was seized at his college in Iraq shortly after his mother, Faiza, toured the U.S., calling for a timetable for U.S. withdrawl. So, why is it that arrests of Iranian webloggers made international news, but Iraqi webloggers from prominent families can be "disappeared" without a single major news organization reporting on it?
posted by insomnia_lj at 2:29 AM PST - 15 comments

Thousands (!) and thousands and thousands of old 45s on eBay. (More)
posted by growabrain at 2:18 AM PST - 21 comments

Morgan Spurlock Watch
posted by srboisvert at 1:33 AM PST - 109 comments

Huck This!
The internally geared GT IT-1 solves many a mountain biker's problems in one elegant way.
Also, not to be missed, the Rohloff SpeedHub 500/14, a 14 speed internally geared masterpiece.
Via
posted by fenriq at 9:51 PM PST - 44 comments

Online Generators
ALL historical evils stem from the failure to accept and be governed by the law of electro-temporal-time compensation.
They altered the Sphinx to conceal the truth about the law of electro-temporal-time compensation. the Club of Rome and their accomplices, David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger, are systematically suppressing knowledge of the SECRET of Nature’s law of electro-atomic inequality.
the UNIVERSAL HARMONIC CONSTANT is 7.2304852305381. only from this value can one calculate the TRUE ORBITS OF THE PLANETS.
End wars, sexual frustration, etc. — adopt Holy Spirit field science now!
Fun with randomosity, via Del.icio.us/popular.
posted by Edible Energy at 7:43 PM PST - 15 comments

DIY Guide to Recording. Set up a home studio. This seems to cover a lot, and not being a pro at audio recording, I found it pretty useful.
posted by ginbiafra at 7:22 PM PST - 13 comments

Father kills toddler over gay fears a man has appeared in US court accused of killing his baby son because of an irrational fear that he would become gay.
posted by brandz at 6:51 PM PST - 91 comments

The common desk. [huge quicktime movie]
posted by gwint at 6:08 PM PST - 22 comments

Bassline Bassline. Rock has its electric guitar, hip-hop has its turntable/mic, and electronic music has its Roland TB-303. One of the few single instruments that can claim to define the entire genre, its history is an interesting one: "Bassline Baseline is a video essay that investigates the invention, failure and subsequent resurrection of the mythic Roland TB-303 Bass Line music machine in the last two decades of the 20th century."
posted by afx114 at 5:04 PM PST - 24 comments

When keyboard warriors collide. "The gallantry with which you both seem willing to place your bodies at the disposal of each other over your differences of opinion is a rare occurrence these days. It seems to me that you are in need of a disinterested third party to mediate the discrepancies in your expectations."

On the left, we have Reverend Mykeru. On the right, Lord Spatula. Let the games... (hey, wait a second. come back!)
posted by icosahedral at 4:49 PM PST - 38 comments

But where are the clowns? Quick, send in the clowns.
Don't bother, they're here.
Isn't it rich? Isn't it queer?
Losing my timing this late in my career?
And where are the clowns? There ought to be clowns.
Well maybe next year. (Thanks, Mr. Sondheim.)
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 3:46 PM PST - 27 comments

Evil Empire Buys Benign Annoyance Rupert Murdoch's Intermix Media is buying MySpace for half a billion dollars. I can barely conceal my excitement. Did I tell you Eliot Spitzer has already fined them for secretly installing spyware? Thanks, Tom.
posted by trinarian at 2:37 PM PST - 50 comments

The Watchful Investor "Bringing you the underreported, the underappreciated, and the overlooked news from the markets."
Jim Waddell created this frequently updated journal providing economic news and commentary, as well as a newsletter which gives more detailed coverage of specific market events and issues. Accessible and interesting, yet not dumbed down.
posted by knave at 1:50 PM PST - 9 comments

Domains by Proxy is a fairly popular service run by GoDaddy that aims to protect your personal info from whois requests. The domains by proxy homepage has links to law enforcement and civil subpoena policies, making it sound like you actually have to do something deemed illegal by a judge or officer to get outed. One blogger found out something as simple as a letter from a local lawyer was enough to reveal all his personal details in a whois request, without ever being notified beforehand. Might be worth reading up on EFF's guide to anon blogging if you ever start a whistleblower site.
posted by mathowie at 1:34 PM PST - 26 comments

This week, the New Republic's &c. blog is providing a primer on the Darfur conflict. Today's post: why the genocide started, how it is being carried out, and whether it is getting worse. Registration is required, but you can find a userid and password here.
posted by hellx at 9:38 AM PST - 4 comments

Pillion passenger to the United States. London based think tank Chatham House and the Economic & Social Research Council have issued a report concluding that there is "no doubt" that the invasion of Iraq has imposed difficulties for the UK and that that the UK is at "particular risk" because it is the closest ally of the US and has closely supported the deployment of British troops in the U.S. led military campaigns. A key problem for the UK in preventing terrorism in Britain is the government’s position as "pillion passenger" to the United States' war on terror. Formulating counter-terrorism policy in this way has left the "ally in the driving seat" to do the steering. Senior UK cabinet ministers are in denial.
posted by three blind mice at 9:23 AM PST - 73 comments

"400 Days and Out: A Strategy for Resolving the Iraq Impasse" is a proposal for US troop withdrawal by Carl Conetta of the Project on Defense Alternatives think-tank. "The key to enabling total US troop withdrawal from Iraq within 400 days is achieving a political accord with Sunni leaders at all levels and with Iraq's neighbors - especially Syria and Iran. The proximal aim would be to immediately lower the level of conflict inside Iraq by constricting both active and passive support for the insurgency, inside and outside the country." It follows up on another briefing authored by Conetta in May entitled "Vicious Circle" discussed previously.
posted by jenleigh at 9:12 AM PST - 25 comments

Broadly speaking, the brief includes the claims that in prizing persons, we prize a complement of emotion; that in prizing moral perception, we prize the emotional dispositions that make it possible; that in cultivating character, we cultivate virtues but also emotional sensibilities. Wisdom in Love aims to show that passions, love and concern, in particular, ground the substance of a worthy life and, perforce, a life of wisdom. A loving attachment, appropriately fixed and cultivated, underlies felt-significance. This makes the goods that animate a life matter. Conversely, a love that's misaligned or stunted brings on personal deterioration and despair. Right action and reasonable belief presuppose apt emotional attunement to the world and others, as well as appropriately responsive character that is rooted in emotional dispositions and operative in moral perception. This gives a philosophical frame equipped to separate false, sentimental, inept, or frozen emotions from more worthy ones, tied deep into worthy roots.
Wisdom in Love: Kierkegaard and the Ancient Quest for Emotional Integrity reviewed. On a related topic, Peter D. Kramer, author of Against Depression ponders "So, Dr. Kramer, what would have happened if Kierkegaard had taken Prozac?" See also Philosophy And Depression by Tim Ruggiero
Also by Richard Anthony Furtak, a translation of a poem by Rainier Maria Rilke--Sonnets to Orpheus, 1.2  mostly via Online Papers In Philosophy
posted by y2karl at 9:12 AM PST - 38 comments

Google buys Zazzle "Google, the online search giant, have invested $16 million in Menlo Park, California based, online marketplace company called Zazzle. Just two years old, the web based, Amazon/Dell-type store is where people buy and sell customized T-shirts, stamps, posters prints and other gifts and artwork."
posted by webmeta at 9:11 AM PST - 24 comments

Mr. X Reporting for Duty!
posted by Stynxno at 9:02 AM PST - 11 comments

The Straight Dope. The indispensable resource for almost any question, and despite resolving arguments in many threads, it has never been featured in the Blue on its own. So, some of the best from the last 30-odd years: Can hair turn white from fright? How do airplanes really fly? What was Barney Rubble's job in the Flintstones? If spaghetti is Italian, why is it sold by Franco-American? After the zombies take over how long until the electricity fails (A personal favorite)? What is the origin of the tooth fairy? And, of course, how much wood could a woodchuck chuck? And ever so many more.
posted by blahblahblah at 8:32 AM PST - 32 comments

Sonido y Energía: Sound games, interaction, movement and energy. By Santiago Ortiz.
posted by signal at 6:18 AM PST - 2 comments

My favorite word. Add your own.
posted by OmieWise at 4:17 AM PST - 109 comments

Half-hanged Harding; Women of Pleasure; the Rape Master General; Haemorrhoides, Hernia, Bad Teeth and Other Ailments; the Rabbit Woman; Sew-Gelder Tries to Spay His Wife; Getting Rid of Bedbugs, and other Early Eighteenth Century Newspaper Reports.
posted by madamjujujive at 3:52 AM PST - 14 comments

Class in American society, a survey by the Economist.
posted by daksya at 11:02 PM PST - 48 comments

Blogger gets fired. An NYC nanny was fired because of her blog. The twist? she worked for an Helaine Olen, an NY times style-section writer who wrote an article that started like this "OUR former nanny, ... liked to touch her breasts while reading The New Yorker ... She took sleeping pills, joked about offbeat erotic fantasies involving Tucker Carlson and determined she'd had more female sexual partners than her boyfriend." The nanny, saving money to get a PhD in english, chose to respond
posted by delmoi at 3:28 PM PST - 209 comments

"Kentucky is one of the sickest states in America."
posted by davy at 11:29 AM PST - 106 comments

The Spidron is an interesting geometric construction that seems to lend itself to folding, dissection, and space-filling in two and three dimensions.
posted by Wolfdog at 8:41 AM PST - 9 comments

The Omkara Project "..the word Omkara meaning - ' the vehicle to cross the ocean of life ' Crossing this ocean is the journey that the mortal being must undertake in a lifetime and henceforth encounter the three basic elements of mortality - creation, preservation and destruction."
posted by dhruva at 4:23 AM PST - 8 comments

Why Judith Miller should go to jail. Also, her actions as an embeded reporter in Iraq make me question if she really is such a bastion of journalistic ethics. via billmon
posted by afu at 1:50 AM PST - 132 comments

There are 7 words you can't say in kindergarden. Caution: contains foul language and political thought.
posted by growabrain at 11:39 PM PST - 40 comments

"At this moment, I am proud to be a citizen of a country that has done more than most to help the US get rid of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. And I think that it would do other Europeans some good to think again about what their countries have achieved, if anything, to try to stem the tide of dictatorships and terrorism around the world. They should wonder whether they are really asking themselves the hard questions. Or whether they are shrugging their shoulders and blaming America because that is what they have been brought up to do." A thoughtful & conflicted post from the anti-war Englishman in New York reflecting on the London bombings.
posted by dhoyt at 4:31 PM PST - 119 comments

Do Not Remove This Condom Under Penalty Of Law A New Zealand man who removed a condom during sex with a prostitute has been fined for putting her life at risk.
posted by halekon at 3:30 PM PST - 70 comments

False Terrorist Organizations. Berkeley law prof. John Yoo has championed the War on Terrorism before in the now famous Yoo/Delahunty/Philbin Memos to the White House on the Geneva Convention. But the recent attacks in London, and the ever growing death toll in Iraq, are driving Yoo to push the envelope even further in search for a solution. He is now proposing that the US create a false terrorist organization. "It could have its own websites, recruitment centers, training camps and fundraising operations. It could launch fake terrorist operations and claim credit for real terrorist strikes..."-- But is it wise to compete with terrorists? What if they are more competitive than we are?
posted by derangedlarid at 3:13 PM PST - 31 comments

Coming Apocalypse? In a forthcoming book by Paul L. Williams, Al Qaeda Connection: International Terrorism, Organized Crime, And the Coming Apocalypse, Williams alleges that al Qaeda has managed to obtain nuclear weapons from Russia and has already smuggled the WMDs across the Mexican border and into the U.S.
posted by j-urb at 11:30 AM PST - 83 comments

Peer to Patent (PtoP): A Modest Proposal This modest proposal harnesses social reputation and collaborative filtering technology to create a peer review system of scientific experts ruling on innovation. [via beSpacific]
posted by mlis at 11:19 AM PST - 11 comments

SCRAPITERIA---Collage Collaboration. Curios Things---Un blog comic in inglese e l'italiano per gli amanti di tutto il goonish di cose, sconosciuto, dispari, bizzarro e più perculier. WarpArt---The Collage Art of Peter Lewis.
posted by onkelchrispy at 10:52 AM PST - 3 comments

AAAARGH
posted by Pretty_Generic at 8:33 AM PST - 85 comments

Nek Chand was working as a roads inspector in northern India in the 1950's. Around 1958, he began collecting materials from demolition sites and using them to create a secret place which would soon grow into a beautiful rock and sculpture garden. But it happened to be on a national land conservency, and in 1975 authorities discovered it and the garden was nearly demolished. However, by this time it had already grown into a twelve acre complex of interlinked courtyards, each filled with hundreds of pottery-covered concrete sculptures of dancers, musicians, and animals. Chand soon gained much public support and in 1976 the garden was sanctioned as a public space. It then continued to grow and today it is over 40 acres.
posted by p3t3 at 7:21 AM PST - 21 comments

The atom bomb is 60. It's very popular now and becoming more so daily. The most recent nuclear nation to threaten to use theirs is China. The U.S, Europe, and the U.S.S.R. got through a half century Cold War without immolating themselves. Will South and East Asia be as successful and/or lucky in the near future?
posted by jfuller at 6:24 AM PST - 23 comments

Beautiful, hypnotic flash game from Amanita Design. Guide the little guy to the end of his journey..........
posted by lee at 8:39 PM PST - 37 comments

Since the US is the systemic centre of the global capitalist system, the shift to militarism is having global effects, some obvious, some insidious... While the US is the leading state in the international system, it is ensnared in webs of dependence of its own making: US patterns of consumption and living standards, while helping to maintain Asian economic activity, require the absorption of ever larger volumes of world savings, currently 80%. Over time this will prove unsustainable... Since there is no transnational political authority to halt or reverse the disintegrative trend, we are sliding towards disorder.
United States: the slide to disorder  Also by Philip S. Golub:
United States: inventing demons & My country, ’tis of thee
posted by y2karl at 8:15 PM PST - 28 comments

Information Aesthetics is a weblog of experiments in visualization: a power cord that glows as one draws power, a crocheted Lorenz manifold, a live display of a computer thinking about chess, a color-changing flower that detects nearby wifi. To be sure, there are lots of old favorites here but probably some new ones as well.
posted by fatllama at 7:55 PM PST - 12 comments

Not your ordinary white-tailled deer.
posted by Smart Dalek at 7:38 PM PST - 26 comments

Retro arcade photoset. God bless the gentleman who saved these photos from a 1980's arcade. You will cherish the garish and mock the hair, but this one hits the sweet spot of nostalgia for me.
posted by jeremias at 6:50 PM PST - 28 comments

"One of the most cowardly wars ever fought in history" was how Booker Prize winning novelist & Sydney Peace Prize winner Arundhati Roy described the war against Iraq, in her opening speech on behalf of The Jury of Conscience of the World Tribunal On Iraq.

