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The Nobel Prize for Literature will be announced on Thursday. Two candidates with buzz this year are Syrian poet Ali Ahmad Said, better known as Adonis, and New Zealand novelist-memoirist Janet Frame. Other candidates frequently mentioned include JM Coetzee, Philip Roth, Inger Christensen, Tomas Transtroemer, Margaret Atwood and Carlos Fuentes.
posted by Daze at 11:14 PM PST - 19 comments

The Shark That Won't Be Caged: everyone knows the Carcharodon carcharias--usually by its popularized name The Great White Shark--but not many people have ever seen one, due to the fact that one has never survived for any significant length of time in captivity. Until recently, it was thought that the shark's sensitivity to electrical fields was the culprit, but an aquarium in Monterey Bay is out to prove that theory wrong (additional stories on attempt:1, 2). A previous, accidental capture of a Great White in a tuna net off the coast of South Australia suggests that it could be possible if the stress level can be kept low enough.
posted by The God Complex at 9:31 PM PST - 14 comments

"Going Wild in Urban America - To be an individual hunter-gatherer in America is to lead a lonely life." Southern Californian hippy college student alienates friends, gains weight by subsisting on stolen figs (more inside).
posted by troutfishing at 8:59 PM PST - 14 comments

David Brooks nicely summarizes the current state of politics. I appreciate this article. It is simple, easy to read, and represents what I've been feeling for quite some time now. (NY Times)
posted by BlueTrain at 8:09 PM PST - 44 comments

The largest collection of mugshots on the Internet. From famous celebrities to old gangsters.
posted by crunchland at 8:00 PM PST - 4 comments

Journalists say off the record "it was Karl Rove that I spoke to..." (RealPlayer)
Julian Borger of the Guardian reveals that several journalists have revealed "off the record" that Karl Rove revealed the identity of the CIA operative, but that the reporters aren't publicly admitting it, in order to protect their source. But aren't they also material witnesses to a federal crime? Does not revealing their source make them accessories to that crime?
posted by insomnia_lj at 7:49 PM PST - 50 comments

Spam: This Time It's Personal. Andy Markley was really looking forward to a work-free Labor Day weekend far away from his computer. But he made the mistake of checking his inbox before he left for his planned holiday.
posted by lola at 5:24 PM PST - 31 comments

Money Saving Expert is a site for UKians, to play the credit card game and win, save tax, understand consumer rights, and generally be more savvy in all things fiscal.
posted by Blue Stone at 5:19 PM PST - 2 comments

Vaseline Glass is a particular color of yellow-green glass that is made by adding 2% Uranium Dioxide to the ingredients when the glass formula is made. The addition of the Uranium Dioxide makes the glass color yellow-green. A 'magnificent obsession' site crammed with images and information on art glass, novelties, collector themes, and manufacturers.
posted by quonsar at 4:49 PM PST - 11 comments

'24'. Violent content. Complaint not upheld. The British Standards Council (BSC) publish their findings on a regular basis, as they explain which complaints by members of the public regarding the 'offensive' content of some programmes on TV and radio have been upheld or not. This is fascinating for two reasons -- we get to see what people actually moan about and also how the various stations have to justify their output -- some seem more successful at it than others... [pdf format file via Whedonesque]
posted by feelinglistless at 3:38 PM PST - 11 comments

The Texas Transportation Institute released their latest figures on which cities are the most congested, and how many hours per year the average person spends in traffic. Or you can read The Big Picture. I find it amazing that New York City isn't in the top 25 cities. The reason being is that New York City has an excellent public transportation network. Even some Politians are realizing that public transportation is a better bang for the buck.
posted by LinemanBear at 2:36 PM PST - 20 comments

Build your own Howard Dean website! The Dean campaign has released web site "kits" under the GNU GPL and based on the Drupal codebase, which allow web-based communities to quickly and easily build their own sites to support Dean's campaign. Last night, he held a conference call with over 3,500 "house parties" and individuals to spread the word. If Dean gets the nomination, he'll have technology to thank for it. (yeah, via slashdot.)
posted by jpoulos at 1:32 PM PST - 27 comments

A Pretty URL Is Like A Melody: By a waterfall, I'm calling Who's Who In Musicals, diligently compiled by John Kenrick, a wonderful little resource.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 11:50 AM PST - 6 comments

This new film [25MB, QuickTime] documents the 3rd annual Bring Your Own Big Wheel race, in which a bunch of crazed fools raced headlong down San Francisco's Lombard Street (aka: the crookedest street in the world) on Big Wheels. Good drunk fun! Here are some pics for the bandwidth-challenged.
posted by scarabic at 11:12 AM PST - 22 comments

Madonna's being sued for stealing images from Guy Boudin's photography and using them in her Hollywood video. Here are side by sides. When does imitation/homage become theft? And who gets to decide? Should she have been sued for using this image in her vogue video?
posted by archimago at 9:14 AM PST - 86 comments

Campaign populism, Bush style As democrats raise money online and galvanize grass-roots support, the Bush campaign is becoming responsive to regular people as well. Perhaps you have been wondering about some of the protocol for everyday folks like yourself to show your support for the President. [more inside]
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 9:06 AM PST - 22 comments

Little Joe waited at the bus stop before continuing his bid to escape the authorities. The 300-pound gorilla had just broken out of his Franklin Park Zoo enclosure for the second time in two months, overcoming a newly-installed electric fence, injuring two people and terrifying others. The gorilla was hit with four tranquilizer darts but had managed to pull at least one of them out. Little Joe's namesake reminds us that we've known for at least 70 years that big apes in the middle of cities can cause major problems. Why are they still there?
posted by soyjoy at 8:37 AM PST - 32 comments

Anti-sanctions group sanctioned. Anti Iraq-sanctions group Voices in the Wilderness is being sued by the U.S. Department of Justice for bringing relief supplies to Iraq before the war. ViTW has issued an initial response and filed an answer and counterclaim. Does the DoJ have a leg to stand on? What moral and legal obligations do we have to refrain from giving aid and comfort to "enemy" civilians? How about if they live in sunny Cuba?
posted by stonerose at 7:25 AM PST - 19 comments

The Subpoenas are Coming! The FBI, in an attempt to prosecute Adrian Lamo (discussed here) is sending letters to journalists telling them to secretly prepare to turn over their notes, e-mails and sources to the bureau. And by secretly, they mean don't tell your colleagues, editors or lawyers, or risk facing obstruction of justice charges. (Via dailyrotten)
posted by Officeslacker at 6:25 AM PST - 11 comments

Boston Herald sports reporter outs himself in print and asks why people in the world of sports still have to hide. Frankly, I'm out because I can't come up with a single logical reason why I should have denied myself the right to live and work as openly and freely as everyone else. Nor should anyone find a reason why an openly gay athlete should be denied the right to play a team sport without fear of becoming a target of prejudice or physical harm. See Outsports for more info on the subject, and an interesting pro and con on whether gay baseball players should come out.
posted by amberglow at 6:23 AM PST - 57 comments

British bachelors beware. Rachel Greenwald knows how to find a husband using the techniques of Harvard Business School, and she's bringing her methods to the UK. But it's not easy: she advocates careful 'packaging', putting 10 to 20% of total income into a separate 'find a husband' bank account, cancelling newspaper subscriptions so they can be read in public and getting a third party to contact unsuccessful dates for feedback. There's one change for the UK though: here it's aimed at over-30s instead of the over-35s. I always thought "the Rules" were too spontaneous.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 12:48 AM PST - 39 comments

This post is about nothing. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
posted by moonbird at 10:19 PM PST - 36 comments

megaman vs. metroid [Note: Flash]
posted by crunchland at 7:57 PM PST - 19 comments

smallpox vs. aids: the pandemic smackdown!! Researchers are [very, very cautiously] suggesting there might be a link between the end of smallpox vaccinations in the early 1980s and the rise of HIV. Pinwheel, in the RFID thread: "All I can say is that it's a great time to be a lazy paranoid schizophrenic--modern society is doing all of the work for you."
posted by jengod at 5:49 PM PST - 24 comments

"You men are visually stimulated creatures. Seeing a woman, in hot clothes, get pelted by pies is a rarity." Meet Phoebe Rodriguez everyone. Read her story, and of course, watch her videos (nsfw or pies)
posted by Peter H at 2:34 PM PST - 30 comments

P2P United, the new lobby set up by peer-to-peer software developers, publishes a code of conduct.
posted by liam at 1:46 PM PST - 6 comments

My Mixtapes is a site for users of emusic. Members can post album reviews, create mixtapes, and compile thematic lists of albums, all with direct links to the songs or albums so that subscribers to the mp3 service can download directly "via" my mixtapes.
posted by dobbs at 1:33 PM PST - 6 comments

Décolleté takes you on a fascinating guided tour of decapitation through the ages that covers biblical head severers Judith and Salome, the hapless victims of the Tudor axe, as well as the dreaded guillotine. Site contains some mild artistic gore, but nothing too horrendous.
posted by MrBaliHai at 1:07 PM PST - 3 comments

100 Documents that Shaped America. (Via Fark, of all places.)
posted by PrinceValium at 10:41 AM PST - 18 comments

Is This All There Is To Modern Design? Although Design Within Reach is a commercial website, it's well put together, with interesting features that provide biographies and a a potted history of modern furniture design. However, like the plethora of coffee-table books on the subject, the uncomfortable (!) feeling remains that it crystalizes the accepted and the historical - the so-called modern classics - rather than engage with what is truly contemporary. This is, after all, highly traditional modernism and post-modernism. And it's rife. Where is the avant-garde? Is there one on view to ordinary mortals? You end up feeling that the truly new designs - this century's, after all - are being swept under the carpet, awaiting some boring committee process of consensus and approval.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:59 AM PST - 35 comments

Drug War Victims. "Increasingly, people are dying because of the tactics of the drug war. Military operations are being conducted on our soil, and collateral damage is inevitable... Every now and then, a death happens that is particularly grotesque -- that points out the horrific folly of our actions. This page presents some of those deaths." This is part of the Drug WarRant blog. [Via TalkLeft.]
posted by homunculus at 9:25 AM PST - 40 comments

Final Lord of the Rings trailer [Quicktime Movie]. No sign of it yet on the official site. (Via BBC)
posted by MintSauce at 9:01 AM PST - 37 comments

What software version numbers really mean. Not sure who started the latest trend of dropping version numbers from software. We could always blame Microsoft with Windows ME . But Macromedia is at fault too with the whole MX thing. And MX doesn't even stand for anything. Now Adobe is getting into the mix. There will be no Photoshop 8 or Illustrator 11. Just CS . So is this a good thing? Version numbers may not be exciting but it sure did make it easy to keep track of the latest upgrade.
posted by jeremias at 7:14 AM PST - 42 comments

The Fanimatrix is an amazing zero-budget amateur MATRIX film made by some great folks in Auckland, NZ. Finally, somebody gets it - The Matrix is an action film.
posted by anser at 6:42 AM PST - 23 comments

The Bolles Collection on the History of London at the Tufts University Perseus Digital Library contains, among other transcripts, the searchable text of all four volumes of the Henry Mayhew's classic 19th century account London Labour and the London Poor: Volume 1 (costermongers and street-sellers); Volume 2 (more street-sellers, cleansing, and sewer work); Volume 3 (vermin destroyers, street entertainers, labourers, cabbies, vagrants); and the Extra Volume (vice and beggars). Read of the sellers of fake pornography; snail-sellers; death and fire-hunters; a depressed street clown; "pure" (i.e. dog dung) finders; and more. The past really is another country.
posted by raygirvan at 4:52 AM PST - 11 comments

The entire 50 years of Peanuts are to be reprinted in chronological hardback volumes by Fantagraphics in a project that will take 12 and a half years to complete.
posted by Robot Johnny at 11:24 PM PST - 48 comments

SpeechEasy - a true fluency device to alleviate stuttering.
Janus Development Group, Inc. fluency products are therapeutic devices designed to dramatically reduce stuttering. They employ altered auditory feedback in the form of auditory delays and frequency shifts to provide maximum benefit to individuals who stutter.
posted by starscream at 8:54 PM PST - 8 comments

SkyHigh Airlines is one of the funniest, most well done and fleshed out parody sites I've seen on the web. Try everything, plan a trip (notice the luxurious ports of call they fly into), track your lost luggage - oh hell, just click everything, you'll be glad you did. Even the Chairman's letter is funny.
posted by Dome-O-Rama at 5:09 PM PST - 22 comments

How bad is it really in Iraq? The majority of the media stories have covered the attacks on American troops and the unrest among Iraqi citizens. But is that the full story? An Iraqi Catholic bishop thinks the media is lying about the postwar state of the country. An Iraqi journalist writes that Basrah is moving towards religious stability. There are other stories of the renewed economic opportunities in Iraq. An American federal judge visited the country and found overwhelming support for Americans. Even a Democratic Congressman thinks the negative media coverage is dangerous. More coverage from in-country and polls (NY Times) that show Iraqi optimism.
posted by marcusb at 4:03 PM PST - 71 comments

Welcome to Maskon.com. Your one-stop resource for female latex masks on the Internet. [via Cup of Chicha]
posted by soundofsuburbia at 3:59 PM PST - 9 comments

Before there were videogames ... an archive of old penny arcade machines.
posted by crunchland at 2:36 PM PST - 7 comments

WiFi Speed Spray "It's an amazing product, and I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone who has a computer or would like to have a computer." [via Michael's So-Called Life]
posted by DBAPaul at 1:29 PM PST - 15 comments

A little Iraqi girl -- no more than eight years old -- squatted beside the road with tears of humiliation streaming down her cheeks. Twenty feet away, three American soldiers had their rifles aimed at her as she was forced to relieve herself in full view of a long line of parked cars. From inside their vehicles, the Iraqi onlookers screamed their rage at the U.S. troops. Whenever one of the Iraqis ventured to step out of his vehicle, an American officer bellowed, "Get back in the car, a--hole!" and the .50-calibre machinegun mounted on the U.S. Hummer would swing menacingly toward the protester.
posted by tpoh.org at 1:18 PM PST - 116 comments

Theodore Roosevelt 'Hound Dog' Taylor
posted by wobh at 12:24 PM PST - 8 comments

Freeland's We Want Your Soul video is a cynical look at the american dream and keeping up with the joneses. Whether you agree with the point of view, it's still a pretty cool and amusing use of camera effects. (note: large quicktime on that page) [via randomfoo]
posted by mathowie at 12:00 PM PST - 14 comments

The Blur Building. Now you can spend your day in a literal fog.
posted by srboisvert at 11:20 AM PST - 5 comments

Rupert Murdoch, The Guardian Newspaper Group, magazine group IPC (and others) have formed an unlikely coalition, the British Internet Providers Association, in order to do one thing: decimate the BBC Online website, and protect their own online ventures. They demand that "BBC Online should be scaled back to being a 'news portal' and...should release its internet source code to commercial organisations." Spin-off projects such as iCan, the grassroots political site which the BBC is set to launch in October, would be trashed, and the BBC's use of its website to promote programmes, magazines and services would be restricted. In addition the BBC would face a cost ceiling on its online budget and be forced to "provide links to the news services of its competitors."
The Governement's closing date for submissions to the BBC Online review is November 17th, 2003.
posted by Blue Stone at 10:41 AM PST - 31 comments

The 24 Hour Hitch. Howell Parry, a student at Manchester in the early 90s, undertook three fund-raising 24-Hr Hitchhikes with the aim of getting as far as possible. Parry kept logs of his second and third trips (the first hadn't been too successful, getting only as far as London). Nomadic Simes, a wandering web designer, presents hitchhiking tips. See also history's hitchhiking record holders.
posted by nthdegx at 10:37 AM PST - 6 comments

Yes, We're The Mini*Pops! For a few brief, shining years in the 80s the Mini*Pops were the ne plus ultra of every pre-adolescent's rock star fantasies. From the classic Mini*Pops, to the haunting Mini*Pops Let's Dance, to everyone's seasonal favourite Mini*Pops Christmas, the Mini*Pops embodied the hopes and dreams of pedophiles children everywhere. Of course, no retrospective of the Mini*Pops would be complete without listening to their bastardization of tribute to Abba.
posted by filmgoerjuan at 10:26 AM PST - 12 comments

The British find WMDs, evidence of gruesome experiments on human guinea pigs. This, plus recent shipments of the chemical precursors needed to produce sarin and other chemical weapons to countries such as Libya, Iran, Syria, and Sudan should pretty much wrap things up, no?!
posted by insomnia_lj at 8:40 AM PST - 18 comments

How to hack an election 1.12: Diebold tries to silence incriminating evidence : Diebold, maker of proven-to-be hackable voting systems, plays global whack-a-mole, in effort to scare ISP's into taking down websites with incriminating material. They used the DCMA to shut down BlackBoxVoting.org.