She went on: The evidence collated in this tribunal should [...] be used by the International Criminal Court (whose jurisdiction the United States does not recognize) to try as war criminals George Bush, Tony Blair, John Howard, Silvio Berlusconi, and all those government officials, army generals, and corporate CEOs who participated in this war and now profit from it.
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:53 PM PST - 61 comments

Behind the scenes in Bonneville. Land speed record racing, as practiced every year during Bonneville Speed Week, is at once the simplest and most unique form of motor racing around. Here's a look into the Rice/Vigeant team's Suzuki Hayabusa-powered lakester--from construction to competition, near-tragedy to rebirth.
posted by arto at 5:31 PM PST - 9 comments

Did you ever wonder what it would be like to pop a water balloon in space? (Check out this page for more videos)
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 3:41 PM PST - 22 comments

Global warming starts to destroy the bottom of the food chain. I'm actually not being ironic or anything here. It's a rainy, dark Friday and I feel like human beings really ARE all gonna die, like, soon. What do I do? What kind of Harlan Ellison/William Gibson/Neil Gaiman-esque world is my little daughter going to grow up into?
posted by jfwlucy at 3:04 PM PST - 75 comments

US energy bill is held up by a pro-MTBE provision that bipartisan Senators promised they would not sign into law. Nervous MTBE manufacturers, in an effort to divest themselves of potential asbestos-like liability lawsuits, have been donating millions in campaign contributions to the cause, despite peer-reviewed research pointing to lingering questions about safety (PDF) and utility (PDF).
posted by Rothko at 2:55 PM PST - 12 comments

H2O Playlist: a series of links to books, articles, and other materials that collectively explore an idea or set the stage for a course, discussion, or current event. With tags, rss and other good stuff. And this time the color scheme is quite nice.
posted by signal at 2:44 PM PST - 6 comments

Odd Books dedicated to that constant source of delight and wonder, the second-hand bookshop. (via)
posted by crunchland at 2:41 PM PST - 11 comments

Rocks Among the Rings. The Planetary Society's Emily Lakdawalla has compiled some of the loveliest imagery of Saturn's ring-and-moon system from Cassini. More on Saturn from the Planetary Society here. Also see the Cassini at Saturn photoset, from our very own kokogiak, and watch for updates on the latest Enceladus flyby.
posted by brownpau at 2:24 PM PST - 5 comments

The Tortilla-Board^TM. When the worlds of electronics and cheap Mexican food combine.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 1:42 PM PST - 18 comments

Ninjam lets you play music (not MIDI) collaboratively with random people in real-time offset by one measure. Samples.
posted by Tlogmer at 1:36 PM PST - 3 comments

Security, the TSA, and the No-Fly List You would think that our National Security apparatus would be like the TV series "24", with the most ingenious and sophisticated technology available. You would be wrong. Disclaimer: TSA is not an intelligent intelligence agency. Here's a blurb from the resume of the designer(Kenneth Mack) of the application the airline industry uses for *PDF* managing their employee data and the cross-checking them with the no-fly list:

- Sr. Developer: Developed a program [for Goddard Technologies] that uses the "No-Fly List" Excel spreadsheet, provided by the FAA and the database of badged employees to permute the name combinations. It takes into consideration multiple first and middle names, with Soundex and the various "initial" combinations. This program reduced the time for comparison from 3 days to 10 minutes.

The scary yet interesting part of all of this is that the No-Fly List is nothing more than a password-protected spreadsheet (see this PDF). One would guess our Government's geeks would know that it's a bad idea to send email attachments containing social security numbers and dates of birth, unencrypted, over the internets, even if they might be terrorists.
posted by rzklkng at 1:26 PM PST - 30 comments

Buy your own fully functional Bipedal Exo-Skeletal Semi-Robotic Vehicle—or Mech—courtesy of Neogentronyx.
posted by jenleigh at 12:24 PM PST - 18 comments

D.C. Circuit: Military Tribunals Just Fine, Thanks. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit unanimously rejected an appeal by an Afghan who is being detained by the military to the tribunals established by the President's Court order in 2001. The decision reversed a federal trial court ruling that the tribunals violated the Geneva Convention.
posted by esquire at 11:19 AM PST - 67 comments

Psychoactive Drugs for the Future Could brain-boosting drugs become as common as coffee?
UK government group Foresight have just released their 'Brain Science, Addiction and Drugs Project' in which the aim was to evaluate:
"How can we manage the use of psychoactive substances in the future to best advantage for the individual, the community and society?"
The report can be viewed in its entirety from here. Direct link to the Executive Summary (.pdf) via
posted by peacay at 10:21 AM PST - 31 comments

The Wild Parrots of Brooklyn. "I'm amazed at how many people living on the island of Manhattan regard these birds as urban legends, just like the crocodiles once reputed to live in the sewers. But these birds are real, they're thriving and yet they're also endangered." Theories, studies, photos and an audio sample of these non-native birds, which are found elsewhere in the US, throughout the world and on film. [prior discussion, first link via memepool.]
posted by myopicman at 9:16 AM PST - 42 comments

The Great Molasses Flood of 1919 in which 21 people died. (A picture of the devastation.) Another account from The Smithsonian. A present day picture of the site (scroll to the bottom). Brief accounts of two other molasses floods. And while we're at it, don't forget the London Beer Flood. Cheers.
posted by OmieWise at 6:55 AM PST - 49 comments

David Horton Attempts Pacific Crest Trail Record What the heck does that mean? It means running over 40 miles a day for 63 days. The PCT is 2,650 miles long.
posted by raaka at 5:55 AM PST - 15 comments

Houston rapper fired as baggage screener. It wasn't your standard old "f*ck tha police" rap, and management evidently felt it conflicted with the intent of his job: "Once we discovered these Web sites, we fired him." Trust the art and not the artist?
posted by alumshubby at 5:00 AM PST - 137 comments

Thor rolls a joint
posted by johnny7 at 4:45 AM PST - 48 comments

Are the London bombings a possible long-term result of an Administration undercover operative outing? And, why exactly was this deep mole agent blown by the US Administration in August of 2004, concurrent with raising the DHS Threat Level to Orange for NYC and Washington DC financial services? While the Plame blame game and investigation carries on, we now have another old news story about a rara avis Al Qaeda double-agent undercover operative outing that is suddenly rising from the ashes of dusty newsprint almost like a phoenix seeking it's own special prosecutor. -- Following the thread of the story is a bit of a tangle, so an attempt to unsnarl the imbroglio is provided inside....
posted by Dunvegan at 2:12 AM PST - 67 comments

Winnipeg's mosquito population explodes "Heavy rains throughout June and early July have flooded farmlands and fields, leaving pools of water that are perfect for mosquito breeding." The Manitoba government has ordered Winnipeg to spray the controversial chemical malathion across the city. A survey reveals that the vast majority of Manitobans who have contracted West Nile virus have no idea they have been infected. Recommended repellants have contained the chemical DEET and sixty percent of Americans shy away from any insect repellent, even when the mosquito-borne West Nile Virus is a serious threat. CDC has more information and FAQ about insect repellent use and safety.
posted by webmeta at 1:50 AM PST - 15 comments

Borf is dead. The masked mystery whose ubiquitious graffiti has confused Washington for months is revealed to be an 18-year-old anarchist. He had a good run, though, getting his work on dozens of locations in D.C., then going on tour through Raleigh, New York and San Francisco, inspiring an internet following in the process. And while his work wasn't brilliant enough to match the romantic counterculture image he tried to create, there's a truly sad story behind his pseudonym and icon: both belong to a friend who committed suicide two years ago. Of course, that's unlikely to arouse the sympathy of the various city officials spending (I would assume) hundreds of thousands of dollars to remove his work.
posted by gsteff at 1:14 AM PST - 61 comments

Why I’m Raising Violent 4 Year-Olds: Solving America's Boy Problem (via Mainstream Baptist)
posted by pandaharma at 11:15 PM PST - 114 comments

How should science be taught in school?
posted by daksya at 10:55 PM PST - 16 comments

RoveFilter (via Drudge): Where does it go now? The AP is now saying Bob Novak told Karl Rove about Valerie Plame, who then passed it on to other journalists. So who told Novak? Pass the popcorn, this could get interesting.
posted by trinarian at 10:29 PM PST - 87 comments

A (Picturesque) Walk Through Durham Township
posted by Gyan at 10:09 PM PST - 26 comments

Thanks to no warning time, the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 was the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. History (ranked #4 in weather.com's Storm's of the Century). Now we can see them coming from their inception. Florida has been getting the recent hurricane headlines, but Texas also has a history. This season has seen an unprecedented number of hurricanes (for so early in the year) and the latest (Emily - already a Category 3) may be taking aim at Texas according to computer models. The Galveston Chamber of Commerce welcomes you! Track all tropical storm and hurricanes (and bone up on hurricane preparedness) at the NHC site. Hurricane basics at National Geographic: Forces of Nature - Hurricanes (FLASH)
posted by spock at 9:26 PM PST - 7 comments

Seattle Bus Monster : a project that combines the resources of Google Maps, realtime public transit data provided by the Intelligent Transportation Systems at the University of Washington, and King County's online bus trip planner and does it right. It is refreshing exhilarating to see an application designed so well. It doesn't seem to work on Safari yet. Links to project's blog and summary of features.
posted by fatllama at 7:18 PM PST - 28 comments

The Last Days of NYC's Fulton Fish Market. A lovely, Mitchell-like paean to the odiferous old fish market that, like the rest of Manhattan, is being sanitized. Here's another, not quite as well done. Here's a great page of old articles and info. Don't like word pictures? Flikr has some really nice galleries. Forgotten New York has a tour of the area around the market. Or maybe you just want today's prices.
posted by CunningLinguist at 6:26 PM PST - 23 comments

Not torture. U.S. interrogators also told him he was a homosexual, forced him to dance with a male interrogator, told him his mother and sister were whores, forced him to wear a leash and perform dog tricks, menaced him with a dog and regularly subjected him to interrogations up to 20 hours a day for about two months, the report said. Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall Schmidt, who headed the probe into FBI accounts of abuse of Guantanamo prisoners by Defense Department personnel, concluded that the man was subjected to "abusive and degrading treatment" due to "the cumulative effect of creative, persistent and lengthy interrogations." The techniques used were authorized by the Pentagon, he said. "As the bottom line, though, we found no torture. Detention and interrogation operations were safe, secure and humane," Schmidt said. . . . Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, himself abused by the North Vietnamese as a Vietnam War POW, noted, "Humane treatment might be in the eye of the beholder." The report.
posted by caddis at 6:08 PM PST - 87 comments

Earlier this week, Senator Santorum (R., PA) stood by comments he made on a Catholic website in 2002 when he said:

'It is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political, and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm" of the clergy sexual abuse scandal.

In a brief interview with the Boston Globe on Tuesday, Santorum reiterated his view that the 'basic liberal attitude" in Boston fostered an environment where sexual abuse of children could occur. Many slammed him for politicizing a scandal that has touched many across the country - way beyond the borders of Massachusetts.

Separate, but of great importance to one who waves a flag of "traditional family values" and repeated homophobic rhetoric, how does Senator Santorum "square the fact" that his "mouthpiece" to the world (Director of Communications, Robert Traynham) came out as a gay man this afternoon?
posted by ericb at 5:21 PM PST - 50 comments

Sharp's Dual View LCD Picture in picture isn't new but, by using a parallax barrier superimposed on the LCD, the Sharp Dual View LCD displays two full screen images (Yahoo jpg) simultaneously, you see one or the other depending on your viewing angle.
This could be the end of the battle for the remote control. And no word on the conniptions something like this would give to a PVR.
posted by fenriq at 3:34 PM PST - 33 comments

LCD computer keyboard
posted by Pretty_Generic at 2:16 PM PST - 56 comments

Oil Exploration For over 75 years the oil industry has been searching... from the icepack of fitzwilliam strait to the Tarmin Basin in China, fighting storms in the North Sea, ice, mud & forest. Using powerful computers to find new reserves ready for that billion dollar oil rig to start drilling and pumping.
posted by Lanark at 2:15 PM PST - 9 comments

CommonTunes.org, a community directory of freely distributable music. With tags. Also see CommonFlix & CommonBits. Oddly enough, the site itself is "All Rights Reserved". Pity about the color scheme.
posted by signal at 2:05 PM PST - 6 comments

"A vampire has been arrested in Ukraine after luring street children into her home for their blood. Diana Semenuha, 29, believed that drinking blood could fend off a muscle-wasting condition."

Ummm...WTF? It appears to be real, even if all the news outlets seem to have cookie-cutter stories. (Although wiccan sites appear to be tracking it too.) I'm well aware that there are practicing witches all over the world, but vampires are usually just an item of historical lore or science-fiction/fantasy. How often do stories like this really happen? (via)
posted by mystyk at 1:56 PM PST - 18 comments

The Tell-Tale Heart. As told via highway signs.
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 1:30 PM PST - 18 comments

DO NOT READ ANYONE LOOKING FORWARD....! BIG SPOILER! So reads every post on a Harry Potter forum, where spoiler-vandals have turned after getting locked out of the official forum. I'm afraid to even link you directly, with warnings, to the spoiler -- you'll have to click through. Meanwhile, the news reports leak after leak.
posted by NickDouglas at 1:26 PM PST - 28 comments

Tatooine Not Destroyed. Yoda Stuns Buffalo. New Death Star Built.
posted by grateful at 12:57 PM PST - 25 comments

The Tarquin Engine, a series of Action Script routines within a Macromedia Flash FLA file, is raising the bar for infinite canvas comics. With Tarquin now allowing zoomable comics to sprawl in every direction, it would seem that technology is finally catching up to the vision of Scott McCloud, who coined the phrase in his 2000 book.
posted by ScottMorris at 12:51 PM PST - 10 comments

are we doing enough to protect the unborn?
where are the demonstrations at the gates of petro-chemical companies?
posted by specialk420 at 12:22 PM PST - 34 comments

As much as I would like to see Rove's head on a pike, I still don't understand why outing a CIA agent should be a crime. After all, we managed to get through World War II and most of the Cold War without such a law. Once upon a time liberals opposed the intelligence Identities Protection Act, and for good reasons. Namely, the law is more likely to ensnare journalists making legitimate inquiries than the kind of traitors that spawned the law. It also requires a very high legal standard, as no one has officially confirmed that Valarie Plame, who's cover had been previously compromised and was well-known in Washington circles, still qualifies as a covert agent under the legal definition. After all, only one person has ever been convicted under the intelligence Identities Protection Act.
posted by Heminator at 12:13 PM PST - 43 comments

Loch Ness Tooth • "In March (2005) my roommate and I went to the U.K and spent our last two days at Loch Ness. The boat rental season hadn’t started so we hired a local who took us on a private boat tour. After a few hours we came across the remains of a dead deer. The animal had literally been ripped in half - hind quarters gone, its spine was broken and severed. There were huge bloody gashes, teeth marks and a bizarre bony protrusion sticking out of an exposed rib. It was a tooth - about 4 inches long, barbed and very sharp!"
posted by dhoyt at 11:33 AM PST - 50 comments

Are the political debates on MeFi stressing you out? The solution is simple: laugh it off. (warning: embedded video, silly)
posted by ddf at 10:18 AM PST - 25 comments

How should right and wrong be measured?
posted by jeffburdges at 8:36 AM PST - 42 comments

Thursday non-flash fun: Pendulumania! (Direct link here.) Swing the ball around to hit the targets, but don't let your line break. (more inside)
posted by squidlarkin at 7:16 AM PST - 7 comments

Happy Bastille day! For all citizens of France, the storming of the Bastille symbolizes, liberty,democracy and the struggle against all forms of oppression. Also, the Declaration of the Rights of Man (which was written by Lafayette, of all people).
posted by warbaby at 7:02 AM PST - 27 comments

"Delta: I am maneuvering with difficulty; keep clear." U.S. Navy & international signal flags (bigger and prettier). The semaphore alphabet. Some illustrative signals. A history of signaling at sea. The comprehensive Space and Electronic Warfare Lexicon.
posted by OmieWise at 6:37 AM PST - 12 comments

Lanchester's Law (pdf file) broadly states that in warfare it takes an N-square-fold increase in quality to make up for an N-square increase in quantity. In other words, gains in technological superiority do not multiply as fast as increases in in troop strength. When the warfare is asymmetrical, numerical superiority become even more important. With complaints that the US Army is understaffed (there are 1/3 fewer troops now than in 1991 when the US fought the first Gulf war) Democrats in the House and Senate - led by Joseph Lieberman and Hillary Clinton - are proposing to increase the size of the US Army by 80,000 troops - more than twice what the Army asked for and counter to the argument made by the the CATO institute that troop strength should be decreased.
posted by three blind mice at 6:09 AM PST - 27 comments

Surreal photography by Alessandro Bavari. [via] Some images NSFW.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 4:26 AM PST - 13 comments

The media's pursuit of Karl Rove was inevitable. Faced with the persistent hammering by the press on the issue, Scott McClellan seems to channeling former Nixon Press Secretary Ron Ziegler. And of course the scent of a big scandal around Rove has some people asking if the "Turd Blossom Express" has reached the end of the line?
posted by thedailygrowl at 12:38 AM PST - 77 comments

Cat-Scan.com is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their cats wedged into their scanners, or why.
posted by anastasiav at 9:39 PM PST - 121 comments

People often say 90% of statistics are made up on the spot. This probably isn't true, but according to this scientific paper about a third of scientific papers turn out to be wrong. Perhaps we shouldn't be so quick to take published research at face value. (research applies to medical research, not other fields of science, as far as I can tell)
posted by delmoi at 5:56 PM PST - 33 comments

Rove Rove Rove Rove Rove.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 5:36 PM PST - 30 comments

An*l Bleaching Cream ... courtesy of the Village Voice. (no photos, but one would have to say, NSFW)
posted by R. Mutt at 4:08 PM PST - 55 comments

Fixr photographs recreations of moments when you didn't have a camera, then sends you a photo. At last, a solution to photos not taken.
posted by brownpau at 3:35 PM PST - 15 comments

Why I bought a typewriter on ebay. Nate, a writer, tells why...well, the link is self-explanatory. A follow-up to an earlier post.
posted by braun_richard at 2:33 PM PST - 21 comments

Bush says he may consider non-judges to replace Sandra Day O'Connor. Is it time to panic? Is the terrbile prediction of a Justice Ann Coulter made in this thread coming one step closer to being realized? Buckle up Either way, because Rehnquest has been hospitalized as well.
posted by piratebowling at 2:04 PM PST - 65 comments

Debating A Neocon, etc. "Editors’ note: The following exchange is significant for its discussion of how the world order functions today. Particularly interesting is the debate over the significance of neoconservative ideology within the ruling class and whether such a thing as 'Islamic fascism' exists."
posted by davy at 2:04 PM PST - 23 comments

The Honda Civic GX NGV is a car that you can fuel up at home by using a unit that taps into your home's natural gas line. There are two major benefits of owning a natural gas powered car: (1) they can use HOV lanes in California; and (2) using residential natural gas as fuel can save a heavy commuter up to $1,000 per year in fuel costs. Ultimately, though, the Honda Civic GX NGV is only for penny-pinching clean-air fanatics who have arduous daily commutes, don't like music or driving and are too anti-social to carpool.
posted by hellx at 1:57 PM PST - 23 comments

NerdTV. “Beginning Sept. 6, PBS will make available – exclusively over the Internet [and under a Creative Commons License] – broadcast television’s first entirely downloadable series, featuring PBS technology columnist and industry insider Robert X. Cringely’s interviews with personalities from the ever-changing world of technology.” [Via]
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 1:27 PM PST - 13 comments

Aphex Twin and Chris Cunningham strike again. (Come to) Rubber Johnny. More here and here.
posted by afx114 at 12:17 PM PST - 40 comments

Hedgehog: a beast that carries away grapes on its sharp quills Everything you ever wanted to know about animals in the middle ages, courtesy of The Medieval Bestiary. The Aberdeen Bestiary is now online; see also images at Bestiaire (a French site; parts available in English and Spanish translation) and the Getty Museum.
posted by thomas j wise at 11:31 AM PST - 12 comments

The Shins Will Change Your Life A collection of fawning music "criticism" updated a few times a week. No commentary from the author, just excerpts from reviews.
posted by mlis at 10:44 AM PST - 104 comments

The Power of Nightmares, the BAFTA winning BBC documentary previously discussed here, is now available for free download - in excellent quality - from the Internet Archive.
More: The Guardian - The Making of the Terror Myth; The Guardian - Adam Curtis: Fear gives politicans a reason to be; Wikipedia - Adam Curtis
posted by mr.marx at 10:13 AM PST - 15 comments

Frank and Beverly Herbert interview from 1969 on the first Dune books. In a recent AskMe thread, many respondents cited Dune as a favorite science fiction novel. An almost complete (missing one page) 1969 interview with the author and his wife has surfaced. Enjoy. [Tip of the hat to Monkeyfilter]
posted by mojohand at 9:27 AM PST - 36 comments

Muslims are speaking out against terrorism to anyone who will listen.
posted by leapingsheep at 9:22 AM PST - 68 comments

making room art and design mag
posted by Thayer-P at 9:19 AM PST - 4 comments

Is New York Rock: A Critical History hilarious band-busting sarcasm or so cloyingly ironic and juvenile as to be puke-inducing? (via ILX)
posted by oldleada at 8:43 AM PST - 19 comments

Celebrity Look-Alikes - for hire! Uncanny resemblances.
posted by cpchester at 8:10 AM PST - 58 comments

In November 2003, Weekly Standard writer Stephen Hayes published a report alleging collusion between terrorist agents and Saddam Hussein which received little attention in the press. In June of '04, Hayes published another article called "The Connection" excerpted from his book of the same title. His newest follow-up, with economist Thomas Joscelyn, entitled "The Mother of All Connections" goes one step further to illustrate the alleged connections, contradicting what the 9/11 Commission & Bush himself have claimed.
posted by jenleigh at 7:57 AM PST - 38 comments

The Logic of Suicide Terrorism. First you feel nervous about riding the bus. Then you wonder about going to a mall. Then you think twice about sitting for long at your favorite café. Then nowhere seems safe. Terrorist groups have a strategy—to shrink to nothing the areas in which people move freely—and suicide bombers, inexpensive and reliably lethal, are their latest weapons. Israel has learned to recognize and disrupt the steps on the path to suicide attacks. We must learn too.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 7:46 AM PST - 38 comments

"I don't feel your pain." Mohammed Bouyeri, the man who confessed to killing Dutch filmmaker and writer Theo van Gogh, surprised judges and television viewers alike yesterday by breaking his silence for only the second time since the start of his trial. On monday, when asked about his hate for the same Western society that gave his parents work and asylum, he gave only this short answer in Arabic: "I pray that God protect me that I should ever think differently than I do now." (WaPo link, reg. req'd) [more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 7:35 AM PST - 65 comments

From Apocalypse to Zombies. Forty seven ways the world could end, and another couple dozen for good measure. With the Doomsday Clock back at seven minutes to midnight, you can either try to escape the end of the world, or else hope that the thirty-six people on whom the fate of the world rests are doing okay. Too grim? Take a look at the more humorous side of failed predictions of the end (Coral cache version of that link, just in case). Forget peak oil, and bring on the hypernovas!
posted by blahblahblah at 11:01 PM PST - 9 comments

Free Beer! ...but free as in "Open Source Beer", mind you. Students from Copenhagen's IT-University have produced and released a powerful beer recipe under a Creative Commons license. Microbrewers, start your machines...
posted by betobeto at 10:21 PM PST - 31 comments

The Virtual Museum of Ancient Inventions, most of the discoveries and inventions on which modern societies have been constructed were made in prehistoric times. Ancient inventions tell detailed stories of complex knowledge for which no written records exist.
posted by nickyskye at 4:01 PM PST - 13 comments

The space shuttle (and NASA) return to flight tomorrow at a scheduled launch time of 1551 ET, weather permitting. They had a laundry list of things to fix, and of course, they've fixed all of them... except the three that actually killed the last crew. They're launching nonetheless, and NASA TV will be covering it, with a couple of lists of mirror site links. I wish them well.
posted by baylink at 3:09 PM PST - 37 comments

Planarity Arrange the vertices such that no edges overlap. Or, A Farewell to Productivity
posted by boo_radley at 12:45 PM PST - 91 comments

"An ossuary is a chest, building, well or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains." via Wikipedia.
The one in the Czech Republic town of Sedlec takes the ossuary and turns it into a thing of bony beauty.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 12:42 PM PST - 25 comments

'The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign—over 95 percent of all the incidents—has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.'  The Logic of Suicide Terrorism The American Conservative interviews Robert Pape, author of Dying To Win: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism:
posted by y2karl at 12:14 PM PST - 133 comments

Next Action. A nifty Getting Things Done tool (done in Javascript but for local use).
posted by srboisvert at 12:04 PM PST - 11 comments

Blackhat Search Engine Optimization Techniques. Through the use of a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) complaint, you can have competing web sites thrown out of Yahoo's search index. If you file a DMCA report against a site, Yahoo will quickly remove the "offending" site, leaving no trace of the site in its index. This has led to a rise in so-called "Blackhat SEO," wherein one seeks to become the leading search result not by improving one's own site, but by having competing sites removed through the DMCA.
posted by nlindstrom at 11:54 AM PST - 15 comments

Devils Lake is the largest body of water in North Dakota, and it's growing. Landlocked and continuously fed by surrounding rivers and lakes, its size corresponds to the amount of rainfall and can vary dramatically. In fact, recent changes aren't even on the map yet. With more rainfall on the horizon, the government of North Dakota is building an artificial outlet for the lake, channeling the water northwards. But Manitoba doesn't want the water, fearing that an invasion of Devils Lake species will seriously upset the Red River's ecological balance and harm the Manitoban fishing industry. Nonetheless, the ND government seems determined to prevent the loss of any more trees and farmland and roadways and villages.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 11:54 AM PST - 26 comments

Che Guevara: The Killing Machine
Che's lust for power had other ways of expressing itself besides murder. The contradiction between his passion for travel--a protest of sorts against the of the nation-state--and his impulse to become himself an enslaving state over others is poignant. In writing about Pedro Valdivia, the conquistador of Chile, Guevara reflected: "He belonged to that special class of men the species produces every so often, in whom a craving for limitless power is so extreme that any suffering to achieve it seems natural." He might have been describing himself.
posted by highsignal at 10:52 AM PST - 82 comments

Vintage & Retro Posters
French/Italian
Marc Chagall
Old Movie Posters via
posted by peacay at 10:29 AM PST - 8 comments

"Now you fellows have lost all your ships. Now you really are orphans of the Pacific. How do you think you will ever get home?" Tokyo Rose was the name given to any female propaganda broadcaster for the Japanese during WWII’s battle for the Pacific, but it has stuck most tightly to Iva Toguri D'Aquino, an American who studied zoology at Berkeley and unwisely went to visit a relative in Japan in 1941 without a passport.