But the incriminating data just keeps popping back up on the Net, and Gun-and-Voting rights activist Jim March calls the bluff and challenges Diebold “Diebold: You are cordially invited to bite me. Bring it on. Make my day.". March has created a legal strategy/toolkit for voting rights activists who want to fight Diebold, a company which has knowingly - for 10 years - sold security-compromised voting technology, and whose CEO, an aggressive Republican fundraiser, has said he is "he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." In internal memos published by Scoop, Diebold's officials admit that their voting records database is (and has been for a long time) hackable ( [anyone can] "access the GEMS Access database and alter the Audit log without entering a password" ) but that this isn't necessarily a problem because "It has a lot to do with perception. Of course everyone knows perception is reality." For background to this story, see my summary of Mefi posts on the Voting Fraud story, from this thread. Diebold's funky voting systems are in the process of being "Certified", in Maryland and elsewhere, by SAIC, a company convicted of major frauds within the last decade and which has extensive ties to the Bush Administration, the CIA, and which "proudly lists DARPA in its annual report as one of its prime clients.", and owns Network Solutions, Inc. SAIC has not, it seems, noticed the GEMS database story (see main link). If Diebold systems win certification, we can expect an awful lot of This sort of thing. Computer security expert Dr. Rebecca Mercuri has some pointed analysis on the subject.

You can join the effort to demand truly secure voting systems at VerifiedVoting.Org by David L. Dill, a Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University. Go team.
posted by troutfishing at 8:26 AM PST - 35 comments

Medical histories of American Presidents - Washington "exuded such masculine power as frightens young women just wakening to the opposite sex." Jefferson had all his teeth when he died at 84. Wilson's handshake was described as "a ten-cent pickled mackerel in brown paper." Taft was once laid up for a few days after a bug flew into his eye. Facts & trivia about presidential health.
posted by madamjujujive at 7:12 AM PST - 15 comments

I'm starting to think I was only one to ever buy a Rubik's Clock. The hours I spent trying to work it out, the effort I put in, whilst all along there's a simple solution to the infernal thing. While we're on Rubik's games, this man with an audiacious mullet has lots of tips on solving them, and another man can solve the Rubik's Cube in 16 seconds (.mpg file). Impressive, although his social life must have suffered...
posted by wibbler at 4:06 AM PST - 16 comments

Weapons of Mass Drunkenness. The ever vigilante U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency has been monitoring the web cams at the Bruichladdich Scotch Whisky Distillery on Islay island, Scotland, to make sure the facilities are not being used to make chemical weapons. I, for one, am glad to know that my government takes the safety of whiskey distilleries seriously. [First link via Boing Boing.]
posted by homunculus at 9:55 PM PST - 12 comments

Italy-wide blackout ongoing I'm right in the middle of a nation wide blackout. 2 hours without electricity so far, luckly sunrise is near. Guess now I know what they guys in U.S. East coast has felt. Link goes to italian language realtime news on event, for interested italians abroad.
posted by elpapacito at 8:36 PM PST - 22 comments

What do the Great Wall of China, the Paraguay Railway System and Historic Lower Manhattan have in common? They're all on the World Monuments Watch list of 100 Most Endangered sites.
posted by moonbird at 6:14 PM PST - 5 comments

Who'dda thunk it? We interrupt our usual story about how badly the Cubs suck to say that the Cubs just made the playoffs this year. Will long-suffering Cubs fans be vindicated? Is this the end of the billy-goat curse? Bonus: link to audio of Harry Caray yelling "cubs win!"
posted by answergrape at 4:57 PM PST - 17 comments

The Spirits Of The Times: Whatever's Next? In an unstable marketplace, good old spirits have been undergoing an extraordinary renaissance since 1988, with 2003 the best year yet. And growing. With summer over and thoughts turning to the more warming libations, I wonder what the next big drinking craze will be. My bets are on the wonderful, underrated fruit brandies, distilled directly from fruit juices with nothing else added: kirsch, framboise, mirabelle. Mmmm... The best eaux-de-vie, in my experience, are those from G. E. Massenez and above all (though they're quite expensive and alcoholic) from the Swiss Paul Morand distillery. (Flash req.) An ice-cold Williamine, served in a shot glass surrounded by an old-fashioned tumbler full of shaved ice: oh what bliss on an autumn night, after a late dinner with old friends!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 4:57 PM PST - 12 comments

Man charged in Blaine paint attack "A 28-year-old man has been charged with criminal damage for allegedly throwing pink paint at the box illusionist David Blaine has made his temporary home." It's not the first time he has been attacked. Here are the stunt details, a progress report and the box's location.
posted by ifenn at 1:48 PM PST - 48 comments

Cops Say Legalize Pot. Ask Me Why. Howard Wooldridge, a retired law enforcement officer, a long rider, helped found Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and is riding his horse Misty across the United States to raise awareness of the folly of the drug war.
posted by filchyboy at 1:18 PM PST - 12 comments

Experts say putting ice cubes up the rectums of unconscious people has no physiological benefit and can even lead to seizures and stroke. "An overdose in a club is embarrassing enough for the person involved... The sight of the incapacitated person with their pants around their ankles having people inserting ice cubes is beyond humiliating and potentially dangerous."
posted by quonsar at 1:08 PM PST - 26 comments

Bill Gates, the philanthropist. It's not mentioned enough that the world's richest man, through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has donated more than $3.2 billion to combat disease and improve education for the poorest people of the world. Bill and his wife Melinda have pledged to give most of their money away before they die -perhaps following Carnegie's philosophy "The Gospel of Wealth" in which he states that the rich have a moral obligation to give away their fortunes.- Just last week they donated $168 million to combat Malaria in Africa, this came "atop $120 million" they already gave towards fighting the disease. Not only is "Malaria, the Terrorist's Friend," but worse every year it sickens 300 million and kills 1.1 million. -does donating Linux to the world make Linus Torvalds a Philanthropist?
posted by giantkicks at 12:40 PM PST - 44 comments

The Life & Art of Winsor McCay ... part of Coconino Classics, "ressource encyclopedique sur l'histoire de la narration graphique."
posted by crunchland at 11:11 AM PST - 9 comments

Cleveland Press Shakespeare Photographs Er, no, not photographs of Shakespeare--that would be difficult--but of Shakespeare's plays in performance, 1870-1982. Covers productions in all media; photographs can be browsed by dramatic genre (tragedy, comedy, etc.). On a related note, see also Harry Rusche's Shakespeare Illustrated (outstanding and extensive site devoted to nineteenth-century paintings of scenes from Shakespeare's plays).
posted by thomas j wise at 9:47 AM PST - 6 comments

Planet Autism
"Last summer, a man in California shot his 27-year-old autistic son to death and then shot himself. I understand why." (warning - Salon link)
posted by Irontom at 8:19 AM PST - 16 comments

An Audit for the Soul As we enter the Jewish High Holy Days--the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah (the new year) and Yom Kippur (the day of atonement)--some examinations on how personal reflection and renewal is essential to a healthy life, whether continual, periodical, or annual.
posted by amberglow at 7:47 AM PST - 6 comments

"Sick Nick" is a cartoon blog by Nikahang Kowsar, the Iranian cartoonist. He drew a cartoon that could be interpreted as an insult to a top cleric, therefore he was arrested and the paper was closed down. He now lives in Toronto, fearing of going back to Iran.
posted by hoder at 4:00 AM PST - 5 comments

Daphne Oram, Godmother of Electronic Music • During WWII, Ms. Oram worked for the BBC as a sound engineer while indulging an obsessive curiousity of experimental audio in her free time. In 1958, she finally convinced the BBC to open the seminal Radiophonic Workshop, which also fostered the talents of sci-fi composers Delia Derbyshire and Ron Grainer. During that period she developed a technique known as Oramics: manipulating 35mm film to create electrical charges and thus, editable sound.
posted by dhoyt at 12:52 AM PST - 6 comments

CIA Seeks Probe of White House
At the risk of a Newsfilter callout, this is pretty big news. The CIA has asked the Justice Department to find out if White House officials were responsible for blowing Valerie Plame's cover. Previous Plame discussion here.
posted by emelenjr at 11:48 PM PST - 131 comments

Let's go on a rocket trip to the Moon! A collection of space art in children's books, 1883 to 1974. These books, and their evocative art, instilled in a generation the romance and wonder of space flight. I grew up in the 1950's, and as a kid I could pour over this book and its illustrations for hours, dreaming.
via A Voyage to Arcturus
posted by Slithy_Tove at 9:31 PM PST - 8 comments

The Anti-Squatter... A web-based sidebar to the recent passing of WKRP Manager and Maytag Repairman Gordon Jump: the 'dot-com' address with his name (as well as those for living and dead celebrities including Jack Palance, Bob "Captain Kangaroo" Keeshan and Flip Wilson) are owned by Richard Shumaker of "Wilmerding World Wide", who, on each homepage, editorializes against "Celebrity Name Cybersquatting", declares he has "captured" the names for "safekeeping", and promises "At no charge, I will be more than honored to transfer domain name ownership." [more inside]
posted by wendell at 8:49 PM PST - 12 comments

General Paranoyacx
posted by lazy-ville at 4:05 PM PST - 7 comments

From Russia, with love.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 2:56 PM PST - 14 comments

"I'm Speaking Out On Whatever The Hell That BUGS ME!" Would someone please get this man a kidney, stat? [Warning: inline sounds, last link has startling close-up photograph.]
posted by britain at 2:47 PM PST - 7 comments

Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music, v. 2.0. Now covering 140 genres with 635 samples. I'll just go ahead and say it: [this is good]
posted by grabbingsand at 12:50 PM PST - 74 comments

I attacked and took over two countries... Friday Debunking Fun! It's been popping up all over in the past month. The problem is, none of its claims are referenced. I challenge my fellow MeFites to come up with the links to debunk or support the charges filed in the Presidential Confession. What's true? What isn't? What's relevant to the election?
posted by badstone at 10:50 AM PST - 40 comments

Segways recalled.
posted by liam at 10:15 AM PST - 59 comments

PandaCam: Bai Yun’s cub(male) is big enough that now there’s something to see on the webcam in her birthing den at the San Diego Zoo. She’s quite the attentive mother and he’s becoming quite the wiggly baby. You can also view videos here.
posted by lobakgo at 9:54 AM PST - 12 comments

The Paris Review Editor in Chief George Plimpton dead at 76.
posted by lilboo at 9:39 AM PST - 10 comments

The tallest man on record was Roger Pershing Wadlow which I discovered after finding this curious photo. His 8'11.1" stature dwarfed Andre's mere 7'4" height. Both suffered from the rare pituitary disorder of gigantism or acromegaly. China has some really tall people including Defen Yao. If her height of 7"8.5" is accurate, it is more than an inch taller than Guinness record holder Sandy Allen. By comparison, the top 50 tallest basketball players provide some scale. (centimeter converter). Apparently, girls and giants are a popular combo.
posted by madamjujujive at 8:57 AM PST - 20 comments

It's Friday, and you don't want to work. You want to practice your hacking skillz instead.
posted by Melinika at 7:23 AM PST - 35 comments

Doctor Who is back
posted by Mwongozi at 7:05 AM PST - 45 comments

SUPER MARKETING: ADS FROM THE COMIC BOOKS
"A look at some of the best, most-memorable, and most-audacious ads from American comic books."
posted by crunchland at 6:45 AM PST - 19 comments

The New Republic . . . is one of multiple sources featuring variations on Bush-hating in recent weeks. What's up with the sudden currency of the phrase?
posted by palancik at 6:42 AM PST - 24 comments

Drop charges against accused 9-11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui? In a statement, the Justice Department said, "We believe the Constitution does not require, and national security will not permit, the government to allow Moussaoui, an avowed terrorist, to have direct access to his terrorist confederates who have been detained abroad as enemy combatants in the midst of a war." Confused? I know I am.
posted by hairyeyeball at 6:38 AM PST - 19 comments

This one time, at band camp....
posted by spazzm at 6:30 AM PST - 5 comments

80's singer Robert Palmer has passed away. CNN reports that the British rocker who is famous for his 80's hit "Addicted to Love" died of a heart attack in Paris at the age of 54.
posted by nyukid at 5:38 AM PST - 25 comments

Bruce Willis offers $1million dollar bounty for Saddam. "Its awesome. Soldiers identify with action movies and action actors. He's a guy's guy." said commander Col Michael Linnington.