Her sultry voice was heard across the Pacific during her radio show “The Zero Hour,” which earned her about $7 per month. After the war, "Orphan Annie" returned to the U.S., where she was tried for treason in the most expensive trial in history. Her story has been made into movies and documentaries, and as of 2003 she was running a store in Chicago. You can listen to her broadcasts online and apparently even email her.
posted by gottabefunky at 10:07 AM PST - 10 comments

The use of a mobile phone up to 10 minutes before a crash is associated with a fourfold increased likelihood of crashing according to a forthcoming article in the British Medical Journal. There is no safety advantage in 'hands-free' devices. The authors interviewed 456 drivers in hospital ERs in Perth, and then accessed, with consent, their phone records. The authors had wanted to carry out the study in the United States, but the phone companies would not release customer billing records, even with a customer's consent. [Article pdf free for the next few days, but BMJ will charge for it after next week I think.]
posted by carter at 9:56 AM PST - 46 comments

We are not afraid. If you want to understand London in the aftermath, here it is.
posted by Duug at 9:39 AM PST - 41 comments

You thought the US had all the frivolous lawsuits? You thought that Russian astrologer had the "stupidest lawsuit ever" award all sewn up? Think again. French bus service Transports Schiocchet Excursions is suing a group of ten women who carpool to work every day, alleging unfair competition with their bus line. Among TSE's demands: confiscation of the defendants' cars. Groklaw has more, including excerpts from an interview in French which tosses around the delicious term "covoiturage".
posted by ubernostrum at 7:54 AM PST - 41 comments

SCOTTISH ARCHITECTURE plus
posted by Phantast at 5:56 AM PST - 5 comments

It sounds a lot like science fiction. It moves at the speed of light and it can penetrate walls. The U.S. military has firepower that uses electromagnetic energy to blind, stun or kill targets. Defense contractors are eager, but the weapons are not yet being deployed.
posted by dsquid at 5:25 AM PST - 37 comments

Londonistan. Some say Britain overdoing tolerance. In some areas, it’s a shock to see a woman without her head covered. Britain had been too squeamish about respecting Muslims' rights. It is to be hoped that Blair will rise to level of Nelson's exhortation that "England expects that every man will do his duty."

To what extent will Britain comply with demands for change from the conservative right?
posted by bwerdmuller at 3:34 AM PST - 141 comments

So BoingBoing recently linked to this fantastic comic book serial from the 60s entitled "This Godless Communism," a surprisingly in-depth (and hilariously slanted) history of the rise of the USSR, its leaders, and their philosophies. It's great, but it is far from the only thing on the site, the Authentic History Center. Just looking at the other comics and cartoons they have, there is a huge amount of ancient political cartoons, fantastic WWII-military-themed comic strips(surprisingly good!), and generally awesome period-relevant comic book covers, some of which link to full comics (Donald Duck's Atom Bomb?!). There is a collection of embarassing shows of race-sploitation in comics in the 70s, and the racist toys and artifacts section would make Archie Bunker blush (Chop Suey Specs!). Guaranteed to make you wince and chin-stroke simultaneously.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 11:04 PM PST - 43 comments

Embracing Illegals: Companies are getting hooked on the buying power of 11 million undocumented immigrants - The Underground Labor Force Is Rising To The Surface [pdf]
posted by kliuless at 10:49 PM PST - 30 comments

Glory Hole
posted by rubin at 9:46 PM PST - 61 comments

El Indio in Hispanic proverbial speech "The proverbial speech of Hispanic America preserves, even today, numerous traces of the interaction between explorers, conquerors, or settlers and the native populations they found in the various regions of the so-called New World"
posted by dhruva at 9:21 PM PST - 6 comments

Mulattoes Child-bearing amongst slaves started around the age of thirteen, and by twenty the women would be expected to have four or five children. To encourage child-bearing some population owners promised women slaves their freedom after they had produced fifteen children. The folks who told these stories had reasons to cry out in anger that most of us (on the blue) probably don't.
posted by snsranch at 7:24 PM PST - 36 comments

“The nature of the explosives appears to be military, which is very worrying,” said Superintendent Christophe Chaboud, the chief of the French anti-terrorist police, who was in London to help Scotland Just because this may have been the work of one or two or three men does not mean there is no infrastructure. A message to the terrorists. Why have these Mullahs been allowed to operate in London with impunity?
posted by Ugandan Discussions at 5:52 PM PST - 52 comments

The Latest Addition to the iPod Family: the iPod Harper's Special Edition. "Each unit comes preloaded with high-resolution photos of every writer whose work has appeared in the magazine during (Harper's editor Lewis H. Lapham's) long tenure..." Is it me, or is this just super lame?
posted by JPowers at 2:02 PM PST - 40 comments

McDonald's plans to hire top designers to remake its uniforms. McD's recently hired music mogul Steve Stoute, a marketer with ties to the hip-hop community, and is contemplating deals with fashion figures ranging from Sean "P. Diddy" Combs to Tommy Hilfiger, in a move that could cost as much as $80 mil.
posted by Blue Buddha at 1:42 PM PST - 58 comments

Eliot A. Cohen has second thoughts on the Iraq war. Cohen is a neoconservative, and a member of the Project for a New American Century; he's the author of Supreme Command; and he has a son going to Iraq as an infantry officer. Via Belgravia Dispatch and Brad DeLong.
posted by russilwvong at 12:32 PM PST - 50 comments

The Codex Seraphinianus, a Hallucinatory Encyclopedia, details fantastical beings and impossible places. It's one of the highlights of issue 17 of the Grey Lodge Occult Review, which also includes Maya Deren's very rare film on Haitian Voudoun "Divine Horsemen" [torrent] and William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin's "The Cut-Ups" [torrent].
posted by moonbird at 12:04 PM PST - 17 comments

Have you got ICE in your mobile? "Following the disaster in London . . . East Anglian Ambulance Service have launched a national "In case of Emergency (ICE)" campaign with the support of Falklands war hero Simon Weston. The idea is that you store the word "ICE" in your mobile phone address book, and against it enter the number of the person you would want to be contacted "In Case of Emergency". LINK.
posted by azul at 11:40 AM PST - 30 comments

Sir Isaac Newton had 'a secret hobby,' and some of his papers on alchemy have just been re-found. At Indiana University they've been conducting some of his experiments, which they've documented with pictures. But for today's non-academic alchemist, a stop at The Alchemy Web Site (previous MeFi discussion here) or Alchemy Lab can set you on the right course. The former has an extensive library of texts, several galleries of images, photographs of home experiments, as well as sections on Islamic, Indian and Chinese alchemy. The latter includes sections on the history of alchemy, famous alchemists, the alchemy of health, and, of course, practical alchemy. (Neither site should be confused with Alchemy-Gothic.com, the online home of "the original gothic revivalists.")
posted by OmieWise at 11:25 AM PST - 42 comments

The Unheard Beethoven - This website endeavors to make all of Beethoven's unrecorded music readily accessible to the public. These never-before-heard works are now available to anyone with a computer, a modem and a soundcard, in the form of MIDI files. At present, over twelve hours of Beethoven's music is available on this website and in no other listenable format.
posted by Wolfdog at 11:05 AM PST - 16 comments

This series of photographs largely taken from the P.O.V. of a sniper are interesting, almost like a real world recreation of a video game.
posted by jonson at 10:32 AM PST - 85 comments

FT changes headline on Blair's statement. This morning, I picked up the paper copy of the Financial Times, scanned the headline, and harrumphed, remarking that "I had seen something like this before". Yesterday, the FT website had the same title - "Blair rejects calls for probe into bombings." Today, however, the headline has been changed to "Blair promises to hunt down bombers". (BTW, it's UK conservatives calling for a probe). Not only that, but the text in question is purged:

Tony Blair will on Monday reject Conservative demands for a government inquiry into last week's London bomb attacks, insisting such a move would distract from the task of catching the perpetrators.

Gentlemen, prepare your tinfoil hats!!
posted by rzklkng at 9:36 AM PST - 19 comments

"Guns, Germs & Steel" premieres tonight on PBS. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Jared Diamond, and hosted by the same. The mini-series consists of three, one-hour episodes tackling many of the same issues in the book.
posted by jefgodesky at 8:42 AM PST - 55 comments

Brainfreeze! Since today is 7/11, 7-Eleven is celebrating with free Slurpees. (Naturally, in 7.11 ounce cups.) Since its introduction in 1965, over 6 billion Slurpees have been sold--one for every person on earth.
posted by sdrawkcab at 5:04 AM PST - 58 comments

Dannybot is a short musical film about a lonely man whose robot goes off to war. It shouldn't be confused with What's Your Name, a music video about a lonely robot office worker, which itself shouldn't be confused with the previously-MeFi'd one about a worker who doesn't know he's a robot, or the one about the worker who is haunted by robots, or the much lower-tech Kraftwerk video "The Robots (mpg video), or the video about a robot scavenger in a third-world nation (mp4 video) (which itself shouldn't be confused with that previously-MeFi'd non-musical short about a robot cop in a third-world nation), none of which should be confused with any of the various shorts (Windows Media) and commercials(MPG) about breakdancing robots(streaming video). However, any of the previous videos about robots could have been made by the robots in this music video about robots making a music video(quicktime). If any of this is unclear, please contact your local League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots. (links mainly via Memepool and Antville.)
posted by yankeefog at 4:49 AM PST - 17 comments

Israel's Cabinet has approved final details of a barrier to surround Jerusalem "redrawing the disputed city's boundary and shifting its demographic balance in favor of Jews." The Jerusalem Post declares this to be "most dramatic change [in Jerusalem's borders] since 1967." The decision means Israel is taking lands claimed by the Palestinians for a future state, including traditionally Arab east Jerusalem, the intended Palestinian capital. In addition, the UNRWA (pdf) reported that other negative impacts on the Palestinain population include "logistical problems of access, proximity of schools" for Palestinians and that "access of refugees to secondary and tertiary care in Jerusalem hospitals will be severely hampered." Dr. Gerson Baskin of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information wrote in 2003 "It is time for honesty – the security barrier may have started in its conceptual phase as a security barrier, but in its translation into reality it has been manipulated to be a political border." Is this another nail in the coffin of the peace process, a necessary and constructive step towards a solution, or an encouraging development in the ultimate conversion of Jews to Christianity and the second coming of Christ?
posted by three blind mice at 4:35 AM PST - 60 comments

Google demos their SMS capability . Personally, I have used Google via Wap/GPRS on my mobile for years. Now, quick definitions, telephone numbers, and calculations are available via SMS, too. Great for geeks on the move - but will Joe Q Bloggs catch on?
posted by SharQ at 3:35 AM PST - 19 comments

"Do girls box?" she asked, turning to her father one evening. "Is it OK for girls to box?" Part 1 of 10-year old boxer Seniesa Estrada's story. (reg. req.)
posted by riffraff at 12:33 AM PST - 36 comments

The Puzzling Story of NATO's Secret Armies During the Cold War: Just What Were They Up to? Secret stay-behind armies served a dual purpose during the Cold War: They were to prepare for a communist Soviet invasion and occupation of Western Europe, and – also in the absence of an invasion – for an “emergency situation.” Further detailed in the book Nato's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe by Daniele Ganser.
posted by stbalbach at 11:30 PM PST - 11 comments

Noctis is a free space simulation program/game written mostly in assembly by Alessandro Ghignola, an Italian programmer. It is downloadable for Windows and MS-DOS, but be warned there is quite a learning curve. It features a planet lander, onboard ship computer, a Fido Net style method of communicating newly named and discovered stars and systems with other users, and a haunting sense of being alone in an immense universe. Fan fiction. Screenshots reveal the outdated resolution of the program.
posted by nervousfritz at 9:53 PM PST - 19 comments

Can't Find On Google . Com While many people seem to think that Google can find anything (and knows everything), experienced web surfers know the results are often a bit lacking. So this site allows you to post what you are really looking for and what you punched in to the "Big G" to try to find it. The owner claims to know someone who works at Google that is "always interested in what people can't find on Google" - doubtful IMHO if they will really change anything based on this site. But semi-interesting stuff that highlights the inadaquacy of search engine technology.
posted by RonZ at 8:46 PM PST - 36 comments

Three days and Counting Breathe deep, mine eyes, the frosty saga of eternal suns. From unseen depths and dreams undreamt, I sing the gleaming cantos of unvanquished space. By thought I embrace the universal, With wings of mind I sail the infinitude. Glory! 'tis the stars which beckon man's spirit and set our souls adrift!
posted by blue_beetle at 8:13 PM PST - 14 comments

The Thousand-hand Bodhisattva dance is performed by 21 deaf, Chinese dancers. (NLTH: "Not Literally a Thousand Hands") Via octopus dropkick
posted by brundlefly at 6:57 PM PST - 19 comments

Blaming Everyone But the Terrorists | Portland journalist Michael Totten vents on the Portland Indymedia crew who blamed Bush for attacks on London. On Friday, Kos banned a handful of his more conspiracy-minded followers for the same reasons: "I have a high tolerance level for material I deem appropriate for this site, but one thing I REFUSE to allow is bullshit conspiracy theories. I can't imagine what fucking world these people live in, but it sure ain't the Reality Based Community." This Seattle Times article indicates even some young British Muslims agree: "Obviously the media is saying that Muslims did it, but I think it was a conspiracy by Tony Blair and George Bush," said Olle Rahaman, 32, a husband and father who, like the other men, was born in London of Bangladeshi parents. "An excuse to say, 'Let's go kick some ass.' " William Bowles of GlobalResearch.ca talks about the use of agent provocateurs and the 'suspicious nature' of the bombings.
posted by jenleigh at 5:56 PM PST - 121 comments

The culture of peace is advancing according to accounts from all regions of the world. This is the conclusion from information submitted by almost 700 organisations and summarised in a report which has been formally submitted to the United Nations Secretary-General by the Bangladeshi Ambassador to the UN, Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury. This report provides the first comprehensive view of the progress of the global movement for a culture of peace, since it was called for in 1999 by United Nations Resolution A/53/243. The advance of the culture of peace comes despite almost total neglect from the mass media, according to most accounts from all regions.
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:40 PM PST - 21 comments

Is he going to pull it off again? That is The 40th televised Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon.First broadcast , 1966. that makes it 40 years. Hats off to Jerry Lewis. Buy that man a case fo Red Bull on August 30th.
posted by celerystick at 5:11 PM PST - 37 comments

The Computer That Said NO to Drugs (and the other 7 issues of Tandy Computer Whiz Kid comics.) And if we're feeling nostalgic now, there many more retro computer magazines where that came from.
posted by .kobayashi. at 12:03 PM PST - 22 comments

The use of "y'all" is slowly but steadily gaining acceptance in standard English far outside . . . 'the South'. Why is it becoming so popular, when other . . . southernisms show no such acceptance? Language is a fluid thing.
posted by spock at 10:30 AM PST - 260 comments

Moby Blaster is an arkanoid clone that lets you create your own levels. (requires Shockwave)
posted by furtive at 7:48 AM PST - 15 comments

Great Leap Forward With the Chinese minister of extreme sports in attendance, American skateboarder Danny Way cleared a 61-foot gap at nearly 50 mph, crossing the Great Wall of China. "I'm not a fan of heights," said Way, 31, who made five successive jumps. "The sooner I can get down from the top in one piece, the better." Daredevil sports have taken off in China, where Flying Over the Wall events began 10 years ago, but this was the first skateboarder to make an attempt. In 2002, a Chinese bicyclist died attempting to jump the wall when he landed outside the safety area.
posted by rcade at 7:05 AM PST - 21 comments

London Underground Bombing 'Exercises' Took Place at Same Time as Real Attack
According to a BBC Radio 5 interview (aired on the evening of July 7th) with Peter Power, Managing Director of a consultancy agency with government and police connections, Mr. Power said his firm was actively running an exercise for an unnamed company that revolved around the London Underground being bombed at the same times and locations as happened in real life on the morning of July 7th.
Power told the host that at the exact same time that the London bombings were taking place, his company was running a 1,000 person strong exercise which drilled the London Underground being bombed at the exact same locations, at the exact same times, as it unfolded on that morning.
Power is a former Scotland Yard official and at one time was attached to the Anti Terrorist Branch.
More inside....
posted by Dunvegan at 3:07 AM PST - 78 comments

"If MSG is so bad for you, why doesn't everyone in Asia have a headache?" A brief history of and exploration some myths and facts surrounding MSG, glutamate (its natural expression) and umami - 'the fifth taste'. "We now know that glutamate is present in almost every food stuff, and that the protein is so vital to our functioning that our own bodies produce 40 grams of it a day. Probably the most significant discovery in explaining human interest in umami is that human milk contains large amounts of glutamate (at about 10 times the levels present in cow's milk). [...] Which means mothers' milk and a packet of cheese'n'onion crisps have rather more in common than you'd think."
posted by Blue Stone at 2:54 AM PST - 227 comments

Is Civilization Decaying? Will technological progress be accompanied by moral progress? Notes on a 1923 debate between J. B. S. Haldane (Daedalus) and Bertrand Russell (Icarus). "As John Brunner pointed out in an article in the New Scientist in 1993, these two books ... inspired two generations of science fiction writers."
posted by painquale at 1:00 AM PST - 11 comments

David Corn is claiming that Newsweek is going to nail Karl Rove tomorrow. Not that anyone's surprised, I'm sure, but nevertheless -- where's that popcorn? (via tpm)
posted by spiderwire at 10:54 PM PST - 361 comments

Woman Jailed for Child Abuse - With a Twist "The young girl and her mother are now trying to rebuild their lives after an 18-month campaign of harassment by Kathryn Skinner, the woman they thought was a trusted family friend. Skinner, now 40, spiked children's drinks at birthday parties and put razor blades in school bags and lockers so her friend's daughter would get the blame."
posted by echolalia67 at 9:18 PM PST - 54 comments

Circus Museum : vintage circus posters
posted by crunchland at 8:20 PM PST - 9 comments

Searching for Bartman. A sports reporter’s account of his efforts to land an interview with “the most reclusive man in sports,” Steve Bartman. Bartman is the baseball fan blamed by many Chicago Cubs fans for preventing the Cubs from reaching the World Series in 2003 when he arguably interfered with a catch at a key point in the game. He received massive attention and ridicule after the incident, but never spoke to the media about it, except he released a short statement the day after the game.
posted by brain_drain at 4:58 PM PST - 32 comments

Police evacuate Birmingham centre
West Midlands police have evacuated the second largest city in England tonight as a precautionary measure. Sky News are reporting that a series of controlled explosions (I heard on Sky News TV that one of these was on a bus, but this may be innacurate) have been carried out in the Broad Street area. I hope that any and all UK MeFi-ites in Birmingham are keeping sane through out all this.
posted by tomcosgrave at 3:07 PM PST - 61 comments

Is your child an angel with attitude? Time to win yourself some Angel Dollars. "Entries will be judged on facial beauty, expression & fashion, and overall appeal of photo. These should be professional pictures, but should not be extremely or overly retouched. (We are judging the child - not the retoucher!) Divisional Winners will receive 25.00 Angel Dollars, and 1 Overall Winner will receive 50.00 Angel Dollars."
posted by sharksandwich at 2:54 PM PST - 66 comments

London - Terror Crossroads? Long before bombings ripped through London on Thursday, Britain had become a breeding ground for hate, fed by a militant version of Islam.
posted by dsquid at 2:26 PM PST - 12 comments

The Euratlas Periodical Historical Atlas of Europe details the evolution of the history of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East with a collection of maps from 1 AD to 1000 AD and 1100 AD to 2000 AD. You might have a general idea about what the Mediterranean looked like in 1000 AD, but did you know of the existence of the principality of Tmutarakan or the medieval Emirate of Mosul? Also includes a section on classical Rome and detailed maps of the city of Rome in 100 AD.
posted by deanc at 1:18 PM PST - 16 comments

Neuroexam.com is an interactive online guide to the neurological examination. [Via Mind Hacks.]
posted by homunculus at 10:21 AM PST - 6 comments

The French experience of counter-terrorism (PDF): from the "sanctuary doctrine" to active prevention, a detailed history of how France learned counter-terrorism the hard way. Since [the French revolution] France has been on the bleeding edge of terrorism, confronting terrorism in all its guises, from bomb-throwing anarchists to transnational networks. In the last 20 years, France suffered repeated waves of terrorism of both domestic and foreign origin, each which spawned a variety of reforms to an already complex system for combating terrorism. As a result, France has developed, largely by costly trial and error, a fairly effective, although controversial system for fighting terrorism at home.
posted by elgilito at 7:22 AM PST - 54 comments

In some ways, Gary McKinnon is indeed a complete idiot. Well, he is a likable and intelligent geeky man who did many, many idiotic things. What he is not, his friends and supporters reckon, is someone who deserves extradition and 70 years in an American jail.
posted by Grangousier at 3:22 AM PST - 59 comments

10 Years Gone - Today marks 10 years since the Grateful Dead played their very last show at Solider Field. While many folks blame Jerry for the decline in quality of performances in the later years, there were many other problems including the instrumentally and vocally challenged Vince Welnick who joined the band after Brent Mydland died in 1990. Fall 1990 through the middle of 1992 was easier to take when Bruce Hornsby was playing with the boys. But after Bruce split things seemed to decline for a number of different reasons. There were still some shining moments, and one of them was the very beautiful "So Many Roads" Garica played at the last show. While this song exposes many of the flaws of the band in the later years, it also shows the degree to which Jerry had given his everything to the music, to this band, and to deadheads everywhere. The end lines "Lord, I've been walking that road..." which aren't done in any other version of the song, as well as Garcia's reference (slip?) in his last tune "Black Muddy River" sung as "Last Muddy River" makes me wonder if Jerry didn't know that this was the end. I still miss the boys very much. Some of the post Garcia ventures were fun, things have never been the same since. "You know our love will not fade away."

some previous similar content in this thread.
posted by Gankmore at 1:19 AM PST - 55 comments

Chet Helms has been dead for a few days. He was not mentioned here and I somehow missed all this. He was a player in the music biz in his day and kinda looks like me if I stopped trimming my beard for a week or two. RIP.
posted by arse_hat at 11:43 PM PST - 4 comments

"If you love someone, you want to give something of yourself to them... Go big or go home you know?" Show that special sweetie of yours that you care with the magic of mutual self-mutilation. Really, how often were you using that ring finger, anyways?
posted by Simon! at 10:48 PM PST - 31 comments

'...Today, such famous sites as the Assyrian capital of Nineveh, the ziggurat at Ur, the temple precinct at Babylon, and a ninth-century spiral minaret at Samarra have been scarred by violence, while equally important ancient sites, particularly in the southern provinces, are being ravaged by looters who work day and night to fuel an international art market hungry for antiquities. Historic districts in urban areas have also suffered from vandalism, looting, and artillery fire. In response to such widespread damage and continuing threats to our collective cultural heritage and the significance of the sites at risk, World Monument Fund has taken the unprecedented step of including the entire country of Iraq on its 2006 list of 100 Most Endangered Sites.'
The 2003- Iraq War & Archaeology
The Smash of Civilizations
posted by y2karl at 10:09 PM PST - 11 comments

First person account of London Tube Bombing: "Fate is a strange thing. On this particular day a series of events transpired such that I ended up on a Tube train that was destroyed by terrorists. Fortunately it was only the carriage in front of me, but tragically it resulted in a serious amount of injuries. This is my story." (via Waxy)
posted by Heminator at 7:24 PM PST - 17 comments

Gallery of the Absurd Gossip Fueled Art
posted by ColdChef at 6:57 PM PST - 11 comments

This is what a party sounds like. If you grew in Washington DC in the 80's anyway. Invention of go-go music, DC's home-grown version of funk, is often attributed to Chuck Brown, but it probably came closest to breaking through to the mainstream when "Doin' Da Butt" was featured in Spike Lee's "School Daze" and E.U.'s beats were subsequently sampled by Salt-N-Pepa. [mi]
posted by mzurer at 6:11 PM PST - 23 comments

Right now, a roll downhill in a giant inflatable ball sounds like just the thing (Flash). A wander through Flickr led to a photo of a Zorb. A what!?! A Zorb! Several, in fact. It turns out that Zorbing has been around for some years now. It started in New Zealand and is catching on in the UK. It's not widely known in the US, and as a US person I've been un-blissfully unaware.
posted by mmahaffie at 5:30 PM PST - 28 comments

Bloggers Need Not Apply A pseudonymous faculty member, writing at the Chronicle of Higher Ed. website, says that when faculty search committees do their jobs--that is, when they look for new hires--they may well find candidates who blog automatically suspect. This is true even if the blogger/applicant has never mentioned any details about his or her workplace or fellow employees, employer or students online. It doesn't mean the candidate won't! It doesn't matter if the committee just found the blog via Google either.
posted by raysmj at 5:15 PM PST - 36 comments

dontclick.it : what would you do if somebody stole your mouse button? Yes, it’s flash, and it’s annoying, but that’s the point.
posted by signal at 4:15 PM PST - 32 comments

Showering could cause brain damage.
posted by Tlogmer at 3:51 PM PST - 36 comments

Unrestriced Warfare Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, two colonels in the People's Liberation Army of China published this back in 1999. It is a striking and trenchant attempt to describe the transformations that warfare has undergone since the first Gulf War, and suggests that the boundary between war and its opposite may be on the move. "We have no reason for optimism. This is because the reduction of the functions of warfare in a pure sense does not mean at all that war has ended. Even in the so-called post-modern, post-industrial age, warfare will not be totally dismantled. It has only re-invaded human society in a more complex, more extensive, more concealed, and more subtle manner. " Short interview posted by the Uyghur American Association, here.
posted by derangedlarid at 3:48 PM PST - 4 comments

What happened to Friday Flash? Balance the mobile and keep everything out of the water, and watch out for the birds.
posted by daHIFI at 3:06 PM PST - 12 comments

New drug blocks HIV from entering cells and causes "almost" no side effects, reports Asahi Shinbun.
posted by taursir at 1:53 PM PST - 21 comments

FUNNY CATS (back me up here)
posted by Pretty_Generic at 1:48 PM PST - 34 comments

Drunk sues for right to drink. So, a guy gets arrested for being drunk. At a private party. One wonders what the Founding Fathers would think.
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 12:24 PM PST - 39 comments

SMOKING MARIJUANA DOES NOT CAUSE LUNG CANCER "Even heavy longterm use"- does not cause cancer of the lung, upper airwaves, or esophagus, Donald Tashkin reported at this year's meeting of the International Cannabinoid Research Society. Over the years, Tashkin's lab at UCLA has produced irrefutable evidence of the damage that marijuana smoke wreaks on bronchial tissue. It is Tashkin's research that the Drug Czar's office cites in ads linking marijuana to lung cancer.
posted by well_balanced at 12:15 PM PST - 68 comments

A Step Closer to In Vitro Meat Production
A group of scientists are proposing techniques in the Tissue Engineering journal (4pg .pdf) that may allow industrial production of meat sans animals. They have established a non-profit organization "to support the development of meat substitutes, with the long-term goal of delivering economically competitve alternatives to conventional meat production".
[New Scientist 2002 & /. discussion] [meat-mefi] [vegan-mefi]
posted by peacay at 11:32 AM PST - 44 comments

"For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!" says Kenyan economist James Shikwati. His point is that economic aid from developed countries destroys the economies of African countries by eliminating entrepreneurship and the need for free trade.
posted by falameufilho at 10:44 AM PST - 70 comments

The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire.
posted by plep at 9:09 AM PST - 11 comments

Fat Man Walking. Steve Vaught chronicles his effort to shed most of his 400 pounds on the highway from San Diego to New York. An inspiring, if medically dangerous, tale of human willpower. (via today's Washington Post, registration required).
posted by Saucy Intruder at 9:08 AM PST - 45 comments

"I mean, my first thought when I heard [about the London bombings]...'Hmmm, time to buy.'" Where most people see what happened in London as a tragedy, FOX News' Brit Hume sees an investment opportunity. Media Matters has a transcript and the video in QuickTime and Windows Media formats.
posted by AccordionGuy at 8:50 AM PST - 65 comments

The next terrorist attack on America may be perpetrated by Europeans. Radical Islam is spreading across Europe among descendants of Muslim immigrants. Disenfranchised and disillusioned by the failure of integration, some European Muslims have taken up jihad against the West. They are dangerous and committed -- and can enter the United States without a visa.
posted by dsquid at 8:49 AM PST - 33 comments

Salon interview with Mike Salvini of Size Matters A look into a bizarre internet subculture of men who spend hundreds of hours doing exercises to get a bigger wang. Requires premium membership or day pass.
posted by sid at 8:25 AM PST - 31 comments

Flickr is making it fairly easy to find imagery and stories (cont'd) of the London 7/7 transit bombings. Some are quite frightening. The responses from non-Londoners range from poignant to somber to familiar favorites from days gone by. Check out Flickr's tags for the last 24 hours - just click on one and go exploring for the pictures of the day you won't see on any media outlet.
posted by Dome-O-Rama at 4:39 AM PST - 30 comments