"..being over here just a couple of days, seeing how well our troops and the allied troops are being received here, (I) think the Iraqi people are happy we're here," the Hollywood star said. (But later admitted he had not met many Iraqis because he had been travelling the country by helicopter.) [Via BBC]
posted by MintSauce at 5:24 AM PST - 30 comments

Levi Strauss to Shut Last Plants in U.S. Levi Strauss & Co. said that it would close the last of its North American manufacturing plants, laying off almost 2,000 workers. San Francisco-based Levi, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year, said it would shutter two plants in San Antonio by the end of the year, displacing 800 workers there and marking the end of its U.S. manufacturing operations. And Cone Mills Corp., the world's largest denim fabric maker, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and accepted a letter of intent from W.L. Ross & Co to purchase all of its assets in a $90 million transaction (more inside)
posted by matteo at 5:06 AM PST - 18 comments

Venerdì del Flash Via Universal Rule. Ahhh, ho perso l'aereo perché c'era lo sciopero!
posted by e.e. coli at 4:13 AM PST - 4 comments

I didn't know geeks could dance like this. (Quicktime; via Celsius1414)
posted by timeistight at 1:15 AM PST - 16 comments

"How To Do The Asian Squat" is a 1950’s style mockumentary by Daniel Hsia which explores the mystery and wonder of the Asian Squat. [Quicktime.]
posted by homunculus at 10:57 PM PST - 9 comments

Happy Birthday, Speccie! Your 175th, actually. There's a special issue out - only five free articles on the web, of which the Graham Greene competition is probably the funniest - but The Spectator itself (my favourite comic in the whole wide world, I have to say) is still in fine fettle. Among the more interesting articles in today's issue, Paul Robinson's delirious defense of West Point and its highly questionable Code of Honour (whereby you're compelled to rat on your fellow cadets if they lie, cheat or steal, or be expelled if you're found out covering up for them) and Melanie Phillip's firm opinion that the evidence of the Hutton Inquiry shows that Blair - Shock! Horror! - spoke the truth about Iraq are probably the most provocative. Damien McCrystal's tirade against fat nannies is the most predictably outrageous and typical. But the whole issue (I am particularly fond of Jeremy Clarke's column) is a cracker. No other weekly (or even monthly) conservative magazine is anywhere near as good. Congratulations, old fruit!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 10:18 PM PST - 12 comments

Amazon as search engine. Is it just me, or does every search on Amazon.com result in 90% results for discontinued items or stuff they don't bother to sell? I'm not very confident.
posted by troybob at 9:10 PM PST - 11 comments

Ted Rall has a theory as to why some people hate George W. Bush. Some of us got beyond the hate and just plan to support Frickles the Mudcat in 2004. A Frickles regine benefits you!
posted by clango at 9:04 PM PST - 37 comments

27 Israeli Pilots have been grounded by the military after refusing to take part in airstrikes carried out in the occupied territories. Some active, some retired, they were accused of "making cynical use of the Israeli air force to express a civilian view," but in a joint letter to their command, they spoke out against "air force attacks in civilian population centers." Either way, Edward Said may be resting a little easier, at least tonight.
posted by scarabic at 8:02 PM PST - 10 comments

Biggest cruise ship ever, the Queen Mary II, launches. Thousands watched as the giant 500 million pound cruise liner, which stretches the length of four football fields, left Saint Nazaire in western France on Thursday for a three-day test run. "We will push it to its maximum power to check that it can achieve 30 knots," said a spokesman for Alstom-Marine. "After that, we'll stop it brutally, and we will go in zigzags to check its stability." Thousands, and not one thought to take a picture.
posted by Poagao at 7:46 PM PST - 23 comments

Tucker Carlson's phone number is 703-519-6456.
posted by angry modem at 7:36 PM PST - 36 comments

8.0 Earthquake in Hokkaido, Japan. Holy crap. The Kobe quake in 1994 was a 6.9 - am I right to think that an 8.0 is about ten times worse than that one? Any mefites in Japan who can give us more information?
posted by majcher at 1:57 PM PST - 59 comments

Deep Fried Live! with your host, Tako the Octopus.
posted by me3dia at 1:15 PM PST - 11 comments

The worst jobs in Science. Brought to you by Popular Science. Everything from Flatus Odor Judge to Metric System Advocate.
posted by Ufez Jones at 12:48 PM PST - 18 comments

This made me spit Yoo-Hoo on my PDA. Humor for 3D graphics nerds.
posted by jpburns at 11:43 AM PST - 16 comments

Chinese Manned Spaceflight as early as October. After years of preparation, China appears poised to join America and Russia in manned space efforts. Tons of details at spacedaily.com. Rumor has it that the goal of the Chinese is a permanent lunar base and a visit to Mars. Will it take international competition to get the US moving in manned space flight outside of Earth orbit? The Space Exploration Act of 2003 sits as a bill in Congress, awaiting support. Will children dream of being a Yuhangyuan (Chinese term for space explorer) instead of an astronaut or cosmonaut?
posted by Argyle at 11:35 AM PST - 48 comments

DVDRHelp. Ever wondered about the difference between DVD-R and DVD+R? Want the best tool for ripping VHS to DVD? All things video are revealed at DVDRHelp. Discover freeware tools like Tsunami MPeg Encoder. Compare the latest DVD burners. Be overwhelmed at the learning curve of making your own DVD videos. AKA VCDHelp.
posted by Wulfgar! at 11:28 AM PST - 29 comments

Dyson telescope game. Fiendishly addictive. Don't ask me what it has to do with industrial vacuum cleaners. (Via Bifurcated Rivets)
posted by gottabefunky at 9:10 AM PST - 29 comments

Things That Have Been Sold In Vending Machines. Also, Skybox, the world's first vending machine for home use.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 9:10 AM PST - 10 comments

Galvanic Experiments on the Dead Body of a Criminal : The macabre electrical reanimation of Matthew Clydesdale`s hung body. Excerpts from The Young Man's Book of Amusement (1854). Just one of the fascinating "weird science" entries at Lateral Science.
posted by crunchland at 6:41 AM PST - 9 comments

Quicksilver Metaweb is the companion wiki to Neal Stephenson's much anticipated new book. If you've found his home page a bit on the off-putting side, but you still had things you wanted to know, or maybe chitchat about, this is the place for you.
posted by jessamyn at 5:20 AM PST - 10 comments

"My symbiotic relationship with squirrels is rather complex and multi-leveled, but I think I can sum it up in two main points: 1. I give them food; 2. They like food" says Jon, at his World o' Squirrels. Some people think squirrels are cute, others think there is more to them, while others still deem them ruthless killers.
posted by nthdegx at 5:05 AM PST - 29 comments

Need more hits? Try adding some of these 'spook words' to your meta tags if you'd like more traffic from your friends at the NSA. first link via Reality Carnival
posted by moonbird at 3:49 AM PST - 22 comments

Michael Moore's comprehensive response to criticisms of Bowling for Columbine. An interesting read, should make up for some interesting comments. Unfortunately, I do not have one of my own, yet. I wish Michael Moore himself would post here. [via BoingBoing]
posted by zerofoks at 1:50 AM PST - 121 comments

"Individuals Active in Civil Disturbances". Rare Alabama publication from the Civil Rights era. Courtesy of the Memory Hole.
posted by plep at 11:47 PM PST - 5 comments

Florida band plans to stage suicide. If you're dying of a terminal disease, you could always go this route.
posted by Lusy P Hur at 11:11 PM PST - 19 comments

Bring Back the Elephants! This article proposes returning these "super keystone species" to the Americas, which were inhabited by proboscideans for so long. The eating habits of free-ranging elephants would help prevent wildfires, and this extreme exercise in rewilding would restart the evolution of one of humanity's own "evolutionary nursemaids."
posted by homunculus at 8:54 PM PST - 23 comments

Caribou Coffee is smacked with a lawsuit for doing nothing when four employees complained of same-sex harassment from their boss. Among the allegations, one claims that the woman "[invited] one of the plaintiffs to her house to engage in some type of sexual activity with her dogs." You've gotta love the local tv news treatment of any given situation. Streaming video also available.
posted by Hammerikaner at 7:32 PM PST - 6 comments

The IAAIS othersise known as "Radio Reading Services. Policy Statement: Everyone with a visual impairment, physical disability or learning disability has a right to equal access to all forms of information available to the general public. IAAIS works actively to promote and protect this access.

More inside.
posted by ashbury at 7:14 PM PST - 4 comments

In a move sure to please independent record store owners and further alienate everyone else, music giant Universal has scrapped its to lower CD prices to a MSRP of $12.98. Just when you thought they might be getting it.
posted by keswick at 6:08 PM PST - 25 comments

"You'd think that predicting human behavior would be easy ...everyone should be a rational economizer, busy calculating their individual costs and benefits, and acting accordingly. Right?" So begins the review of Socionomics: The Science of History and Social Prediction on slashdot. I've always thought the Elliot Wave Theory sounded like psuedoscience, but found the rational choice theory problematic as well, even ridiculous at times. What's voodoo, and what's promising in advancing predictive social sciences?
posted by weston at 3:24 PM PST - 15 comments

U.S. court rules FTC overstepped its authority when it set up the list to block telemarketing calls. Damn.
posted by MidasMulligan at 2:45 PM PST - 64 comments

American Routes with Nick Spitzer is one of the best radio shows ever. It's a "... two-hour public radio program produced in New Orleans, presenting a broad range of American music -- blues and jazz, gospel and soul, old-time country and rockabilly, Cajun and zydeco, Tejano and Latin, roots rock and pop, avant-garde and classical. Plus stories and conversations with musicians and everyday people, known and unknown." There are great archived interviews with people like Dick Dale, Calvin Cooke, Sleepy LeBeef, Koko Taylor, Bob Moog, Nick Hornby, Ahmet Ertegun, John Hammond Jr., Keely Smith, Jim Jarmusch and everyone in between. Playlists back to April 1998. Photos. The shows usually have a theme--"Cool", "Arabs and Jews in Jazz & Blues and Beyond", "East Texas / West Louisiana"--and are always interesting. Get even more info. at Deep Routes .
posted by lobakgo at 12:53 PM PST - 7 comments

Did you ever go to summer camp? Today I ran across the Adirondack camp and was struck by the beauty of the pictures on the site. However, I was stunned by the expense when I looked at their tuition rates. All of my summer camp experiences were at Boy Scout camps (Philmont, Emerald Bay, El Rancho Cima and Camp Orr). I never knew it before, but there are lots of kinds of camps: fine arts camps, camps for disabled children, camps affiliated with various churches and other organizations. So, did you go to camp? What was it like?
posted by Irontom at 12:48 PM PST - 50 comments

“Hybrid Humans” Very early on in the womb, two fertilized eggs that would have normally created fraternal twins will occasionally fuse to form one embryo, producing a "chimera": one person with two sets of DNA. The link goes to a Nature article, here is an NPR piece.
posted by o2b at 12:35 PM PST - 14 comments

Sexy? NOT! Nerve.com lists their top 50 "genital retracting people, places, and things". Safe for work. Linked via the the Sporting Press...
posted by vito90 at 12:24 PM PST - 50 comments

Historical Revisionism
All text is verbatim from senior Bush Administration officials and advisers. In places, tenses have been changed for clarity.
posted by nofundy at 12:23 PM PST - 5 comments

Sex for Money, Money having Sex? Ban on Russian ads depicting euro having sex with dollar. Immoral or are they just dancing?
posted by kodas at 12:12 PM PST - 14 comments

Ugh - and Ooqa Ooqa The company that brought us "shoshkeles" (flash ads plastered over your webstite of choice), United Virtualities - has now launched a newer, more annoying ad banner/tool/, ooqa-ooqa, which basically takes over your browser, removes your toolbar, and inserts ads. (They call it a "Branded Browser", and say it's fully "opt-in", which it wasn't for me) I saw it in action here, at Forbes.com (to be a victim, I believe you need IE5+ on a PC, maybe not). Wasn't the idea of taking over the end-users browser squashed, chalked up as never a welcome or good idea years ago, when the ability to do it first arose?
posted by kokogiak at 11:47 AM PST - 47 comments

DynCorp Disgrace "Middle-aged men having sex with 12- to 15-year-olds was too much for Ben Johnston, a hulking 6-foot-5-inch Texan, and more than a year ago he blew the whistle on his employer, DynCorp, a U.S. contracting company doing business in Bosnia..."
posted by psmealey at 11:31 AM PST - 27 comments

Sonnet Central Wordsworth once said of the sonnet that he hoped that those "[w]ho have felt the weight of too much liberty,/Should find such brief solace there, as I have found." Sonnet Central offers a copious library of sonnets, mainly in the Anglo-American tradition but with examples from around the world. Those who wish to explore further in the sonnet's paradoxically expansive "scanty plot of ground" (Wordsworth again) may also wish to try Petrarch's Canzoniere (complete set, Italian with English translations); Shakespeare's Sonnets (self-described as "amazing"; the full cycle with glosses and paraphrases, plus illustrations and links to other poems); Golden Age Spanish Sonnets (translations); Christina Rossetti's Monna Innominata: A Sonnet of Sonnets (a reflection on the traditional sonnet sequence); George Meredith's Modern Love (a bleaker revision of the sonnet sequence tradition, featuring sixteen-line "sonnets"); and an excerpt from John Hollander's Powers of Thirteen (do the math and you'll see the experiment--it's an interesting modern sequence).
posted by thomas j wise at 10:49 AM PST - 24 comments

A Cautionary Tale: DNA Analysis of Alleged Extraterrestrial Biological Material: Anatomy of a Molecular Forensic Investigation .pdf file
::From The National Institute for Discovery Science via The Daily Grail::
[more inside]
posted by anastasiav at 10:07 AM PST - 6 comments

It's not democracy if Republicans don't win! After spending $1.6 million to save California, Darrell Issa tells Republicans to vote No on recall if it means a Democrat will win.
posted by badstone at 10:02 AM PST - 24 comments

Directory of Iranians who blog in English
posted by hoder at 8:52 AM PST - 7 comments

Swedish band postcards via a machine that generates excitement
posted by mookieproof at 8:36 AM PST - 3 comments

Tehelka is the Indian journalism Web site that published video of bribe-taking on the Net, launching a Watergate-like corruption scandal at the highest levels of government. Since breaking the story, however, "Tehelka’s staff has gone from 120 people to three; its office has been vacated; its staffers arrested and harassed; and its debts have spiraled." But the site perserveres. And Malaysiakini seems to be following in its footsteps. As Doc Searles says, it's "the duct tape of journalism."
posted by hairyeyeball at 7:33 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Massachusetts governor has new plan to get death penalty re-introduced. Romney claims that his science is so tight that guilt will be irrefutable. It's an interesting angle to take to change legislation. I do, however, wonder how science can irrefutably detect crooked cops.
posted by Mayor Curley at 7:24 AM PST - 32 comments

Wind Power cheaper than coal, electric car does 0 to 60 in 3.7 w/300 mile cruising range

It's official: wind power is now cheaper than electricity from Coal, Stanford Researchers report in a study published in the Journal Science. Quiz for Metafilter science wonks: how much of current US energy consumption could be supplied by spending 200 billion dollars on wind turbines?

Meanwhile...Powered by 6800 lithium-ion batteries, the Tzero "from zero to 100 and through the quarter mile, will run with, or beat, the $281,000 Lamborghini Murci
posted by troutfishing at 6:53 AM PST - 53 comments

Psychedelic Flash [note: flash]
posted by crunchland at 6:24 AM PST - 8 comments

Important expose and interview runs on Salon today. "This evening the site the aritcle features is shut down. As soon as we get that new server up we'll host the materials (yes, we have a copy) that Diebold doesn't want the public to see. Diebold cannot silence everyone. " The links (2) for this piece can be found at URL given here. "If you're not outraged you are not paying attention. " The Agonist, as usual, is both outraged and paying attention.
posted by Postroad at 6:14 AM PST - 47 comments

Have more sex says the Conservative party in the UK, procreate for the good of the economy and solve the looming pensions crisis. "Europe's real demographic crisis is not longevity but birth rates". Research says, apparently, that most women want more children than they have, but could it also be the case that a growing number of people just don't see the attraction?
posted by jonvaughan at 4:44 AM PST - 30 comments

In her autobiography, "Living History," Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton recounts how China's imprisonment of a prominent human rights activist, Harry Wu, caused a sensation in the United States and nearly derailed her plans to attend a United Nations women's conference held in Beijing in 1995. In the officially licensed Chinese edition of Mrs. Clinton's book, though, Mr. Wu makes just a cameo appearance. While named, he is otherwise identified only as a person who was "prosecuted for espionage and detained awaiting trial." But nearly everything Mrs. Clinton had to say about China, including descriptions of her own visits here, former President Bill Clinton's meetings with Chinese leaders and her criticisms of Communist Party social controls and human rights policies, has been shortened or selectively excerpted to remove commentary deemed offensive by Beijing. My question: is anybody other than Hillary really suprised by this?
posted by RevGreg at 12:57 AM PST - 14 comments

"A Kmart Exclusive! This Inflatable Costume from Pumpkin Time is sure to make you the comic hit at any Halloween Party. The cool and comfortable costume self inflates and requires 3 "AA" batteries (not included) to do so."
Other designs:
--You think your kids are scared of clowns now...
--Can Paul Prudhomme sue for this?
--Aarrgghh!! My eyes!!!
"So, Little Tommy, what do you want to go as for Halloween?" "I wanna be Jiminy Glick!"
...with 3 AA batteries. Now it's official: Kmart is doomed.
posted by wendell at 10:37 PM PST - 38 comments

An Elevator to the Stars. The paper of record claims this isn't science fiction, but do we really believe that in ten years we'll be able to build a 60,000 mile long cable capable of supporting 13 ton cargo loads? Would you trust this to take you into asynchronous orbit? (Or maybe you just want to make like Joe Kittinger and jump out at 100,000 feet.)
posted by alms at 6:34 PM PST - 24 comments

Bill Is Thinking About The Children. MSN has decided to close almost all of it's chatrooms across the world. It cites concerns about paedophiles targeting and grooming children. Some children's charities are delighted. Some of MSN's competitors are less impressed.
posted by Blue Stone at 5:50 PM PST - 32 comments

Plenty of pop music explosions have been international in scope-metal, punk, hip-hop. But none as much as the initial blast garage rock and roll that erupted after the Beatles and Stones broke big. Cutie Morning Moon does an astounding job of documenting the far flung outposts of garageland like Chile, Hong Kong, Sweden, Holland Japan Uruguay, Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe. It also includes the story of Japanese Brazillian expatriates Os Incriveis , plenty of wild photos, movie footage of swede legends the Tages and an article on the secret history of Joan Jett's #1 hit " I Love Rock And Roll". This site is seemingly bottomless, but if that ain't enough there's great links too. If the whole world gan get together and dig three chord boogie, I say there's still hope. *some pages are translated from Japanese. The prose can be awkward. But the feelings there.
posted by jonmc at 5:44 PM PST - 13 comments

Digital Fiction attempts to make something artistic using Flash. Monochromatic darkness, crazy writing and some weird visual effects.
posted by seanyboy at 3:04 PM PST - 3 comments

The requirement to carry passports while visiting US, that will eventually include biometric markers such as iris scans as well as digital photos, leaves Canadians unhappy.
posted by riffola at 2:59 PM PST - 23 comments

President confirms denies confirms link between Iraq and terrorism! " The regime of Saddam Hussein cultivated ties to terror while it built weapons of mass destruction."

In other news, we're at war with Eastasia. We've always been at war with Eastasia... Food rations have jumped by 10%! Doubleplusgood!
posted by insomnia_lj at 2:51 PM PST - 38 comments

Jim Munroe, author of Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask [free e-book here] and other books, is also the creator of No Media Kings, an anti-media monopoly site where you can learn to make your own books (why & how). Jim also makes movies/cdroms and recently co-created The Perpetual Roadshow [careful, sound].
posted by dobbs at 1:52 PM PST - 3 comments

The Most Phallic Building In The World? Cabinet Magazine collected assorted nominees, both circumcised and not. Of course, these days we prefer our erotic architecture to be user-friendly.
posted by liam at 12:02 PM PST - 44 comments

Hooray For Leonard Feather's Scrapbook: Here's something wonderful to go with proud owners of his epochal Biographical Encylopedia of Jazz . Seminal articles and delicious jazz clips (Quicktime req.) are part of the pleasure.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 10:57 AM PST - 4 comments

The Alphabet: Meaningless shapes arbitrarily linked to meaningless sounds. When George Bernard Shaw died in 1950, his will provided for the development of a new alphabet for the English language, an alphabet of at least forty letters that could be used to write English without all the oddities of our traditional spelling. Learn more about the history and origins of The Shaw Alphabet, and look at some of its competitors, including the initial teaching alphabet, Inglish Simplifíd Speling and The Unifon Alphabet - a 40 character alphabet resulting from the Shaw alphabet competition. Or, read what Mark Twain had to say on the subject.
posted by anastasiav at 10:04 AM PST - 10 comments

Iraq's governing council bans Al-Jazeera, al-Arabiya TV stations. "US officials have accused Qatar-based Aljazeera and Dubai-based al-Arabiya of giving too much prominence to anti-US attacks and providing a forum for backers of ousted President Saddam Hussein." Wouldn't buying them be more American?
posted by Eloquence at 9:58 AM PST - 43 comments

Warblogger as Goodwill Ambassador Chief Wiggles, one of the major military warbloggers, is running a toy drive for Iraqi children. Seems like it might be a nice way to engender some good vibes in the next generation of Iraqis.
posted by jengod at 9:56 AM PST - 30 comments

In the long tradition of Google anouncements may I present to you Google Location search (which if you recall was the winner of the competition they held last year)
posted by zeoslap at 9:45 AM PST - 7 comments

Search the dead Internet. (via Q Daily News)
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 8:07 AM PST - 1 comment

another canary tips over
as the administration (more specifically the white house council on environmental quality and its head james l. connaughton) continue to ignore and bury the warnings of the effects global warming from their own scientists.
posted by specialk420 at 7:31 AM PST - 52 comments

Glasgow University Library Exhibitions. Some nice online exhibits : nineteenth century views of Glasgow, sixteenth and seventeenth century anatomical illustration, British bookbindings, Glasgow Cathedral windows, rare Spanish books, music books, flower illustration, etc.
posted by plep at 6:46 AM PST - 2 comments

Does India belong on the UN security council? A fascinating analysis of UN politics from a developing country's perspective.
posted by SandeepKrishnamurthy at 6:41 AM PST - 15 comments

rockface rescue [note: flash]
posted by crunchland at 6:17 AM PST - 5 comments

Skype, a new P2P Telephony service from the people who created KaZaA. [more inside]
posted by davehat at 6:08 AM PST - 16 comments

Breaking the silence Last night ITV1 in the UK ran a documentary that is unlikely to be shown in the USA. It is by a respected journalist called John Pilger and amongst other tidbits it shows Colin Powell saying in 1991 that Iraq poses no threat and also Condoleeza Rice confirming the same thing. It also quotes some US officials that the current bunch who seem to be running US foreign policy were known during the administration of Bush senior as "the crazies". Plus much more.
posted by donfactor at 5:45 AM PST - 99 comments

Not quite moblogging. Though basically a publicity ploy by the cowbox folks, Candidate Camera is still worth a browse. A digital camera has been offered to every single one of the candidates in the California recall election — from Adam to Zellhoefer — and they're sending in shots from the campaign trail. Clearly some are having fun with the project, from the unknown to the infamous. And while others are going for the mom and apple pie constituency, at least a couple are aiming at the Maxim mindset. Having David Hume Kennerly at the helm adds some credibility, and while his featured photo picks are always good, you can always — in true blogger style — just jump to the latest entries.
posted by pzarquon at 11:15 PM PST - 6 comments

Mutant Rats are Here! Farms in Kyrgyzstan are being overrun with rats that do not respond to the usual poison and target people. It was created in a (mad scientist's?) lab. Apocalypse Now?
posted by billsaysthis at 7:46 PM PST - 34 comments

ICANN requests Verisign to stop wildcard redirects. The Internet Architecture Board posts many reasons why wildcards are a very bad thing in root servers. Verisign responds by saying "We don't care and you can't make us." (This is a follow-up to this thread.)
posted by dejah420 at 3:44 PM PST - 64 comments

Dreaming is said to play a vital role in the lives of the Senoi tribe of Malaysia. While this story has it's detractors, Senoi-style lucid dreaming is one technique practiced by those looking to discover just what's going on inside their heads.
posted by moonbird at 3:22 PM PST - 5 comments

The Budget Traveller's Guide To Sleeping In Airports. Overnight flight delayed far from home? Can't afford a room at one of those boring, noisy airport hotels? Stuck in Japan on a cancelled layover and too chicken to rent out a capsule? Well, why not try sleeping in the airport? The B.T.G.T.S.I.A. has tips for "pro" airport sleepers, best and worst airports to sleep in, and as an added bonus, stories of strange non-airport sleeping places.
posted by brownpau at 3:19 PM PST - 20 comments

Why Everything You Know About Murphy’s Law is Wrong
It's about engineering built-in redundancy, the fastest man in the world, and the right to claim authorship. Plus: not a single dumb ethnic stereotype in sight! From the Annals of Improbable Research
posted by dash_slot- at 3:10 PM PST - 10 comments

Behind the scenes with an Election Officer - "Congratulations! You have been appointed to serve as an INSPECTOR for the Statewide Special (Recall) Election." Also good: F'd State.
posted by elvissinatra at 3:09 PM PST - 3 comments

Scientists Find World's Oldest Known Genitals - A team led by Prof. Jason Dunlop from Humboldt University has found the world's oldest genitals. This new find is older than the previous record holder (discovered by Prof. David Siveter of the University of Leicester) by about 300 million years. The record holder for world's oldest pile of vomit remains unchallenged. Images of whip-wielding biologists in fedoras escaping giant rolling boulder traps to discover penis fossils flood my mind.
posted by Joey Michaels at 1:00 PM PST - 9 comments

It’s not what you say, it's the way you say it--Part 2. This observation was cleverly illustrated by Prof. Howard L. Chace in Anguish Languish, an exercise to demonstrate to his French Language students that intonation is key to understanding spoken language. Here is the complete text. You can read his best known Furry Tell about a Wicket Woof and a Ladle Gull or hear it read.(Warning-has sound.) I first found out about Howard Chace from an article in The Whole Earth Catalog and certain phrases have rattled around my head ever since. Here is a discussion of Anguish Languish if you want to write your own. Like this version of Gender Cyst from the Homely Babble.
posted by lobakgo at 12:19 PM PST - 5 comments

Language Removal Services is a service that electronically removes that which is uneccessary in human speech. The laboratory has come to the aid of California voters by processing recorded speech samples of the candidates in order to "better understand their true positions."
posted by mert at 11:15 AM PST - 27 comments

A new movie holding her name is coming out in the US soon, find out who she was, why she was killed, and why she deserved a movie. Meet the real Veronica Guerin.
posted by Dome-O-Rama at 10:43 AM PST - 17 comments

Video of Krugman on Media and Economics

If Bush said the earth is flat, of course Fox News would say "Yes, the earth is flat, and anyone who says different is unpatriotic." And mainstream media would have stories with the headline: "Shape of Earth: Views Differ; and would at most report that some Democrats say that it's round."

So said Paul Krugman during a recent interview in Boston with Chris Lydon, former host of NPR's 'The Connection.'
posted by ericrolph at 10:41 AM PST - 25 comments

Is this really the most depressing book cover of the year? Because I kinda thought this one was. [via AntiPixel]
posted by kirkaracha at 10:09 AM PST - 93 comments

The Song Is You: If ever there was a perfect singer - and I do mean perfect - it was Ella Fitzgerald. Her Songbooks (please scroll down for the listings and samples) are still - and will always be - the best collection there is of the great American standards. That is, if you don't mind crying and having the little hairs on the nape of your neck stand up and revolt. And swing. They'd be the last records objects I'd be willing to part with: they're the mother's milk of American Western popular culture. So imagine my surprise when I found their perfect counterpart on the Web: the best-ever collection of lyrics to the songs of the greatest American composers: Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington and Richard Rodgers. Admirably, the compiler has gone way beyond his duty and included wonderful standards (quite a few unknown to me) that even Ella never got around to singing. Thank you, Todd. And God bless you, Sir!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 10:02 AM PST - 26 comments

I have to travel the highways and byways of America by car and train a great deal, and its much more fun if you actually see America on the way. Two of my favorite sites for finding offbeat attractions and tasty eats are By The Way Magazine and Roadside America.
posted by anastasiav at 9:54 AM PST - 5 comments

Monkeys down tools . - Demand fair pay for a fair day's work. " Researchers taught brown capuchin monkeys to swap tokens for food. Usually they were happy to exchange this "money" for cucumber. But if they saw another monkey getting a grape - a more-liked food - they took offence. Some refused to work, others took the food and refused to eat it. "
posted by Blue Stone at 9:50 AM PST - 19 comments

Stories from Seattle history to mark the Seattle Times' centennial in 1996 - altered Indian images, 'new women', the General Strike of 1919, anti-Communist hysteria, out and about at the turn of the century, etc.
posted by plep at 4:54 AM PST - 4 comments

"May You Live in Interesting Times": The 'Chinese Curse' is semi-debunked.
A scholar (over-)documents his search for the true origin of this oft-repeated quote (Google found it 10,800 times). Here's more about/from Professor DeLong. And here's a semi-official response from China. Appropriate, since here's how one writer amended the original. And, just for snarkiness, here's a related quote from a familiar figure.
posted by wendell at 3:43 AM PST - 11 comments

All you can eat : FOODBLOGS!
Foodgoat / vitriolica's foodiblog / The Weekend Chef / Culinary Adventures with the Radical Chef / backyard grub / fuckcorporategroceries.net / gastronome / Murrayhill 5 / an invitation to the barbecue / The Joy of Soup / An Obsession with Food / Out of Our Mouths / pertelote / Shallots and Chipotle / Struggle in a Bungalow Kitchen / tastingmenu.com / Weight Botchers / Appetizing Muse / Confessions of a Foodie / Cooking with Gina / Haught Cuisine ... [in no particular order.]
posted by crunchland at 11:25 PM PST - 27 comments