Language Is a Virus
posted by srboisvert at 2:15 AM PST - 30 comments

A Letter To The Terrorists, From London
posted by Spoon at 12:15 AM PST - 81 comments

Pretty much all of Live8 broken up into individual songs, minus the annoying vjs
posted by tsarfan at 12:13 AM PST - 54 comments

Even as oil prices hit record highs, the Saudi’s are now warning that they do not have the oil supply to keep up with future demand. With news like this it’s time to start taking peak oil seriously. Matthew R. Simmons, a former bush advisor, recently wrote a book that examines the future prospects of Saudi oil reserves and the implications for global oil production. He finds that the amount of oil left in the big fields may be much lower than is publicly reported and that there is no where else in the world where we can find the oil to make up for the shortfall. This interview with Simmons (part 2, part 3) was one of the scariest things I’ve read in awhile. I guess it’s time to buy a hybrid… (Peak oil previously talked about here and here and here)
posted by afu at 9:47 PM PST - 69 comments

Incredible -- but true coincidences are fascinating, and pleasing, to the psyche. I tend to agree with John Littlewood (a University of Cambridge mathematician) that "...in the course of any normal person's life, miracles happen at a rate of roughly one per month." In other words, statistically speaking, unusual coincidences are to be expected in a world teeming with billions of humans. Still, I find such coincidences stangely inspiring. More can be found here.
posted by ember at 7:37 PM PST - 97 comments

Securing public computers isn't easy, but a Microsoft kit to do that may also help families share home computers. If you share a Windows XP Home or Professional computer with other users, particularly, children, or family members, you may find the Shared Computer Toolkit beta an interesting idea. But caveat emptor: this is free "beta" software, has a spooky "validation" process to confirm your copy of Windows is "genuine," and installation is not for the faint of heart. Then again, neither is re-installing Windows after a friend/relative/SO inadvertently trashes your computer.
posted by paulsc at 6:40 PM PST - 17 comments

Hey, Soba has a website! Is what I thought when I finished Joe Sacco's War's End -- a heartbreakingly frank, lovingly illustrated snapshot of life during the Bosnian War . Naturally, I had to see this S(h)oba fellow's work. Of them all, I dig this one most, prolly.
posted by undule at 6:30 PM PST - 9 comments

OK, the movie, The Wedding Crashers, doesn't look all that interesting to me, but I gotta say that the Crash the Trailer viral ad that they whipped up is Awesome! You upload pictures of yourself or whomever, and they superimpose the pictures onto the faces of the stars of the movie. Very clever, or at least kind of fun for a second.
posted by willnot at 6:07 PM PST - 18 comments

A Chip and a Chair: The World Series of Poker's Main Event started today at the Rio in Las Vegas. That's a change from every other year, when Binion's Horseshoe hosted the event. With the rise of online poker and televised tournaments, it's no surprise this is the biggest year ever: 5,661 people registered for the $10,000 no-limit event. That's about $50 million in prize money, once the tournament and casino costs are taken care of. CardPlayer has up-to-the-minute updates on the tournament. Things at the WSOP can get pretty crazy, as you've got thousands of gamblers ready for any sort of action. For instance, poker celeb Phil Gordon put together a Roshambo tournament (paper rock scissors) together with a $10,000 first prize, just to kill time. The main event, by the way, is only one of 45 events, started back in 1970 by a group of hard-core gamblers. Despite the record turnout, however, there's still plenty of people who didn't make it to the main event, including former Harper's reporter James McManus, who placed 5th in the Main Event in 2000 and wrote a fascinating novel on the subject.
posted by Happydaz at 5:12 PM PST - 22 comments

The Rules of Hipster Dating insites into "The Real World, and other dispatches from The Jesus of Failure.
posted by dial-tone at 3:59 PM PST - 68 comments

Joan Rivers on the subject of Boobs: "I think the stereotype that if you ah big breasts you can't be smart came from the fact that your breasts hid your schoolbooks. So it was a little harder to learn." A&E tackled the subject of cleavage in a special that aired first in 2002 and again last night. SFW unless you work for the Archdiocese.
posted by kahboom at 1:39 PM PST - 54 comments

Museum of old Russian radios I want the styling Zvezda-54 and one of these early iPods. The Thermogenerator TGK-3 looks like fun.
posted by arse_hat at 12:02 PM PST - 13 comments

People don't panic in disasters Here's what Lee Clarke has to say about Panic: Myth or Reality. And he has some things to say about terrorism as well.
posted by warbaby at 11:35 AM PST - 31 comments

Alarming Article on Security Procedures What is alarming is not necessarily that there is a "no-fly" list, or that we have security measures in response to a percieved terrorist threat. What's alarming is that there seems to be no accountabity or due process demanded from public officials. Without accountability, what's to stop public officials from acting arbitrarily, or for some political endeavor? (See the Plame case.) Combined with the Right's seeming position that the president is above the law in prosecuting a war, U.S. Supreme Court Case No. 03-1027 (Rumsfield v. Padilla) and Case No. 03-6696 (Hamdi v. Rumsfield), (see also the recent DOJ position papers), and for the 1st time I am becoming nervous that America might devolve into something like a police state.
posted by JKevinKing at 10:53 AM PST - 36 comments

Context Free: A small language for design grammars. These grammars are sets of non-deterministic rules to produce images. The images are surprisingly beautiful, often from very simple grammars. And you can download and play on your own.
posted by signal at 10:42 AM PST - 19 comments

"More than 10-million U.S. homes are equipped with [wi-fi] routers that transmit high-speed Internet to computers using radio signals. The signals can extend 200 feet or more." And Benjamin Smith was just arrested for going online through an unsecured one that didn't belong to him.

It begs the Doonesbury question: Isn't it still a free country?
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 9:41 AM PST - 241 comments

Yes, it's the great god bird,
with its altar call.
posted by deafmute at 9:35 AM PST - 15 comments

The Electric Unicycle makes transportation a breeze: "You lean forward to accelerate, lean backwards to brake, and gyrate your arms wildly to turn." (Invented by the man who thought his own homemade Segway had one wheel too many)
posted by Robot Johnny at 9:19 AM PST - 14 comments

Gulu Walk. Aiming to increase awareness about the Night Commuters of Northern Uganda, some Canadians have started a month long series of nightly walks from their homes into the city to sleep. The Night Commuters are children from rural areas near Gulu who must travel into the city each night to remain safe from kidnappers in the countryside.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:08 AM PST - 16 comments

Coffee hacking: See self-heating coffee cans and cold-brewed coffee. [via MAKE: blog, which is shaping up nicely]
posted by Lush at 8:11 AM PST - 14 comments

Judith Miller Goes to Jail...for not revealing her source. Opinions seem to differ on Miller's personal credibility and reporting history. But is that the issue?
posted by Jon-o at 7:44 AM PST - 62 comments

Got a message to the receiver, hope for an answer someday. Watch real time responses to the bombing through a multitude of blogs. First link sorted by tube station.
posted by klangklangston at 7:26 AM PST - 2 comments

Major Incident on London Underground reported. Anyone have any further information?
posted by Cobbler at 2:17 AM PST - 703 comments

findarticles.com is a very cool archive of a bazillion, well, articles on just about everything. And it's free.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 4:44 PM PST - 20 comments

The Sweet Smell of Success*. North by Northwest. The Comedian. Sabrina. The King and I. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. The Sound of Music. West Side Story. Somebody Up There Likes Me... What do they have in common? Their screenplays all passed through the typewriter of Academy Award-winning (and 6-time nominee) Ernest Lehman, who died Saturday of a heart attack. He was 89. * html screenplay [via The Screenwriting Life]
posted by dobbs at 1:32 PM PST - 12 comments

I'm so glad we got that circumcision debate over with since there is no evidence of a benefit from circumcision, except maybe that 70% reduction in the risk of HIV infection....
posted by dwivian at 11:28 AM PST - 151 comments

Least Wanted is a great collection of old mugshots on Flickr. There are some great ones -- I like the Sixties 'do and Anna's pout best of all.
posted by Vidiot at 11:21 AM PST - 28 comments

The Chalet's video (Quicktime, direct link) for their song "Feel the Machine" is a great, playful interaction between computer interface tropes (icons, scroll bars, arrows) and a live performance. via
posted by jonson at 10:46 AM PST - 7 comments

History of the Flame-broiled Burger! It's Flashy, it's Trashy, it's satirical, it's Fun-- it's The History Channel's Invention Pioneers of Note!
posted by Devils Rancher at 10:09 AM PST - 4 comments

Iraq Casualties Map. US military casualties from the Iraq war. Each click of the (+) displays 30 more casualties, starting from the beginning of the war. Each soldier is shown in at their home town.
posted by signal at 9:40 AM PST - 32 comments

Bored by the relative dearth of tornadoes this year the chasers over at the Stormtrack forums have started a (GREAT) diversionary thread asking for chaser's photos of "scariest storms". See the menacing crocodile, the human skull, and the twin twisters. Lots of old historical tornado photos here. AnyMeFites have any scary storm photos to share?
posted by spock at 9:17 AM PST - 17 comments

When there's no more room in hell, the nerds will walk the earth. LARP nerds vs. zombies Another entry in the long tradition of nerd mashups (via boing boing)
posted by Gamblor at 8:39 AM PST - 60 comments

How to turn your Doberman into a Poodle. Worry no longer, attackchi will be making disguises for all the so called 'dangerous breeds'. Now you can go to the park with your kids and your dog (like you have been doing for years), without the worry of people thinking you are a bad parent.
posted by Ljubljana at 7:13 AM PST - 79 comments

Wanna make money playing games? In certain Asian countries, workers are paid just cents an hour to camp virtual spawn points to collect gold or items that will then get sold for real currency. Owners of these companies are making tens of thousands of dollars a month whereas their workers are barely earning over $100.

'Sell is a recent graduate from Nanjing University. At 24, he's a manager for Vpgamesell, a large SWG Chinese farming center that wholesales to popular resellers. He started off by selling gil in Final Fantasy XI, but his farming days are over. He's moved up to manager status, helping with marketing and delivery. His many farmers work 10-hour rotations and are paid $121 a month. Sell gets $180 a month and works closer to 14 hours a day because he lives at the office, which is a fairly common practice at farming centers - if you lose your job, you also lose your home.'

Absolutely amazing, this human ingenuity thing...
posted by jcterminal at 7:07 AM PST - 45 comments

European Parliament rejects software patenting ..and by a large politically crushing majority of 648 votes vs 14. This is a great measurable success for organization like Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure whose members, supporters and sympathizers have fought against the insane idea of software patent for more then four years (more info on euro software patents on the organization site).
posted by elpapacito at 6:47 AM PST - 31 comments

Obituaries of the Future An example: June 5, 2019. Bush – George W. (72), the 43rd president of the United States, was struck down “in action” early yesterday morning from injuries sustained during a failed one-man invasion of Mexico. Write your own!
posted by jdroth at 5:51 AM PST - 18 comments

Glossary of Food Terms From Abalone to Zweiback, this extensive reference of food terms is found, somewhat surprisingly, on the site of a salsa manufacturer. Who knew advertising could be so useful?
posted by jacquilynne at 5:50 AM PST - 8 comments

London beats Paris, New York, Madrid, Moscow to host 2012 Olympics
posted by altolinguistic at 5:01 AM PST - 133 comments

Human footprints from 40,000 tears ago - evidence of the early colonization of America. New Scientist journalists tell us that this finding may overthrow the commonly held view that the first humans to arrive did so only 11,000 years ago. But this isn't the first time an earlier arrival date has been suggested.
posted by TimothyMason at 3:25 AM PST - 12 comments

What if Nike never apologized and then got away with it? A few weeks ago Nike stole Minor Threat's classic album cover and with a few tiny changes tried to make it their own to promote a skateboarding tour. Not to give other immoral megacorps any ideas, but...
posted by tsarfan at 2:12 AM PST - 15 comments

Fuck Natalee Holloway
posted by aerify at 10:43 PM PST - 123 comments

Accidentally shared
(possibly NSFW)
posted by isol at 10:28 PM PST - 35 comments

Another Minsk gives another view of the decaying city.
posted by dial-tone at 9:40 PM PST - 17 comments

Meet Sharara ("Spark" in English)
posted by amberglow at 7:58 PM PST - 34 comments

So yesterday I posted the story about how researchers had discovered that both sexes cared about appearance when selecting dates. Today Stanford (!!) releases the startling discovery that cars get hot when parked in the sun. Meanwhile K State learns that women feel better about their bodies when complemented, and the other shocker story is that problem gamblers share traits with substance abusers. And how about that New Scientist story about the fact we're entering a dark age? So what's up with science lately, particularly in America?
posted by Fozzie at 5:56 PM PST - 107 comments

Discover the power of carrots! Includes carrot fine art, carrot history, and purple carrots?
posted by Mwongozi at 4:18 PM PST - 20 comments

Bisexuals do not exist, at least according to a study reported in the New York Times. Or, if you look at the actual procedure as opposed to what the researchers claim, some unknown percentage of bisexual men are more aroused by one kind of porn movie than another. Of course, the senior author on the study, J. Michael Bailey, has stirred controversy before with his book The Man Who Would Be Queen, which has been tainted with charges scientifically unsoundness, academic misconduct, practicing without a license, fabricating data, and sex with a research subject. In it, he asserts the ... unique point of view that transsexuals are either effeminate gay men who undergo "sex changes" in order to have sex with lots of men, or sexual paraphilic males who "change sex" for bizarre autosexual reasons. And, is anyone else wondering why, when he writes about bisexuals or transsexuals, he seems to fail to notice that they aren’t exclusively men?
posted by kyrademon at 3:36 PM PST - 97 comments

...it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm. - Rick Santorum on the Catholic Church's sex scandals.
posted by R. Mutt at 3:07 PM PST - 47 comments

The inventor of mail art and master of performance events he liked to call "nothings", "the most famous unknown artist in the world" has caught my fancy. He called his enigmatic collages "moticos" and stored them in cardboard boxes to be shown in Grand Central Station or on the street. He playfully hinted numerous times about his mortality; even his closest friends and associates agree that his carefully planned death was his last “nothing". I can't wait to see How To Draw A Bunny. Here's an open letter to him.
posted by Specklet at 1:36 PM PST - 19 comments