You've probably never heard of him, but as an artist JSG Boggs has been making "money" for two decades. Boggs has been the subject of many articles, a film, and a book by Lawrence Welscher. He's bought lots of things with his art ("Hot dogs, watches, airplane tickets, rent, clothing, jewelry–-anything." (And he's done so in England, Germany, France, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, the USA, and Italy.) The largest collection of his works belongs to The Secret Service. [more inside]
posted by dobbs at 9:30 PM PST - 16 comments

Stumbling Into War by James P. Rubin, From Foreign Affairs, September/October 2003

Why did most of the world abandon Washington when it went after Saddam Hussein? The war in Iraq could never have been an easy sell, but nor should it have been such a difficult one. The Bush administration badly botched the prewar maneuvering, presenting a textbook study in how not to wage a diplomatic campaign.
posted by y2karl at 9:16 PM PST - 16 comments

Desperate Saddam Offers Americans Deal. Wait...no...move along...nothing to see here...move along please...
posted by stew560 at 7:47 PM PST - 15 comments

Folklore and Mythology E-Texts A multicultural collection classified according to types and variants. See also the SurLaLune Fairy Tales Pages (portal with annotated tales, tons of illustrations), Folk and Fairytales From Around the World (not updated since 1997, unfortunately), Hans Christian Andersen (tales and illustrations, plus additional links), Fairy Tales by the Grimm Brothers (German and English, with some illustrations), the Grimm Index Page (a complete set), Red Riding Hood: A Multimedia Edition (exactly what it sounds like; those with sensitive eyes should be warned that the page is, well, red), and Tracey Callison's extensive Sources for the Analysis and Interpretation of Folk and Fairy Tales (scholarly bibliographies).
posted by thomas j wise at 7:21 PM PST - 7 comments

Bonsai Potato is "the art of nurturing the artistic vision of a potato through various forms of encouragement and manipulation."
posted by mr_crash_davis at 4:53 PM PST - 9 comments

How To: By You is a "sociological project is about the study of knowledge among human society and how it can differ and change." Topics range from how to cook the perfect grilled cheese sandwich to catching fish, with seemingly no limit to the possibilities. Got a question for the unwashed masses? Or maybe you have the ultimate martini recipe. Show off your intuition.
posted by mb01 at 4:21 PM PST - 5 comments

Free speech zones Appearing everywhere from Florida to Oregon. In California the concept has been fought and defeated, but in Kansas there seems to be little resistance. It's not just the usual suspects, either. Watch where you are standing no matter who you are protesting, even if it's just governors.
posted by betaray at 3:06 PM PST - 31 comments

The Analytical Language of John Wilkins - the Decimal System post below reminded me of this exquisite essay by Jorge Luis Borges. Famous for its appearance in Michel Foucault's The Order of Things, the essay describes an attempt to create a non-arbitrary language. For fans of Borges' work, this is absolutely classic.
posted by Hjorth at 3:04 PM PST - 9 comments

Simon Waldman, director of digital publishing for Guardian Newspapers, found an interesting piece on Hitler's Mountain Home, "A Visit to 'Haus Wachenfeld" in a 1938 copy of Homes & Gardens magazine. Intrigued by the glowing nature of the article and it's historical importance [We hear a lot about how the British upper and upper-middle classes felt that 'That Hitler chap had some very good ideas' ... but it's only when you see it in this almost comically fawning form that you realise how someone who can seem utterly abhorrent with hindsight can appeal to people at the time,] he posted it to his blog only to be sent a takedown notice by Homes & Gardens magazine, for copyright violation. Wired has the story.
posted by Blue Stone at 9:22 AM PST - 16 comments

Bobby Womack - one of the last surviving soul greats from the Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding generation. A beautiful site with a deep jukebox of stirring soul classics. (Via zootoon. A flash site)
posted by madamjujujive at 8:50 AM PST - 14 comments

A trademark infringement lawsuit has been filed by the owners of the Dewey Decimal System against New York's Library Hotel, which numbers and fills rooms based on the system: "Each of the 10 guestrooms floors honors one of the 10 categories of the DDC and each of the 60 rooms is uniquely adorned with a collection of books and art exploring a distinctive topic within the category or floor it belongs to." Call early to book Room 800.001.
posted by rcade at 6:22 AM PST - 53 comments

A legitimate use for P2P programs: tracking music downloads for target marketing. BigChampagne "is selling file sharing data to "Maverick, Atlantic, Warner Bros., Interscope, DreamWorks, Elektra, and Disney's Hollywood label." Data is mined from partial IP addresses married to postal codes, and this tied to downloads associated with the contents of the users shared folders. Data is analyzed to understand and target specific markets. Acknowledging this legitimate use would put a damper on the music industry's case against P2P, so it's mostly being done on the sly.
posted by giantkicks at 5:00 AM PST - 6 comments

Virtual tours of Salisbury Cathedral. Views and essays.
posted by plep at 2:46 AM PST - 5 comments

Tacheback? (via The Presurfer)
Another web widget I have to add to my blog to stay cool? No, it's another moustache-growing contest, organized to support "The Institute of Cancer Research's national campaign to raise awareness and funding for male cancers". What do moustaches have to do with "male cancers"? Don't ask. Why did I say "another"? Because the biennial World Beard and Moustache Championships are coming to Carson City, Nevada, November 1st. Of course some media have already given this man the title of "World's Longest Moustache" (at least those who paid him $5 to take his picture).
posted by wendell at 1:02 AM PST - 13 comments

It's Not What You Say, It's The Way That You Say It: George Bernard Shaw famously remarked that every time an Englishman opens his mouth it's guaranteed that another Englishman will despise him. This website offers a motley and unintentionally hilarious collection of the many, ever-growing pronunciations of the English language. The variety is so wide you could almost be listening to different languages. But is a particular accent still an anti-democratic barrier, strictly revealing your position on the socio-geographic ladder, as it was in the days Nancy Mitford discussed U and non-U vocabulary? Or have upper-class accents in the U.K. and U.S. (note the Boston Brahmin samples), once coveted and preferred, now become the opposite: unforgivable impediments? Does posh speech exist in Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand as it does in the U.K. and U.S.? In other words: Does it still matter? (Quicktime Audio for main and fourth link; Real Audio for third.)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 10:21 PM PST - 50 comments

CIO Magazine reports estimates that by the end of 2004 one in 10 IT jobs at U.S. IT companies and one in 20 at non-IT companies will move offshore. And yet, as it turns out...the "savings" that these companies are touting are largely imaginary. (more inside)
posted by dejah420 at 9:51 PM PST - 20 comments

Upcoming.org is a collaborative event calendar that looks like it's going to be interesting. (Reviewed here by some guy.)
posted by oissubke at 3:00 PM PST - 14 comments

A 44-year-old Buddhist priest completed a seven-year, 24,800-mile running ritual on Thursday in Japan. The grueling ritual is performed by the gyoja, or "Marathon Monks," of the Tendai School of Buddhism at Mount Hiei. The ritual began in the year 831 with the monk So-o, and involves periods of running, walking, and chanting and praying to the Japanese deity Fudo Myo-o.
posted by homunculus at 1:24 PM PST - 8 comments

Garret Hardin and his wife Jane were found dead last Thursday in their house of Santa Barbara (California), presumably a double suicide. His 1968 essay Tragedy of the Commons (a critique of both communism and laissez-faire capitalism in the light of natural resources constrains) was one of the most widely known works of this expert in population and ecology. Garret was 88 and Jane was 81 and both were in poor health. Last week celebrated their 62nd anniversary. They were members of the Hemlock Society (now know as End-of-Life Choices).
posted by samelborp at 12:14 PM PST - 11 comments

US soldier kills rare tiger in Iraq zoo
...during a drunken night of revelry involving - you guessed it - feeding the animals. Geez, this occupation gets better every day.
posted by mapalm at 11:25 AM PST - 98 comments

Wrong moves, right moves As the occupation of Iraq starts to look more like Lebanon, the Illinois contrasts the fallacious tragedy of forging a police force from infantry, and contrasts that with the MP's from the 223rd. The infantry is trained for full-scale war. Infantry soldiers are taught to meet any force, or any threat of force, with overwhelming counter-force. This mindset wins wars, as proved by the rapid defeat of the Iraqi military during the April invasion. But it poses a huge problem during post-war peacekeeping, as demonstrated in Fallujah on September 12--and in late April, when the infantry fired on a large crowd of unarmed protestors in Fallujah, killing 13. more inside...
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 10:37 AM PST - 7 comments

For all you pirates out there: The history of the necktie.
Get it? as though it were "talk like a businessman day" for pirates.
posted by magikeye at 9:47 AM PST - 6 comments

Welcome to the International archive of pants cars. Why would anyone do this to a jag?
posted by srboisvert at 7:01 AM PST - 17 comments

Japanese schoolgirl watch. [Safe for work]
posted by anathema at 5:57 AM PST - 30 comments

It's not too early to think about Hallowe'en. This year, why not go as Dr. Zira?
posted by plinth at 4:39 AM PST - 5 comments

The Aletheia Forum's searing critique of post-modernism When faced with moral questions, post modernism turns to invention but not truth for answer. The result are insane inventions like totalitarianism. Hence "the deep affinity, the holding hands under the table between postmodern intellectuals and totalitarian regimes."
posted by gregb1007 at 3:03 AM PST - 24 comments

Eight women and children killed by US bombing in Afghanistan. Nothing on CNN or BBC so far. An MSNBC/AP report describes the victims as "tribesmen", others described them only as "gypsies".
posted by Eloquence at 2:53 AM PST - 19 comments

Lemurama - chances are you didn't know much about lemurs. I know certainly didn't. Learn lemur lore and more in this fascinating look into the secret lives of these winsome critters. (flash alert! ~ via pya)
posted by madamjujujive at 9:20 PM PST - 14 comments

Are Omega-3 oils an effective treatment for Clinical Depression and Bipolar Disorder? This doctor thinks so and the data seems to support his theory. Several studies are going at this time. So why isn't it used more widely in treatment for mood disorders? Do doctors see it as junk science? Or is there another reason?
posted by echolalia67 at 6:02 PM PST - 24 comments

Avast there, me hearties, and listen to some tales of Pirate Utopias! Ar-Harr!!!
posted by carter at 5:19 PM PST - 2 comments

Gene Stories. "If your parents kept on having children, they’d have to visit the maternity hospital another million billion times to stand a chance of producing another child with your genes" (unless you're an identical twin of course).
posted by lola at 4:58 PM PST - 5 comments

So what's more scary than pirates? How about Mimes? Or '60s San Francisco Rock Bands? How about some guys that were BOTH? Ladies and gentlemen, a band that couldn't get a hit no matter how much Todd Rundgren tried to help... THE HELLO PEOPLE!!!
posted by wendell at 4:56 PM PST - 12 comments

How bananas grow. And other photography from Hong Kong.
posted by yoga at 4:22 PM PST - 7 comments

Everything you'd need to know about American Television (almost), including why certain episodes in a season suddenly feature a really exciting plotline, a crossover with another show or a movie star and why that period is called sweeps. Comforting to know that it isn't just in the UK that no one is watching TV on a Saturday night. [via tvtattle]
posted by feelinglistless at 4:07 PM PST - 6 comments

Tell me, maties... Who was the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe? Who stole more treasure than he could carry from the Spanish pig-dogs? Aye, the most famous pirate of all, Sir Francis Drake! Some say he even invaded British Colombia with the world's first steam-powered ship...
posted by kaibutsu at 3:03 PM PST - 6 comments

The Late Graham Chapman and the curse of Yellowbeard. Yar, don't be making fun of a pirate captain, even a fictional one. The curse of the film eventually claimed the lives of actors Graham Chapman, Madeline Kahn, Peter Cook, James Mason, Spike Milligan and Marty Feldman - the only one of them who died while filming the actual movie. Harry Nilsson wrote an unused ditty for the flick and soon visited Davy Jones' locker. It didn't exactly do wonders for the careers of Cheech and Chong or Martin Hewitt, who played Yellowbeard's son. Watch it and feel like you too have been cursed. (More Inside, Yar!)
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:41 PM PST - 22 comments

Human chess on a city-block scale. Giant chess games, played by international masters, using humans as pieces and city blocks as the board squares. Another game is in the works for New York next year, and the organizer is preparing to hold a similar game in San Francisco next month. Plus, bonus stories from the front line: "Black Queen's Bishop gets call on cell phone, ordering him to move South. We note that the Black Queen has apparently moved from her position at c7. We appear to be on the attack! I eagerly await my own orders to move."
posted by majcher at 2:36 PM PST - 14 comments

In a British Parliamentary by-election yesterday, there was a surprise upset. It had little to do with the candidacy, however, of Alan Howling Lord Hope (59 crucial votes), current leader of the Monster Raving Loony Party. The Party was founded by the very late Lord Sutch, whose current political activity is unknown. Besides the current California circus, we yanks haven't had a good "hampaign" since this man (we're overdue).
posted by moonbird at 1:59 PM PST - 4 comments

Just think of it as the world's biggest colonic. Hurricanes: Death, destruction and good for the environment? From the WaPo. "A hurricane can dump five to 15 inches of fresh water on a place that desperately needs it, replenishing the aquifer, Marks says. It can also clean out clogged-up and polluted bodies of water. "It flushes out all the garbage," he says. "It cleans out the plumbing, so to speak."
posted by beatnik808 at 1:57 PM PST - 5 comments

Sail ho! "In the spring of 1788, the original Lady Washington sailed into the northwest waters, becoming the first American vessel to make landfall on the west coast of what would one day become the United States...Launched in 1989, the Lady Washington is a full-scale replica of the first American vessel to explore the Pacific Northwest Coast." Any tall ships in your local area? Now I'm in the mood for some Barrett's Privateers or Canadee-I-O .
posted by OneSmartMonkey at 1:50 PM PST - 2 comments

"Never mind manoeuvres, always go straight at 'em!" Such was the Advice of Lord Nelson to Jack Aubrey. Today seems a good day to suggest the works of Patrick O'Brian before the Russell Crowe film potentially soils his good name. Aubrey is a captain of the Royal Navy and "the particular friend" of Stephen Maturin, naturalist, surgeon, spy. Those starting the 20 volume series may need a dictionary. Given the day, I should mention the duo did sail under a Letter of Marque when times were tough. More Inside
posted by yerfatma at 1:25 PM PST - 11 comments

My vote for best sentence of the year: "I did not have financial relations with Halliburton." Though I would have preferred the wording "that company" to Halliburton.
posted by coolgeek at 1:12 PM PST - 26 comments

Avast ye scurvy dogs! Perhaps ye'll be needing a glossary to get you by on this fine Day o' the talkin' o pirates. Perhaps you'll be wanting to know about Wee Jim Hawkins. Mayhap you're looking for something to fly up the mizzenmast or else something to hang on that lanky plank of yours. Or perhaps you'd like something saltier, by way of bad anime. [Arr, Safe for the poop deck]
posted by Ogre Lawless at 1:06 PM PST - 1 comment

Avast matey, turn ye old computer into a Pirate Radio Station. And if you're looking for pirate radio, don't forget to check the Pirate Radio Logs DataBase
posted by Outlawyr at 12:47 PM PST - 1 comment

Eyes Hurt? Wavy,Strained.Stressed get some Sun!
posted by Niahmas at 12:24 PM PST - 5 comments

Treasure hoarding bastards to the starboard bow, Mr. Christian! While they laid off millions and millions of workers, and starting moving jobs to offshore providers, the rich got richer. According to the new The Forbes 400, the aggregate net worth of the nation's wealthiest 400 citizens leapt 10% in the past year, to $955 billion. Meanwhile, minimum wage hasn't been raised since 1997.
posted by dejah420 at 12:15 PM PST - 72 comments

The Gooberstory... an award-winning Flash mini-epic, cute/gorgeous/moving in a Lion King sorta way. Free up a few quiet minutes to enjoy the whole thing, both sight and sound. Also mirrored here. (Found at The Presurfer.)
posted by Tubes at 11:40 AM PST - 7 comments

"The first time I met June was backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, and I got on my knees and told her that I was going to marry her some day. We were both married to someone else at the time. Ring of Fire - June wrote that song for me, because that's the way our love affair was. We fell madly in love and worked together all the time." The Guardian's got Johnny Cash's final interview.
posted by Ufez Jones at 10:02 AM PST - 10 comments

Spasmodica There have been some unusual homemade characters popping up, but I thought the names and descriptions for these were unusually clever. For example: Chestaire, who "secretly wishes he had more hair (on his head)." Or Jacques Heepoe ("the 's' is silent") the hippo who is "an avid tonette player".

Hey, Kelly Osborne owns one. And if you're out of work like me, the creator is open to swaps. Sweet.
posted by sparky at 9:09 AM PST - 9 comments

Arrr, snuggled contraband! What truth be there in these pirate legends? They be misheard, says I.
posted by arto at 8:58 AM PST - 5 comments

E.T. and God. Physicist Paul Davies explores the question of what impact the discovery of life elsewhere in the universe would have on religion on Earth.
posted by homunculus at 8:52 AM PST - 37 comments

Mitsi Kato's fifth-grade class at Roosevelt Elementary in San Leandro listened to Radiohead and drew pictures of what the music suggested to them.
posted by Atom12 at 7:53 AM PST - 29 comments

A memorial service was held today for Anna Lindh, the Swedish foreign minister that was murdered last week. The swedish police have arrested a suspect. The man, a neo-nazi, was filmed on video, moments before the murder.

The service was broadcast live on television in Denmark Finland, Norway and Sweden.

An odd twist in the story is that the man had met crown princess Madeleine in a bar and that they hang out in the same social circles in Stockholm (last link in swedish).
posted by hoskala at 7:47 AM PST - 17 comments

Slim Dusty - Australian country music icon - passes on. You know him - "There's nothing so lonesome, morbid or drear, than to stand in the bar of the pub with no beer."
posted by GrahamVM at 6:30 AM PST - 4 comments

Monopoly Stats. Now you can play the odds [via boingboing.net]
posted by srboisvert at 6:02 AM PST - 11 comments

Avast, ye scurvy dogs, wi' a good wind, we'll have naught to do but sing 'til we strike land again!
posted by headspace at 5:59 AM PST - 4 comments

Hey man to you too. I am not the Tony Howks that skates. In fact I am not even Tony Howks. Such is the extent of your error.
posted by Aaorn at 5:23 AM PST - 44 comments

Today is the 30th anniversary of the death of Gram Parsons (famous, of course, for the corpse's subsequent adventures). Read a long bio starting here, a small interview, or page through one of his notebooks and the guestbook that sits in his last hotel room.
posted by transient at 4:55 AM PST - 17 comments

Purple carrots are to be sold by a UK supermarket. But it's orange carrots that are the gimmick. Most wild carrots are purple or white. Orange carrots were created by patriotic 16th Century Dutch farmers from a mutant variety, to match their national colour.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 4:39 AM PST - 17 comments

Arr: Swashbuckler's Cove! What truth be there in pirate legends, me hearties? Ha-Harr! Know ye of pirate lassies? Recall ye the bygone days of offshore pirate radio? Should we be a-thanking the Vikings? Arr!
posted by nthdegx at 1:35 AM PST - 14 comments

It's talk like a pirate day all the world over, even for kids.
posted by mathowie at 12:03 AM PST - 71 comments

David Garland's disturbing new book addresses the question why there are so many more people in jail in America and Britain than anywhere else... Its broader concern is with "cultures of control," how societies treat deviance and violence and whom they single out for what treatment. Here are some facts about skyrocketing imprisonment... There are approximately two million people in jail in America today, 2,166,260 at last count: more than four times as many people as thirty years ago. It is the largest number in our history... [and] between four and ten times the incarceration rate of any civilized country in the world... Twelve percent of African-American men between twenty and thirty-four are currently behind bars (the highest figure ever recorded by the Justice Department) compared to 1.6 percent of white men of comparable ages. And according to the same source, 28 percent of black men will be sent to jail in their lifetime... It was not until crime rates had already leveled off that incarceration rates began their steady, year-by-year climb. Between 1972 and 1992, while the population of America's prisons grew and grew, the crime rate as a whole continued at the same level, unchanged. Jerome S. Bruner reviews The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society for The New York Review of Books, as does Austin Sarat in the American Prospect.
posted by y2karl at 7:14 PM PST - 9 comments

Man held for threat vs. Kobe accuser (MSNBC)
If this guy was looking for his fifteen minutes then the timer just started.
posted by fenriq at 6:30 PM PST - 1 comment

Magnatune is a killer new record label that is doing everything a cutting-edge record label should be doing. They offer music from a wide range of genres that you can download, stream, and listen to, but like shareware, you only buy stuff you like after trying it out first. The label splits profits with artists 50-50, and even offers a sliding scale when buying through paypal. After paying for an album, you get both high quality MP3 and uncompressed WAV files for download.
posted by mathowie at 4:48 PM PST - 40 comments

Isabel Blog. WVEC in Hampton Roads, Virginia creates a blog for Hurricane Isabel, and allows users to submit content. Users respond with pictures and stories that are a lot more interesting than what the media has to report...
posted by insomnia_lj at 4:34 PM PST - 14 comments

Best 404 of the Week
posted by Captain Ligntning at 4:03 PM PST - 24 comments

Where is our money going? According to the Congressional Budget Office, not only is the Bush administration asking for 87 billion dollars to cover Iraqi reconstruction, but they're also unable to account for 2.5 billion of the 4 billion dollars that they're spending per month in Iraq.
posted by bshort at 2:37 PM PST - 33 comments

DUKWs have been around since WWII, and are basically boats with wheels. Schwimmwagens have also been around since then, but they're basically a waterproof car with a propeller, like the 1960's Amphicar. Both are kinda slow in the water. The only cool looking amphibious vehicles that could reach a decent speed in the water have been in James Bond movies. Not any more...
posted by badstone at 2:33 PM PST - 10 comments

Meet Adrian Lamo, the so-called Homeless Hacker. He surrendered to the FBI Tuesday after breaking into the NYTimes intranet, and now he's speaking out to anyone who'll listen.
posted by Yelling At Nothing at 2:20 PM PST - 17 comments

the dynamic AMAZING artwork of Norman Saunders. PULP ART to die for
Early works, Paperbacks, Men's Magazines, Comics, Pulps, TOPPS trading cards - including mars attacks, batman and wacky packs, heck even a spoof diploma. this site which is maintained by his son, publishes the painter's entire lifetime of extremely significant pop-cultural work. Packed with pages and pages of art ...Really amazing and quite something.
posted by Peter H at 2:17 PM PST - 8 comments

Can we ever 'Get Back' to 'Let it Be'? A new version of the Beatles' last album will be released in November. Doubtless it'll sound great to Paul and Ringo, but will we be able to appreciate the raw, un-Spectorized sound, or is 33 years too big a wall of sound to overcome?
posted by soyjoy at 2:03 PM PST - 42 comments

The Postwar Post Abi Berman takes a look at stories by Washington Post reporters--chiefly Walter Pincus--who consistently penned stories during the war that are developing increasing currency now that the truth about the post-war situation is getting out. The problem? The Post buried these stories in the back, but Pincus is joining the growing chorus of journalists decrying their employers' suspect war-time editorial policies. via Joe Connason's blog
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 1:40 PM PST - 4 comments

Hurricanes really suck. Luckily our friends at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association have posted a FAQ to answer our questions. No matter how moronic the questions are.
posted by patrickje at 1:38 PM PST - 15 comments

Iakov Levi analyzes history and literature using a very Freudian approach.
Some highlights:
Pinocchio - The Puberty Rite of a Puppet
Medusa, the Female Genital and the Nazis
Killing God: From the Assassination of Moses to the Murder of Rabin
Without Borders: The Borderline Case of United Europe
::warning! geocities links!::
posted by anastasiav at 1:20 PM PST - 3 comments

And I was really looking forward to those wide leather seats... Looks like JetBlue sold out, and created a dossier on YOU in the process!!
posted by matty at 12:39 PM PST - 21 comments

"They have no business debating the efficacy of gay marriages, any more than they should be debating the pullout of troops from South Korea" North of Detroit, a county commissioner and avowed Christian Conservative pushed a resolution supporting an amendment to the Michigan state constitution, declaring marriage to be a strictly man-and-woman affair. It passed in Oakland County's Board by a narrow margin. But the county executive, a longtime prominent conservative, won't let it go without a fight, and says that with an urban county seat, Pontiac, they should have better things to do-- like their jobs. Is a county board seat an appropriate forum to push another agenda, or should they be more concerned with fixing roads and economy? Does such a resolution at such a low level of goverment even mean anything? Meanwhile, some couples are saying heck-with-it and making that trip 'cross the Ambassador Bridge.
posted by marzenie99 at 11:41 AM PST - 14 comments

"Comrades! As we clip our belts and prepare to cleave our forces for the difficult anabasis ahead, never forget the dike that is our ultimate goal. Remain here, unbending, until morning. But when the call goes out, be fast! Consult not your copemates, for such oversight shall screen our transparent objectives. And finally, never forget we have aught to lose!" --General Antonin Contronym [More Inside]
posted by rusty at 10:29 AM PST - 18 comments

The Haida Art of Bill Reid. Be sure to check out the links just under his name, along with the bestiary and the gallery, and read the story of raven and the first men, on display at the University of British Columbia’s wonderful Anthropology Museum (of which you can take a virtual tour) flash&quicktime. You can see more of Bill Reid’s work, and that of other West Coast first nations artists, at this commercial gallery. Finally, visit The Respect to Bill Reid Pole (The timeline is particularly fascinating.) flash req'd.
posted by stonerose at 9:33 AM PST - 6 comments

College Cost Crisis (pdf alert) Tuition at universities continue to mount. This recent Congressional report chronicles this increase- but places the blame squarely on the Universities. Do you buy it?
posted by SandeepKrishnamurthy at 9:25 AM PST - 43 comments

Learn How to Make Change. Having never had to work retail and wanting to learn bartending, I found the FunBrain Change Maker to be a useful game where the player calculates the change given for a money purchase.
posted by johnnydark at 9:10 AM PST - 18 comments

Car clamped? Angry with politicans? Living in London or Kent, UK? Call... Angle Grinder Man!
"I may not be able to single-handedly and totally cast off the repressive shackles of a corrupt government - but I can cut off your wheel-clamps for you."
posted by Mwongozi at 7:13 AM PST - 9 comments

A history of UK Punk Rock from 1976-79. "Featuring an A-Z of punk bands from Adam and The Ants to The Sex Pistols to X Ray Spex, fanzines, punk girls, rare record sleeves, audio clips, fashion, punk rock lyrics, interviews and loads of pictures." It's not all about the Sex Pistols.
posted by archimago at 7:02 AM PST - 48 comments

After calling our concerns Hysteria and saying we've been Duped by those who are ideologically opposed to the Patriot Act, Ashcroft Now Says the FBI has not sought a single record from a library or business under a part of the Patriot Act widely criticized as opening Americans' reading habits or personal information to undue government scrutiny.
After a Phone Call to the Head of the American Library Assoc, he promised to declassify a report on how often the agency has sought information from public libraries under the USA Patriot Act.
Congressman Bernie Sanders Says who has authored legislation that would amend section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, welcomed reports today that Attorney General Ashcroft, after months of pressure from Congress and national civil liberty and privacy organizations, has agreed to disclose to the public how Section 215 has been used.
posted by Blake at 6:19 AM PST - 18 comments

Project 312. 'We broadcast our vision of equal educational opportunity through original photography that challenges negative stereotypes while creating positive reflections for growth and self-discovery. '
(Related news story: Photos Open Doors for Inner City D.C. Kids).
posted by plep at 6:04 AM PST - 4 comments

Dinner With Typhoid Mary Meet the woman behind the name - she's not the monster you think she was, she didn't kill as many as you thought and learn about her 26 years of exile.
posted by Dome-O-Rama at 4:36 AM PST - 10 comments

Tripping on iboga: author Daniel Pinchbeck describes his experience with the psychedelic drug tabernanthe iboga, which is used in the rituals of the Bwiti in West Africa. Ironically, the active chemical in iboga, the indole alkaloid ibogaine, is said to be useful in the treatment of drug addiction (PDF.)
posted by homunculus at 1:36 AM PST - 16 comments

It's OK to Talk Like a Pirate, Just Don't Pirate Words!
from Dan Gillmor and David Weinberger, found via The Boingers, who disabled comments.
posted by wendell at 1:27 AM PST - 19 comments

I don't know about you guys, but I can't think of any better way for Californians to express their outrage at terrorism than to put a gaudy, flag-draped licence plate on their cars. (And if it includes a bear who just ate the huge head of an eagle, or maybe a group of eagles imitating the Village People, all the better!)
posted by delfuego at 6:29 PM PST - 54 comments

Surgery without anesthesia is something most of us are glad is now a relic of the past, but yoga teacher Yonah Offner decided it was a great opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of practicing Pranayama.
posted by 4easypayments at 5:59 PM PST - 8 comments

Oh Why Oh Why Does The Beeb Have All The Best Babes? Oh all right, I confess that sometimes it's not only the news I watch the BBC for. I admit I pay more attention to the Middle East crisis when it's reported in loco by Kate Adie or presented by Anita Macnaught! As for Keshini Navaratnam, I have the sick delusion she reads the news only for me... Yes, you can drag me away now, thank you. (Parting remark, heard before the ambulance doors shut: "When will you Yanks ever offer such intelligent crumpet to the world, huh?")
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:32 PM PST - 45 comments

Up, up and away... the mysterious Indian rope trick.
posted by moonbird at 5:02 PM PST - 14 comments

Crispy New Freestyle (warning .wmv file)....but it's funny....strong language also.
posted by oliver_crunk at 3:56 PM PST - 14 comments

"Mostly, we've been watching the president's rhetoric spring leaks in Iraq and Afghanistan. So perhaps we haven't paid enough attention to how many holes have popped open in his domestic socks. Joblessness that was supposed to be stanched by the Bush tax cuts. Urban food kitchens overwhelmed by the demand from people who are working but underemployed and end up out of money three weeks into the month. A domestic Peace Corps program (AmeriCorps) that is praised publicly by the president as admirable volunteerism but is being starved of money by the White House and congressional Republicans. But, still, you wouldn't think he would stiff children and their schooling. That's maybe the most disappointing thing this president has done here at home."