Starry Night - Vincent Van Gogh's famous painting of carrots, seagulls, flowers, oranges, dolphins, and polar bears.
posted by Robot Johnny at 1:01 PM PST - 26 comments

Dalek! (flash, sound) via Charlie's Diary
posted by thatwhichfalls at 11:01 AM PST - 30 comments

Turn Your Head is an online service that echoes the famous "two faces/chalice" optical illusion, but in the real world. You provide them with shots of your profile, and they carve a wooden sculpture of the image for only $149.95. Works best for those with uniquely pronounced features, not to mention those with $149.95 to waste on useless crap.
posted by jonson at 10:29 AM PST - 21 comments

Once again, Ayodhya seems to be the subject of activity. This time, no group has taken responsibility for the attack, and the motivation and religion of the attackers is unclear. What is clear? That L.K. Advani is back in action.
posted by goodglovin77 at 8:59 AM PST - 8 comments

Together at last! Joy Division and Mongolian throat singing.
posted by Damienmce at 7:59 AM PST - 28 comments

Blogger Steel Turman is losing patience with a world full of senseless crime against children, and wants to become an activist. Any specific suggestions for him?
posted by growabrain at 7:52 AM PST - 33 comments

metafilter: haiku
happy haiku day, asshats
this haiku vibrates
posted by soplerfo at 7:47 AM PST - 93 comments

Plgjoekz xh jiw lwe zqsd meecebefi aqxaxgw xb pzchiottazlq (pbq kvqetnpavckxg) fqrut fegqeifrm nvednsvu ix xzt 9hu kifiuea, efijn dnzx gu tug Vskwcsem gaehrt ic qahogbvaquggd. Lpsxgr li Nxgrpebi vxr awx acvrpt dlw rwcpij (we qgvopgesq i wlgoaieb tgamnttzpbrvim gaevrz), Kadvnp Bkxahhn Jidpsb jan hgcs fw gwcthtiow wpfyqij, xn 1553. Oglkwg'h wzxpwbeavadmgc vnzrwhsrf tri hdkrz sx ihr valydp frkxs ihnv wkw kfinvhwgeq dy dlw dpiqsmh kra pbsygsfamgc os vhyww ivnb gsbe ogfyvw wwz, irv uoe vho jaggg bmet ia uefif wialvws yrcrc, ef jboziszaone msvt qbcpv qe huen. Gzpfymw Tpbocgo wmrqrawxjlya cbeuzsq Dmytnrte psj ivr Jvaiifj devacu gpi Ugizgax Asg, phb ml laf mezx ktqemx mctvn Fbmwsfvkl Cpsvpsum jtjripws hvu moxzdr n liupdr nadij, xb 1863. Gpi hdllclzlsqsgqg uxpugrc, wmrv na xzxs bpe, biepwa wrw df gje veki qblik qrrckkfdt pl i psnprtsyr oxhuwyl p cbopexwg.
posted by Plutor at 5:49 AM PST - 67 comments

World Chill How chill are you? (Flash and slow)
posted by none at 4:45 AM PST - 9 comments

This is a really bizarre self promotion stunt. Garry Turner sent this in to "One Step Beyond" producer Claire Mandile in the hopes of being featured on the show. Garry's "resume" is in the Guinness book of world records as the man with the Stretchiest Skin.
posted by claus at 3:05 AM PST - 19 comments

China's non-interventionist approach to Africa. They recently lifted 200 million of their own people out of poverty. Unlike the G8, they aren't concerned about corruption, aid, debt relief, social impact, human rights, the environment, or spreading democratic ideology. They build governments, hotels and industrial plants in Sierra Leone, export 60% of oil from the 'genocidal' Sudanese, sell weapons to both sides in war zones and deal arms to embargoed dictators like Mugabe. They'll be the third largest investor in Africa at the end of this year. The People's Republic of China: threatening - or Jeffersonian?
posted by Bletch at 2:36 AM PST - 37 comments

Pliny's Natural History, the first encyclopedia. Featuring chapters like "Other wonderful things related to dolphins" and one mentioning the lynx and the sphinx in a single passage. Obviously he got a lot very wrong, but it launched a tradition of authoritative encyclopedias. More recently, you hopefully know that the forty-four million word eleventh (1911) edition of Encyclopedia Britannica is online, later volumes are not, but you can still find elsewhere Trotsky's article on Lenin, Freud's on psychoanalysis, Houdini on conjuring, or Lawrence of Arabia on guerillas. Britannica also offers a series of articles from its archives showing how views on Mars or the debate in 1768 over whether California was an island. Other fascinating encyclopedias online include the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia and the 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia, and the Encyclopedia Mythica.
posted by blahblahblah at 12:35 AM PST - 16 comments

Researchers from the University of Chicago and MIT (PDF file) have analyzed data obtained from an unnamed major online dating service to try to uncover how the online dating market works. Shockingly, they have discovered both sexes care strongly about physical appearance and a woman's choice depends on the income and education of the men. Recent NY Times article about same. Paper authors other papers here.
posted by Fozzie at 5:19 PM PST - 44 comments

The Longhorn Browser and RSS Team. Long video warning (almost an hour; how far will you get?) - If you've ever worked with the Redmondites, this'll look pretty familiar. What a kick to read all of ya'lls comments...how 'bout it?
posted by ValveAnnex at 2:46 PM PST - 54 comments

600 arrests over Sethusamudram Ship Channel. That seemed like a lot. So I was curious about why. Turns out, they're going to dredge up the sea floor so big ships can have a short cut. Fisherfolk and others think it's probably a pretty bad idea.
posted by RedEmma at 2:14 PM PST - 4 comments

Bush sort of answers lots of serious questions This transcript of Trevor McDonald's interview with Bush is actually quite interesting. I find myself agreeing with his stance on Africa, which is probably a first for me with ANY of his stances on ANYTHING. His climate change and Iraq stances, on the other hand, I didn't quite agree with.
posted by antifuse at 1:39 PM PST - 58 comments

journal of nomadic and popular culture
posted by Thayer-P at 12:03 PM PST - 7 comments

Arlington West. Photos: 1, 2, 3.
posted by loquacious at 11:57 AM PST - 3 comments

The Origins and Common Usage of British Swear-words.
posted by nthdegx at 11:41 AM PST - 47 comments

"Too many people know this. It should break wide open this week" First mentioned on Friday, Sunday brought confirmation : "E-mails surrendered by Time magazine to a grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA agent's identity show that a top White House aide, Karl Rove, was one of the sources, Newsweek magazine reported Sunday." Is Karl Rove in trouble ? Read between the lines.
posted by troutfishing at 11:36 AM PST - 122 comments

The Declaration of Independence It's meant to be read aloud
posted by warbaby at 11:33 AM PST - 46 comments

Need a new ride? Can I interest you in a 27 horsepower two-cylinder, two-stroke engine, and cotton reinforced plastic body? For the celebs in the house try the new stretch Yugo! Cars from the east.
posted by arse_hat at 11:18 AM PST - 11 comments

Following up on this post, the Barbershop Harmony Society (SPEBSQSA) will be holding its annual International Convention this week in Salt Lake City. The contest sessions and several other non-competition concerts will be broadcast live on the internet. There's a fee for the video feeds, but the audio feed is free!
posted by Buzz at 11:14 AM PST - 4 comments

Karla Homolka is due to be released today. For those of you who don't keep up with this story, Homolka and her husband Paul Bernardo kidnapped, raped and killed two teenaged girls in the St. Catherines (Ontario) area a few years ago, with one of the women being Homolka's own little sister. Homolka is getting away pretty lightly because of sheer stupidity on the part of the then-prosecutor. Well she's about to get out now. While the official Karla Internet Death Pool no longer exists, one does wonder how long she will last, assuming she's still planning on moving to Montreal's NDG district.
posted by clevershark at 11:11 AM PST - 123 comments

To chip or not to chip? Fresh from the BBC - the first UK conviction for chipping a games console. Admittedly he was selling modified X-Boxes, but how will this affect those who chip for fun or for friends?
posted by Nugget at 10:53 AM PST - 16 comments

Dreams of Liberty Who Are Americans to Think That Freedom Is Theirs to Spread? Op ed from Michael Ignatieff, Carr professor of human rights at Kennedy School of Government at Harvard; an edited version of which appeared in Sunday Observer 03 July. Ignatieff previously mentioned here.
posted by adamvasco at 10:40 AM PST - 10 comments

God Bless Americana. This 4th of July, celebrate the true America with Charles Phoenix, who's been collecting found slides of other Americans' vacations from the 50s and 60s.
posted by herc at 10:18 AM PST - 4 comments

Cyclists face all sorts of hazards. But as the Warrington Cycle Campaign's cycle facility of the month feature shows, sometimes the well meaning local authority provision can be more dangerous than other road users. all links to Warrington Cycle Campaign are coral cache links.
posted by handee at 8:10 AM PST - 57 comments

The fitness of evolutionary psychology
posted by daksya at 7:49 AM PST - 22 comments

"I CELEBRATE myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.."

Walt Whitman's Leaves Of Grass is 150 years old today.

"Great is life . . and real and mystical . . wherever and whoever,
Great is death . . . . Sure as life holds all parts together, death holds all parts together;
Sure as the stars return again after they merge in the light, death is great as life."

posted by peacay at 6:55 AM PST - 30 comments

Very few people will ever need to learn the value of pi beyond a handful of digits, but some people are more obsessed than others. They call themselves Piphilologists, and all the pi-memorization writings you could ever possibly want have been compiled into one massive Piphilogical text file. And today, Piphilologists the world over must surely bow in tribute to Akira Haraguchi, who has just recited pi from memory to 83,431 places.
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:48 AM PST - 22 comments

Stick Man Movie Scene Quiz combines the simplicity of the stick figure drawings with the frustration of the well known invisibles quizzes.
posted by keks at 6:25 AM PST - 29 comments

Openly and unapologetically, the world's No. 1 oil company disputes the notion that fossil fuels are the main cause of global warming. Exxon opposes the very idea of capping global-warming emissions - From the article Exxon Chief Makes A Cold Calculation On Global Warming. A interesting read, whatever your opinion on the oil industry is...
posted by SharQ at 3:29 AM PST - 27 comments

"A 2,600-year-old corpse has been discovered in the moors of northern Germany. It's not the only one. Such finds are frequent, but have posed an increasingly large riddle: Why were so many of the bodies victims of violence and dismemberment?"
posted by brundlefly at 12:27 AM PST - 30 comments

Nazis in America? This teacher analyzes his experiment years before, showing the fallibility of the human being and the analogs that can be drawn to Fascist Nazi Germany.
posted by Lockeownzj00 at 11:59 PM PST - 34 comments

THWACK!  (NASA TV Live feed) This is just a heads up, only about 80 minutes until Deep Impact (NASA mission page) slams into comet Tempel 1. Recent discussion here.
posted by planetkyoto at 9:28 PM PST - 122 comments

No Hubba Hubba and with this in the campaign too ... Is the New Zealand government trying to be "too down" with the "kids" bro? Or do they have it just right ? Morningside 4 Life!
posted by doogyrev at 6:56 PM PST - 15 comments

Workers in the U.S. South Too Uneducated to Build Cars? Automobile manufacturer Toyota announced that it would build a new car factory in Woodstock, Ontario, even though several US states offered greater subsidies and tax breaks to the company. The reason?

[M]uch of that extra money would have been eaten away by higher training costs than are necessary for the Woodstock project... Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained - and often illiterate - workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use 'pictorials' to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.

(Also a contributing factor -- Canada's national health service, which apparently drives down the overall cost of each individual worker.)

To be fair to the US South, the problem may be more apparent there because of the region's zealousness in competing for automobile factories. But the point remains -- Toyota is saying US workers are so poorly educated that it's not worth the effort to train them. Whom to blame? And how many more factory (and other) jobs will have to be lost to better-educated workforces in other countries before this pings on the national radar?
posted by jscalzi at 6:22 PM PST - 87 comments

Driving down the street in my Panzer tank,
sittin’ drinkin’ Cris’ with my bitch Anne Frank.
And when I step into the club’s you know I’m steppin with style!
Raise my left hand, party people say “Heil!”
posted by jcterminal at 6:05 PM PST - 23 comments

Does this site make you yawn? Well?
posted by caddis at 5:08 PM PST - 49 comments

How to Recognize a Narcissist. We all have to deal with difficult people. Some days we can be pretty difficult ourselves. Recognizing the difference between normal difficulties and personality disorders can be crucial to decisions about entering new relationships and continuing existing relationships. People with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) invariably leave a wake of damage behind them in social arenas of all kinds.
posted by nickyskye at 2:44 PM PST - 92 comments

The Anti-Hit List , by John Sakamoto, continues to unearth music from the depths of the net and through rare releases. It can be found in the pages of the Toronto Star and is now available in convenient podcast form. Note: previous death and rebirth of the site.
posted by boost ventilator at 1:37 PM PST - 8 comments

Put your mettle to the pedal: A website with maps of bike routes around the country, along with GPS points. via Linkfilter.
posted by atchafalaya at 1:09 PM PST - 14 comments

Wild Pigeon: A Uyghur Fable. The Chinese Muslim writer Nurmuhemmet Yasin has been sentenced to ten years in prison (contains story spoilers) for writing this short story about pigeons, which was considered subversive by Chinese authorities.
posted by bobo123 at 12:37 PM PST - 13 comments

Don't teach braille in my town again, McFadden - Martin Amis was an early fan of Jeff Lint's "The Caterer", a Pearl Comic of the mid-seventies. Steve Aylett talks about his biography of the man here, and Justin Taylor says how much he enjoyed it.
posted by TimothyMason at 10:42 AM PST - 7 comments

Jorn Barger found homeless in San Francisco after losing the domain registration to robot wisdom. Happy end to story is he's off the street and has his site back (with plenty of up-to-date links). Jorn, for those who need reminding, is credited with coining the term "weblog", but for a larger sense of his role on Usenet and the Web over the years, browse the 19,000 newsgroup posts that reference him over the years. Jorn was reported missing here in late '03 , provoking Wired to track him down at that time.
posted by Creosote at 6:15 AM PST - 84 comments