Looks like the "No Child Left Behind/'accountability is the true foundation of education reform'/Texas education miracle" is just another Texas tall tale.
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 1:50 PM PST - 62 comments

Forget scholarships and pell grants, there's a new way to pay for college. For all the nubile college co-eds out there wondering how they are going to pay for their schooling with student aid being under-funded and costs increasing, strip clubs in Windsor, Ontario and in Detroit, Michigan are paying the way. The clubs will pay $1,500 to $2,000 in educational expenses per year to women or men who work three or four seven-hour shifts in their clubs. The money is on top of the $10 an hour that dancers are paid; in addition to cash they get from tips and private dances.

There's a catch though. In addition to jiggling more than their required class work, the dancers must also maintain a healthy, robust and voluptuous B average to receive the financial aid. Obviously this program is sexist in more ways than one, but Robert Katzman, owner of the clubs offering the program feels that "A girl who wants to better herself, who wants to progress, makes for a higher level entertainer."
posted by DragonBoy at 12:38 PM PST - 38 comments

Angle Grinder Man Superhero or Vigilante?
posted by anastasiav at 12:35 PM PST - 19 comments

Top this, MacGyver A college freshman and inveterate tinkerer followed Philo Farnsworth's designs to build a workable fusion reactor out of junk. via Macintouch
posted by adamrice at 11:17 AM PST - 26 comments

Given the name of this product, it seemed a natural to post.
posted by Danf at 11:13 AM PST - 32 comments

Simpsonsmath.com: a guide for teachers to engage math-o-phobes with animated fun. "Mmmmmm, pi."
posted by serafinapekkala at 11:11 AM PST - 5 comments

The Democratic Party is blogging. "What do you mean Tom Delay dropped me from his blogroll?"
posted by owillis at 10:13 AM PST - 10 comments

Goddess : The Classical Mode, at the Met. Ancient Greek fashion and haute couture interpretations. (via fashioNroll)
posted by taz at 10:09 AM PST - 4 comments

Has anyone heard anything more about the State Dept's Oil and Energy Working Group?
posted by ahimsakid at 9:28 AM PST - 16 comments

The Gospel of Supply Side Jesus
It's not Friday yet but this is great entertainment! Hope you laugh as much as I did!
posted by nofundy at 9:17 AM PST - 27 comments

216 years ago today, the constitution of the United States was signed with "Unanimous Consent"* from the thirteen states. In the years since, many have used the other writings of those governmental framers to interpret the constitution. To make that task easier, the University of Chicago Press offers The Framer's Constitution, an exhaustively annotated document that includes not just references to those other writings, but the complete texts as well. The print version is 3200 pages and costs a pretty penny, but thanks to the Liberty Fund, you can access it on-line for free.
posted by ewagoner at 8:35 AM PST - 29 comments

"They're like little electronic campfires." Nixie tubes were the face of atomic age electronics. Now, even though they are obsolete, there are enough left to have found new life as art with hobbyists. There is something aesthetically pleasing about typeset digital indicators that glow and move fore and aft as the digits change. What better way to watch the hours of your life slip by than on your very own nixie clock?
posted by jester69 at 8:33 AM PST - 14 comments

Vote Set for Internet Tax Moratorium "The U.S. House of Representatives today is expected to vote overwhelmingly to extend and expand the five-year-old Internet tax moratorium." Cool.
posted by MrMoonPie at 7:51 AM PST - 15 comments

The Little Mermaid Explodes. This is only the latest in a long series of indignities suffered by Denmark's national symbol. Why are people so into this sort of thing?
posted by alms at 6:44 AM PST - 21 comments

Drift - dancer without a body. An "interpassive" flash piece by Koert van Mensvoort. [Via Milk and Cookies.]
posted by homunculus at 11:11 PM PST - 8 comments

differences. [Note: Flash]
posted by crunchland at 8:48 PM PST - 23 comments

Unnanounced art in Home Depot. Artist Stefanie Nagorka has created sculptures in ten states in the last year, and aims to bring her work to Home Depots in all fifty in the coming 18 months. She uses materials, mainly concrete slabs and bricks, from the stores, assembles the sculptures in the aisle, snaps a picture for herself, and leave the rest there for customers to enjoy or puzzle over - and for the employees to disassemble and re-stock. I think I like it. (From this month's ReadyMade.)
posted by majcher at 7:40 PM PST - 89 comments

Cool War: "In searching for evidence of the potential danger posed by Iraq, the Bush Administration need have looked no further than the well-kept record of U.S. manipulation of the sanctions program since 1991. If any international act in the last decade is sure to generate enduring bitterness toward the United States, it is the epidemic suffering needlessly visited on Iraqis via U.S. fiat inside the United Nations Security Council. Within that body, the United States has consistently thwarted Iraq from satisfying its most basic humanitarian needs, using sanctions as nothing less than a deadly weapon, and, despite recent reforms, continuing to do so. Invoking security concerns -- including those not corroborated by U.N. weapons inspectors -- U.S. policymakers have effectively turned a program of international governance into a legitimized act of mass slaughter." [More inside]
posted by stonerose at 7:07 PM PST - 34 comments

The Quest announced by LitKicks marries sudden fiction (and poetry, and nonfiction) workshop dynamics to a survivor-like competitive format, starting October 1, with six winners to be published in a book featuring the best work from the Quest. It's open to all, costs $20 to enter, and requires a free membership in the LitKicks site, which is a thriving online literary community as it is. More info in the FAQ. I think this may work better for me than NaNoWriMo would.
posted by xian at 5:41 PM PST - 4 comments

You've got to be impressed by Smith College's Brown Fine Arts Center. Not only do they have traveling shows, permanent works, and student installations, they've got one thing few other museums can boast: Restrooms As Functional Art. Check out the photos to see the different ways the men's and women's rooms became works in an of themselves.
posted by mathowie at 5:39 PM PST - 13 comments

Gamelan, the traditional percussive orchestras of Java and Bali, has many contemporary ensembles in America. Why don't you take a seat and play along?

P.S. No thread on Gamelan would be complete without reference to the Ramayana Monkey Chant and the story behind it!
posted by moonbird at 4:28 PM PST - 23 comments

NASA's Official 'Galileo Dies' Page. Galileo is set to crash into Jupiter on Sunday. Responsible for many great images and tons of information, Galileo served well. Find a complete history of the Galileo mission here. Also, don't forget to watch the End of Mission webcast this Sunday at approx. 2 PM EST here.
posted by Ufez Jones at 2:17 PM PST - 7 comments

The Cybersexual Adventures of J-Dogg
J-Dogg: Oh yeah, aight. Aight, I put on my robe and wizard hat.
BritneySpears27: Oh, I like to play dress up.
J-Dogg: Me too baby.
BritneySpears27: I kiss you softly on your chest.
J-Dogg: I cast Lvl. 3 Eroticism. You turn into a real beautiful woman.
BritneySpears27: Hey...
J-Dogg: I meditate to regain my mana, before casting Lvl. 8 Cock of the Infinite.
(via Harpers)
posted by Ljubljana at 2:09 PM PST - 29 comments

Stephen King, literary genius? "That they could believe that there is any literary value there or any aesthetic accomplishment or signs of an inventive human intelligence is simply a testimony to their own idiocy," says Harold Bloom. Mr. King to be awarded an honorary National Book Award for lifetime achievement, joining the likes of Roth, Updike, and Bellow.
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 1:12 PM PST - 81 comments

Testosterone accelerates heart disease in men, according to a new Australian study. So is this something unavoidable, or would it help to reject Mark McGwire's favorite performance-enhancer, or avoid all anabolic steroids, or quit rooting so loud for sports teams, or stop getting into silly fights with each other?
posted by soyjoy at 12:51 PM PST - 20 comments

Microsoft Buys-off Foreign Governments. Can you say "Bribery?"
posted by ZenMasterThis at 12:13 PM PST - 17 comments

Have we arrived at the end of the two state solution? Tom Friedman, Ehud Barak, various Palestinian leaders, and a growing number of Palestinians on the ground, are starting to wonder if a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine is becoming impossible. The idea is gaining momentum on the ground in Palestine, as the contiguous area needed for a Palestinian state becomes less likely. Are we heading back to the days of "one (hu)man, one vote" campus activism a la the anti-aparthied movement?
posted by laz-e-boy at 12:05 PM PST - 13 comments

"Vancouver has opened North America's first legal shooting gallery for drug addicts." -for all you poor saps where guns are a part of your everyday vocabulary, NO that's not a place where drug addicts shoot guns.- this is a pilot program supported by all levels of government in BC and in Canada, where addicts can inject drugs in a supervised, clean environment. The purpose of which ultimately I think is to bridge the huge gap between "them" and "us" and possibly shrink the distance addicts have to reach through for help. Does my heart bleed for "them"? Absolutely not. You choose your weapon, you suffer the consequences. But what this could lead to is less addicts and therefore less reason for addicts to commit crimes to support their addictions...
posted by giantkicks at 11:21 AM PST - 71 comments

The World Championships of Lawnmower Racing
posted by arto at 10:33 AM PST - 7 comments

Foetus, log, yearner, soldier, freefaller or starfish? And note that the percentages only add up to 89%, which either means that 11% of us are vampires that hang upside down from our ankles, or there's more ways of sleeping than I was aware of.
posted by yhbc at 10:26 AM PST - 45 comments

Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness, a collection of weird technical documentation illustrations, oddly enough.
via Macintouch
posted by jpburns at 10:19 AM PST - 7 comments

It turns out most Instant Messaging at work isn't about work. No, really. It's mostly personal junk, including "making sexual advances." Wow, who would have thought? Is this any different from receiving email from a co-worker labeled "[FWD]: [fwd]: [re]: [fwd]: FUNNY STORY"?
posted by ilsa at 10:01 AM PST - 16 comments

Cute Girls Only - The only dating web site where they actually reject the ugly chics. via [linkswarm.com]
posted by banished at 9:38 AM PST - 47 comments

Junglewalk
If you need a picture of an alpaca, some video of a nudibranch or audio of a nightjar.
posted by johnny novak at 9:37 AM PST - 2 comments

Don't kill p2p because of a few bad eggs Peer-to-peer networks can be used for legal or illegal purposes. So can the telephone, a newspaper or a church's bulletin board. People are responsible for their own actions and there are laws designed to prosecute people for illegal actions.
The legal uses of P2P are rarely heard, because they are not 'sexy' or political. P2P allows artists and listeners to connect directly. The proliferation of unique works created and distributed on the Internet is staggering.(not the best letter to the editor, but the best I could find)

---

Ok, so in theory, p2p apps can be used for purposes other than downloading coprighted music and porn. But seriously, does anyone actually use it for legitimate purposes? What do you search for on Kazaa/Gnutella/BitTorrent that is useful, legal, and interesting?
posted by mecran01 at 8:23 AM PST - 42 comments

Classic Computer Magazine Archive. [via codemode.org]
posted by soundofsuburbia at 8:05 AM PST - 5 comments

The Chromolithographs of E.L. Trouvelot. "Etienne Leopold Trouvelot (1827-1895), a French-born artist and amateur astronomer, spent 15 years observing the heavens and making original drawings from his observations: 'While my aim in this work has been to combine scrupulous fidelity and accuracy in the details, I have also endeavored to preserve the natural elegance and the delicate outlines peculiar to the objects depicted.' To illustrate his observations of celestial objects and phenomena, Trouvelot selected fifteen of his drawings to be reproduced using chromolithography, an illustration process that was at the zenith of its development in the 1880's." Heavens Above is a NYPL exhibit that compares his art and science to contemporary photos by NASA of the same phenomena.
posted by eyebeam at 7:56 AM PST - 8 comments

Republicans for Dean... but not in the way you might think. An interesting op-ed piece by David Brooks on why a Dean candidacy might be good news for the Bush team. (NYTimes, but no registration required.)
posted by UKnowForKids at 7:29 AM PST - 59 comments

NeoWhig: The Smart Party for Smart People ...and, yeah, you too.
Could this be the Third Party that changes history by stealing votes from... well, I don't know, maybe The Hamster for President Campaign? But can you name another political group where YOU can become their vice-Presidential candidate? And don't they have the coolest party logo ever?
It's just refreshing to see some political satire that doesn't mention Bush, Dean or California.
posted by wendell at 2:10 AM PST - 21 comments

Do Cars force us to give up the outdoors? In jail, prisoners are stuck indoors and aren't allowed to go outside except for an hour at most. But are the car-driving residents of the average American suburb consigned to the same fate? "You go from the box garage in the house to the box car, driving down the street, not touching anything or being part of your environment" says Jessica Denevan. [More Inside]
posted by gregb1007 at 12:54 AM PST - 70 comments

Marijuana meets Socialism. Health Canada's government-approved marijuana is apparently not up to snuff, acording to it's first 'patients'. [more inside]
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 12:48 AM PST - 46 comments

Kick A Brit In The Nuts: We've heard enough about anti-Americanism. What about anti-British feeling? Check out the USian website. Is there still a lingering, post-colonial resentment in the U.S., Australia and South Africa? Why not, apparently, in Canada or New Zealand? Is it anti-British, i.e. including the Scots and the Welsh, or just anti-English? Finally, is Usian the best collective noun for citizens of the U.S.A.? Will American eventually become politically incorrect, even though no one calls a Canadian an American? Sorry about so many questions. Me confused European!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 12:32 AM PST - 64 comments

How to win at slots: Cheat "Carmichael is no two-bit slot cheat. Authorities have anointed him one of the best, a master inventor who conspired with an elite group of thieves to steal millions from casinos. "
posted by srboisvert at 11:26 PM PST - 16 comments

300 miles up.
posted by crunchland at 8:45 PM PST - 25 comments

A prankster turns himself into the RIAA:
JH: Hello. I just downloaded some illegal MP3s and my friend told me that the RAII is going to sue everyone who downloads music. What should I do?
RIAA: Hold on just a sec.
posted by Inkslinger at 8:37 PM PST - 25 comments

The Gropenator will have to spin his wheels for awhile: California's Vote Delayed by Court Over Punch Cards. And here's the kicker--it's deja vu all over again, Bizarro stylee: Bush v. Gore Outlives Its Limited Warranty for Use in California

The Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore was meant to be a ticket good for one ride. "Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances," the justices said in their unsigned opinion in 2000, "for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities." Three judges on the federal appeals court in San Francisco, all appointed by Democratic presidents, decided yesterday to use it for another ride anyway.
posted by y2karl at 8:23 PM PST - 6 comments