Carbon Planet - aims to reduce Climate Change by empowering individuals to erase their CO2 footprint by purchasing carbon credits. The site enables users to subscribe based on the greenhouse gas usage in their country, with the subscription buying carbon credits in a forestry scheme in Australia. Would you consider subscribing?
posted by gusset at 2:23 AM PST - 26 comments

The Zeitgeist has left its mark on us, and whoever wants to decipher it is faced with the task of working on the psychosomatics of Cynicism. This is what an integrating philosophy demands of itself. It is called integrating because it does not let itself be seduced by the attraction of the ‘great problems’, but instead initially finds its themes in the trivial, in everyday life, in the so-called unimportant, in those things that otherwise are not worth speaking about, in petty details. Whoever wants to can, in such a perspective, already recognise the kynical impulse for which the ‘low-brow themes’ are not too low.
In Search of Lost Cheekiness, An Introduction to Peter Sloterdijk’s 'Critique of Cynical Reason'
Peter Sloterdijk; A Psychonaut In Outer Space
--both from my man's sloterdijk.net, can you dig it, daddy-o ?
Spheres III - Foams
Get down on the recent tip in Damned to Expertocracy
posted by y2karl at 12:01 AM PST - 12 comments

Greenlighters are an emerging underground movement of sexually promiscuous teenagers, including bisexual, homosexual, and heterosexual members. Members of this movement wear a green polo shirt with the collar up, indicating that they are open to pretty much any sexual adventure. When someone comes up to them and puts the collar down, they are "collared" and will go with that person and do whatever sexual act they ask. Transfer of money is not usually involved. Some parent groups are starting to get involved - urging parents to go through their kids clothes and confiscate green shirts and polos. Supposedly this has been going on since mid-2004 and may be related to the "chavs" in Britain somehow.
posted by Maxor at 7:56 PM PST - 114 comments

As dial-up internet access begins to fade, a fight is happening over the right of municipalities to install and run their own broadband Internet access networks. Various think tanks like the market oriented Heartland Institute and the community oriented Institute for Local Self Reliance have chimed in on the debate. Last week the Supreme Court ruled that cable companies do not have to provide "open access" to rival Internet providers. And down in Lafayette Louisiana, where the community will soon vote on whether to install a municipal Fiber to Home Network, some of the citizens decided to inject some humor into the issue by holding a film festival.
posted by thedailygrowl at 6:19 PM PST - 13 comments

First Church of Galactus
posted by arto at 5:42 PM PST - 11 comments

Serious Breeders. The Duggars' slogan: "Always pregnant"
posted by growabrain at 3:03 PM PST - 146 comments

Redneck Games Celebrate 10th Anniversary

"Bobbing for pig feet, the mudpit belly-flop, the armpit serenade — they're all part of the Redneck Games, a series of good ole'ympic events for the ain't-so-athletic celebrating their 10th year in middle Georgia....The mudpit belly-flop judges contestants on their flabby form and sonic splat as they drop gut-first into muddy water, splattering nearby spectators. The armpit serenade rates children on their musical skills pumping air through a damp hand beneath their underarm. The 12-year-old winner in 2000 squeezed out a recognizable rendition of 'Dixie.' There's also hubcap hurling — think junkyard discus — and redneck horseshoes, played with toilet seats. The most competitive sport, however, is bobbing for pig feet, where contenders dunk their heads in tubs of water to see how fast they can remove raw pork shanks with their teeth."

posted by ericb at 2:21 PM PST - 5 comments

Shasta Groene , missing since May, was found alive today at a Denny's restaurant. (Her brother is believed to be alive, unconfirmed as of yet.) Joseph Edward Duncan III, the man found with Shasta, is a Computer science major at North Dakota State, and a registered sex offender who blogged his travails as a regular guy being unfairly stereotyped and harassed after serving his time.
posted by Oriole Adams at 11:44 AM PST - 51 comments

it was rove
"MSNBC Analyst Says Cooper Documents Reveal Karl Rove as Source in Plame Case"
posted by specialk420 at 10:29 AM PST - 157 comments

Canada ambassador to the U.S. mobilizes ex-patriots in order to fight the F.U.D. coming from Fox News. But will the only thing paid attention to be the very, very large Canadian oil reserves?
posted by Kickstart70 at 10:16 AM PST - 45 comments

Saddam Hussein's novel is a bestseller in Amman's downtown bazaars. The Arabic-language book is titled "Ekhroj minha ya mal'un", which can be translated into "Damned one, get out of here". Jordan banned the novel on the grounds "the tale of an Arab tribesman who defeats a foreign intruder could hurt relations between the two countries."
posted by webmeta at 10:07 AM PST - 5 comments

Electric power transmission and distribution explosions and fireworks for your Fourth of July weekend.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 10:02 AM PST - 6 comments

President Bush pledged in 2003 that "A free Iraq will not be a training ground for terrorists... A free Iraq will not destabilize the Middle East." This past January, the CIA's National Intelligence Council observed that Iraq had become "a training ground, a recruitment ground" for jihadists. Now the senior Marine commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. James Conway -- in a statement that has not yet been picked up by the media -- acknowledges that the war is furnishing a new "a training ground" for foreign fighters trained in urban warfare who will export terror all over the world, saying, "But there's not much we can do about it at this point in time."
posted by digaman at 8:03 AM PST - 19 comments

It was 20 years ago today...
Bob Geldof just introduced 'billionaire philanthropist' Bill Gates onto the Hyde Park stage, and he then introduced Dido... Can Live8 overcome the millstone of worthiness, and make a real diiference in the way international trade operates? Can we really make poverty history? Post any and all Live8 comments, links and counterpoints - apparently, it's all about the awareness, man...
posted by dash_slot- at 7:39 AM PST - 106 comments

Here's your weekend project: Clare Crespo's Jell-O Aquarium recipe. (More fun Clare recipes here, here, and at her site Flash and sound).
posted by taz at 7:13 AM PST - 10 comments

Canadian 60s Garage Bands - Alex's Picks of the Week - Acid Archives of Underground Sounds 1965 - 1982 - South African Rock Files - The Magic Land - Track Lists - Garage Compilation DB - Psychedelic Album Reviews - Christian Psych - Swedish Label Catalog - Swedish Progressive Artist Catalogue - German Rock Discography - Underground Sounds - Greatest Rock Album Covers - 760 Rare Psych Album Photos - Jazz Label Discographies - Psych from the 60s - Hispanic Progressive Rock - Heavy Rock Database - More Discographies (By Label) - Argentinian Rock - Borderline Books - Julian Cope's Head Heritage - The History of Boston Rock - Psychedelicatessen - Collectable Records album covers - Links page with more 60s resources - Italian Prog - The Crack in the Cosmic Egg - Spanish Prog - Psychedelic & Acid Folk - Encyclopedia of Electronic Music - Nurse with Wound "Influences" list - Beyond the Beat Generation - Gibraltar Encyclopedia of Prog - Canterbury - The Technicolor Web of Sound (links compiled by Cesar Montesano of the avant-progressive mailing list.)
posted by kenko at 7:00 AM PST - 22 comments

That damn Paul Simon sold us short! Here are the other 45 ways to leave your lover.
posted by danb at 10:00 PM PST - 29 comments

Luther Vandross is gone. The great R&B balladeer died today, apparently due to complications from a stroke he suffered two years ago. Believers in an afterlife can hope he's enjoying a dance with his father. After all, he did believe in the "Power of Love". RIP.
posted by trip and a half at 7:31 PM PST - 45 comments

Irish man fails to set world bee record. I, too, have failed at this.
posted by jdroth at 6:55 PM PST - 17 comments

Bisqwit's NES Time attack videos site has been mentioned before, but the site and the time attack community have both grown quite a bit and the redesigned wiki-style site deserves another look. The site now has tool-assisted runs of SNES, Genesis/Megadrive, and GB/GBA games in addition to the rather comprehensive NES collection. You can now check out and vote on submissions, view works in progress, or learn the motivations and methodology, and dare I suggest, make one yourself - but be you aware, it is both difficult and addictive. For "speed runs" - as opposed to time attacks - of newer games and older games without using emulators, check out the Speed Demo Archive (runs listed here) . And you thought you could beat Contra fast...
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 6:35 PM PST - 15 comments

The first patent for remote control was submitted by Nikola Tesla 1899. Since then its been implemented in all sorts of ways. The most popular method is probably channel surfing made possible by Robert Adler, which you can now do on your wristwatch. Pranksters might be interested in remote flatulence or golf balls while musicians might like a remote ukulele. There's even a whole Yahoo category of devices hooked up to the internet. Someday most trains, planes, and automobiles might have remote control capability. But even as we take our remote vehicles to new worlds we have moved on to include remote insects, rats, and someday genes. In fact, the ultimate wi-fi may connect our brains. But perhaps the invention proposed by Tesla that will most change our world is Wireless Power Transmission.
posted by john at 5:37 PM PST - 7 comments

U.S. to Seize State Prison Health System The California Prison Health system kills an inmate a week due to neglect or incompetence, so a federal judge put the entire system into receivership. Thing is, that's not that half of it.
posted by raaka at 4:34 PM PST - 46 comments

Han Bennink - accomplished dutch percussionist, performed a on a drumkit made of cheese as part of a recent Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art exhibit, "Demons Stole My Soul: Rock 'N Roll Drums In Contemporary Art"
posted by tpl1212 at 3:52 PM PST - 5 comments

Basil Kirchin, 1927-2005

Who he? Kirchin began, aged 14, as a drummer in his father Ivor's jazz band. By the mid-1950s, he and his father were co-leading the most acclaimed jazz band in Britain. They backed Ruby Murray (whose name lives on as cockney rhyming slang for curry), and the great Sarah Vaughan wouldn't tour the UK without them; neither would Billy Eckstine. After disbanding the Kirchin band at the height of their fame, Basil set off around the world, a trip which ended disastrously, when Kirchin's tapes of his band's best moments (obsessively recorded, thanks to the fact that the Kirchin band was one of the first to travel with their own PA system) were accidentally dropped into Sydney Harbour. [more inside]
posted by Len at 3:32 PM PST - 6 comments

Happy birthday Canada!
posted by Bag Man at 2:27 PM PST - 18 comments

This paper outlines the major thesis of the larger work... that US foreign policy during the Cold War was not primarily about keeping the USSR out of Western Europe, but rather about promoting the global capitalist system on a worldwide stage... Three themes—strategic, economic, ideological—are introduced in support of this argument, and applied to the 30 case studies. They lead to the conclusion that in many of these interventions the US opposed leftist Third World personalities by supporting more right-wing local clients rather than centrists who were often available. These decisions almost always proved disastrous for the local societies affected, and often even were unfortunate for longer-term American diplomatic interests.
U.S. Foreign Policy in the Periphery: A 50-Year Retrospective. Related: With Our History, Spinning America's Image Isn't Enough
posted by y2karl at 2:21 PM PST - 39 comments

The Intelligence Resource Program from the website of the Federation of American Scientists is a lovely nugget of information about the intelligence field. It has intelligence budget data, threat assessments, imagery information, and more. But, in a little-known unlisted directory you can find intelligence and security related .pdf manuals for all four combat branches of the DOD and even a few others. Check it out, and don't worry because everything there is technically unclassified, it's just hard to find.
posted by mystyk at 1:43 PM PST - 5 comments

The Road Rage Quiz Take this test to gauge your ability to create rage in yourself & others. How do you deal with ragers? Here's two sites which advocate carrying & displaying Signs. This site likes the "Sorry" sign, while this site offers cards of a different nature.
posted by Mack Twain at 12:19 PM PST - 52 comments

NASA says shuttle is ready for July 13 launch, but doubts remain. With two catastrophic failures marring the Space Shuttle's safety record, many people fear that the coming launch of the shuttle Discovery could turn in to a billion-dollar fireworks display. While NASA is optimistic about the coming mission, an independent panel of aerospace executives, academics and former astronauts are not. They concluded that NASA has failed to fully implement three of the fifteen return-to-flight recommendations made by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) in August 2003. While we wish the astronauts a safe and uneventful journey, serious doubts remain as to NASA's competency to continue carrying mankind to the stars. Perhaps our best hopes now lie with private ventures such as Scaled Composites?
posted by nlindstrom at 12:03 PM PST - 19 comments

Fan Death is death resulting from hypothermia or lack of oxygen, caused by the vortex that is created by an electric fan, or air conditioning in closed rooms. Strangely, it only occurs in South Korea.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 11:23 AM PST - 52 comments

Shelby Foote died on Monday. Somehow I missed this, and I assume others will have as well. Booktv will rebroadcast a lengthy interview with him July 2. Downloads available as well.
posted by IndigoJones at 10:59 AM PST - 17 comments

Friday Flickr fireworks fun for the 4th!
posted by WolfDaddy at 10:53 AM PST - 13 comments

Iraq -
On Auditing the War and Reconstruction.
A Wealth of Facts (.pdf) - worth perusing.
'World Tribunal' Findings.
via
posted by peacay at 10:00 AM PST - 43 comments

BMX Backflips. BMX Star. BMX Park. Enjoy.
posted by brownpau at 9:16 AM PST - 12 comments

Friday Flaash Fun RaidenX is a Raiden shoot-em up knock-off. Enjoy!
posted by furtive at 8:04 AM PST - 21 comments

Why do Australians hang corks around their hats? - Jim Heath tells you All About the Australian Bush Fly
posted by TimothyMason at 7:22 AM PST - 19 comments

Recycling Grinds On in Minnesota even if the state doesn't have a budget; the Star Tribune is only too happy to tell us how it works with lots of interesting information. (I'm keeping an eye on the Star Tribune since the rightwing loonies are trying to tear it down over its support for Dick Durbin). Besides, it's a good paper. No, I don't work there and never did.
posted by etaoin at 7:18 AM PST - 5 comments

Star Atlases, Mercator Globes and Celestial Sundries [more inside]
posted by sciurus at 6:44 AM PST - 8 comments

Google sued by Click Defense for click fraud. Earlier Google had sued Auction Experts for click fraud. Meanwhile Google shows profits up 600% and its shares cross $300. Will Google eat itself. What is Click Fraud and how to fight it.
posted by webmeta at 6:07 AM PST - 9 comments

Kill Lizzie. Friday freak fun. Whimsical and disturbing.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 4:30 AM PST - 5 comments