Verisign modifies the infrastructure of the net to point back to themselves. Verisign has rigged all .com and .net mistyped domains to reroute to their branded search page. This makes them effectively the biggest cybersquatter on the net, and will make it impossible for most spam filters at the network level to operate as well as seriously complicating the lives of network administrators everywhere.
posted by dejah420 at 8:07 PM PST - 63 comments

"I promote using a bicycle instead of a motor vehicle because doing so is kind to the environment, good for the body, and good for the psyche." Ken Kifer, the author of the above statement and much other excellent advice will no longer be updating his lauded web page. Ken was killed while cycling last saturday night by a drunk driver who had been released from jail only 4 hours earlier. The suspect had been incarcerated for a separate drunk driving incident.
posted by jester69 at 8:00 PM PST - 37 comments

Ever get that weird feeling that Sony can do anything? [via Coudal]
posted by kickingtheground at 7:06 PM PST - 36 comments

Freak Show: Jumbo In The New World "In 1903, American inventor Thomas Edison arranged to have an elephant publicly electrocuted in Luna Park. Up to that point Edison, in his bitter campaign to discredit the electrical theories of George Westinghouse, had been content to publicly electrocute cats and dogs. When Topsy, an enraged circus elephant, trampled to death its third trainer in three years, Edison offered to "execute" the animal in a way that would demonstrate once and for all his belief in the dangers of alternating current. The electrocution of this elephant was filmed and apparently the footage can still be viewed at the Coney Island Museum."
posted by quonsar at 5:55 PM PST - 26 comments

...“To be honest, I get sick every time I tell someone I am from Mostar [in Bosnia] and they ask me whether I am from the east or west side of the city (the city is divided into the Bosniak east side and the Croat west side),” said Nino Raspudic. “That is one of the reasons for building a statue of Bruce Lee. We are hoping that someone in the future will say: “I knew Mostar. That is the city with the Bruce Lee statue. If we succeed in that, then I can retire.”
posted by talos at 5:30 PM PST - 6 comments

Singing Eggplants, and an index from Plala. [Flash]
posted by hama7 at 2:50 PM PST - 7 comments

Cryptids Cryptids Cryptids Cryptids Cryptids Cryptids Cryptids FUNGI FUNGI !
posted by moonbird at 2:31 PM PST - 6 comments

Family Guy-The Movie
posted by Espoo2 at 2:01 PM PST - 43 comments

How do you keep track of your president? "I believe everyone should be held responsible for their own personal behavior." -- George Bush. Moveon agrees. They're helping track what was said, who said it, and if it is true.
posted by ?! at 12:48 PM PST - 19 comments

In addition to being the documentation (from the winner's p.o.v.) of the Battle of Hastings, not to mention being the world's first comic strip, the Bayeux Tapestry is the inspiration behind the Historic Tale Construction Kit (note: Flash 6 required). Build your own medieval themed cartoons & email them to friends.
posted by jonson at 12:37 PM PST - 6 comments

Moms Insisting on Licensed Tools. They're cheaply made. They're easily available. They're surreptitiously sold at clandestine "garage sales" and out of the trunks of cars. They are used in more criminal building projects than any other tool. Yes, we're talking about "Saturday Night Drills."
posted by Wet Spot at 11:34 AM PST - 20 comments

"Given the choice, it's better to be viewed as a foot soldier for Bush than a spokeswoman for al-Qaeda." This quote, captured in a USA Today article, came from Fox News spokeswoman Irena Briganti in response to allegations that CNN "was intimidated" by the Bush administration and Fox News, which "put a climate of fear and self-censorship."
posted by FormlessOne at 11:25 AM PST - 37 comments

Welcome to the Electric Town. Akihabara, a shopping district in Japan filled with electronics at duty free prices, can seem a bit imposing. You may never visit it yourself, but others have, and oh, the toys.
posted by moz at 10:50 AM PST - 25 comments

9th Circuit Court blocks California Recall Election because six counties would be using outdated punch-card ballots. Perhaps the court should have paid a visit to the Black Box Voting web site to look at all the problems surfacing with the Electronic Voting machines.
posted by thedailygrowl at 10:42 AM PST - 40 comments

Listen to Mike Oldfield's classic Tubular Bells performed by a Sinclair ZX Spectrum.
And here's a mirror for when Angelfire falls over.
posted by Mwongozi at 10:20 AM PST - 7 comments

Guess the Name - Apparently I was the 10th person to think of Turner & Hooch.
posted by Witty at 9:55 AM PST - 82 comments

Medals of the World. Meticulously listed by country. Loads of images and historical data. Now, someone award me the Danish Order of the Elephant, please.
posted by Ufez Jones at 9:09 AM PST - 3 comments

The Internet is made out of people. Warren Ellis wants to see your face. Once you read the original post, hit the main site to see what the Internet has sent him so far. Does that tickle your fancy? He's done this before; once he asked us to show us the world with our cell phones, and once he asked us to send him video. (Start with those posts, and move forward, and dodge the messed up archives from August.) On the other hand, some people just want pictures of cats.
posted by Bryant at 8:48 AM PST - 9 comments

Check out the new $200 bill.
posted by sierray at 7:55 AM PST - 18 comments

"A wicked noblewoman presides over a decadent court of masked revelers. The most beautiful of waxen automatons is brought to life by a sorceress, her very heart hiding a deadly secret. And then love triumphs, if but for a single moment, before a sudden and terrifying finale. This is the bizarre world of The Princess of Wax".

Limned by descriptors such as "sinister", "ravishing" and "decadent", illustrated by a noted French surrealist painter, and inspired by a real-life fantastical figure, "The Princess of Wax - a Cruel Tale" (web site here), promises to be a satisfyingly twisted modern addition to the cherished fairy tale genre. More >>>
posted by taz at 4:01 AM PST - 9 comments

"We're forecasting a major hurricane for the United States East Coast." said Eric Blake, a specialist at the National Hurricane Center that is just below category 5. Hurricane center forecasters said they expected the storm to hit the East Coast by the end of the week, but added that air currents and other conditions could push it farther north before it makes landfall.
posted by Keyser Soze at 2:05 AM PST - 51 comments

Tanzanian Cartoons.
posted by plep at 1:54 AM PST - 4 comments

Scrambled Text. Tihs jrivascapt let's you puodcre scmbleard txet jsut lkie a ctraien prgpaarah taht kepes ppoipng up all oevr the pclae. "Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."
posted by bobo123 at 10:54 PM PST - 58 comments

Methamphetamine is now a WMD. Well, I guess we should've seen it coming. According to this Salon article, prosecutors across the country are now using the Patriot act to prosecute drug crimes, fraud, and anything involving a bomb. This means any of these people may be detained indefinitely without an attorney. I don't like trailing questions, but I would like to see some constructive and creative posts about what can be done to protest this. It's so blatantly unconstitutional, it's not funny anymore, and I for one am not willing to welcome our new overlords.
posted by condour75 at 9:13 PM PST - 96 comments

Vintage magic posters from 1890 - 1930.
posted by crunchland at 8:42 PM PST - 14 comments

In events not suprising to anyone, the WTO's "development round" ends without agreement. The IHT published an interesting dissent from the leftist hope of poor nations climbing out of poverty by using sustainable agriculture as unrealistic. Likely industrial ag businesses would eventually dominate, just as they did in the developed world.
posted by raaka at 4:30 PM PST - 6 comments

Peruse Purses
posted by srboisvert at 4:23 PM PST - 9 comments

"Newly declassified US intelligence documents say Pakistan helped Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda group to start its operations in Afghanistan in the 1990s and even secretly ran a major terrorist training camp." The declassified documents were obtained and posted as "The Taliban File" by the National Security Archive, and describe the closeness of al Qaeda and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) before the later lost control. [Via the Agonist and Juan Cole.] [More inside.]
posted by homunculus at 1:55 PM PST - 16 comments

Britain, US shelve report on Iraq banned weapons: report We'll keep on looking and we know they will turn up...just you wait and see. And meantime, make sure Congress foots the bill for Iraq needs.
posted by Postroad at 11:54 AM PST - 61 comments

Getting bored with mulletspotting? Not just another laugh-at-the-dated-haircut site... Okay, maybe it is, but it's, er, sweeping out into other entertainment phenomena.
posted by britain at 11:06 AM PST - 10 comments

Neoroscience and wireless communication An apparently non-hysterical warning from scientist Leif Salford, who cautions that by using hand-held cellular devices we're conducting "the largest human biological experiment ever."

According to the Independent (UK) article, it's been proven that microwave radiation opens 'the blood-brain barrier, allowing a protein called albumin to pass into the brain.' Lund's latest work 'goes a step further, showing the process is linked to serious brain damage.'

That in turn causes ... uh, what was I writing about? I forget.

Sorry. Seriously, is there anyone in the room competent to comment on the validity of this warning? (Via Gizmodo)
posted by mojohand at 10:54 AM PST - 15 comments

"If I get a chance, I'll do it again. I think a bear would make a good pet." In a story that shocked Ottawa, an apparently clueless Quebec woodsman kidnaps a black bear cub, dunking it under water and dragging it by its hind leg. Police and wildlife officers force him to surrender the bear, which is released 60 km from its mother. Charges are pending -- definitely for possessing illegal wildlife, definitely, possibly for animal cruelty.
posted by mcwetboy at 10:23 AM PST - 21 comments

Dissent Posters for our troubled times...
posted by thrakintosh at 6:30 AM PST - 22 comments

Mexican World Heritage Cities - a beautiful site (flash) developed by an association of the nine Mexican cities on the world heritage list. In English or Spanish. (via Vigna-Maru)
posted by madamjujujive at 5:14 AM PST - 5 comments

Welcome to VantiyDate.com, the world's most judgemental, shallow dating website.
posted by PenDevil at 4:16 AM PST - 30 comments

Cats
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:04 AM PST - 23 comments

Film Schools obsessed with theory David Weddle complains that in film schools "discussions about movie characters, plots and the human beings who created them are replaced by theories such as semiotics, structuralism, post-structuralism, Marxism, psychoanalytics and neoformalism. [More inside]
posted by gregb1007 at 1:19 AM PST - 45 comments

Poop Stories.
posted by PrinceValium at 11:42 PM PST - 18 comments

Astor Place Rubik's Cube .....for those that have been to Cooper Square in NYC you've surely seen the mysterious cube (scroll down). well, these guys turned that mysterious cube into a Rubik's cube in a prank much like something we've seen on cockeyed.
posted by oliver_crunk at 10:21 PM PST - 10 comments

This interface displays a preview of the fonts active on your system. Could be useful for a quick check on what's what.
posted by bluedaniel at 9:06 PM PST - 32 comments

Have you ever seen a $100,000 bill?
From the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco's Historical Currency Gallery.
posted by crunchland at 8:40 PM PST - 27 comments

"At the center of the universe is a horribly wounded angel. It is nothing anyone would call conscious, and is only in the barest, barest sense of the word still alive. If anything resembling awareness remains, that awareness consists of nothing but an infinite field of gridded black and white squares, a test pattern scattered with dancing dots that shift and jump and blur into one another. This test pattern is useful. " This piece of fiction, which appears on kuro5hin, evokes echoes of Douglas Hoftsadter (Godel, Escher, Bach) and Nancy Willard (Things Invisible To See, Sister Water , and lots of children's books) simultaneously. [more inside]
posted by weston at 7:51 PM PST - 11 comments

Scott McCloud and Clay Shirky are trading ideas on Micropayemnts again. Clay Says user-pays schemes can't simply be restored through minor tinkering with payment systems, because they don't address the cause of that change -- a huge increase the power and reach of the individual creator.. Scott Says micropayments, well, BitPass are here to stay this time.
As a content producer I like the idea, but as a content consumer I'm just not sure yet.
If mefi went Micro, would you pay?
posted by Blake at 5:52 PM PST - 26 comments

Some glitz, glam and glitter: the history and art of "drag."
posted by moonbird at 4:44 PM PST - 4 comments

Thais.it: Magnifico.
posted by hama7 at 4:21 PM PST - 6 comments

Slightly ominous, slightly beautiful collection of ePostcards (and photographs) of Streatham Cemetery, rendered in the subtlest use of Flash I've ever seen (gentle animations on small portions of each image. Be sure to view the cemetery in all four seasons, multiple pix of each.
posted by jonson at 4:14 PM PST - 26 comments

Neuroscience and meditation. "Researchers are making the case that Eastern-style meditation is good not just for your emotional well-being but also for your physical state." This is a fascinating article (NYTM, reg. req.) on the convergence of Buddhist meditation and neuroscience (here's a previous post on the subject.) Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama is in Boston, presiding over a conference between biobehavioral scientists and Buddhists.
posted by homunculus at 10:26 AM PST - 9 comments

Reverend Victoria's NASCAR Garden...
posted by machaus at 9:05 AM PST - 20 comments

Upcoming Epic Film Trilogy, or probably not "Fast-paced and action-packed, the three movies will feature "breathtaking" sequences similar to those of Matrix, with a "grabbing" story line like Rocky, combined with the urban awareness of Eminem's 8-Mile." The upcoming trilogy of movies are about..... soccer (football for the international folks). With this heavy-handed attempt to bring soccer to the mainstream of American audiences and with the press that the WUSA and Major League Soccer has gotten the last few years, why hasn't soccer caught on in the U.S. and what can be done to change this?
posted by graventy at 8:59 AM PST - 26 comments

Just to show that American politicians don't have a monopoly on petty sniping: In Ontario, a press release from the office of the incumbent premier Ernie Eves called the Liberal party leader, Dalton McGuinty, an evil reptilian kitten eater from another planet. (Buffy fans take note.)
posted by Johnny Assay at 8:20 AM PST - 29 comments

McIntyre, Pennsylvania, The Everyday Life Of A Coal Mining Company Town: 1910-1947.
posted by plep at 3:32 AM PST - 3 comments

Arbus reconsidered. The great photographer will be featured at SF MOMA in October, with never-before-seen work. (NYTM, reg. req..)
posted by xowie at 11:56 PM PST - 7 comments

Portugal: Officially the greediest, laziest and most drunken country in the West. What dubious, highly debatable sources of pride do you attribute to your own country?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:39 PM PST - 36 comments

100 years of design.
posted by crunchland at 8:37 PM PST - 6 comments

Tack-O-Rama is an amazing repository of kitsch images. Categories include: celebrities, decor, and food, among many, many others. There's also a spiffy collection of free fonts and clipart.
posted by MrBaliHai at 6:46 PM PST - 11 comments

"In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn't creak."
posted by moonbird at 4:39 PM PST - 15 comments

Old Crank: Vintage Phonographs and Ephemera
posted by hama7 at 3:13 PM PST - 12 comments

Meet the New Bruce Wayne. And why not? Bats has always been a bit psycho anyway...
posted by grabbingsand at 1:17 PM PST - 32 comments

Yellowstone supervolcano threatens world destruction - That's about it, folks: "Volcanologists have been tracking the movement of magma under the park and have calculated that in parts of Yellowstone the ground has risen over seventy centimetres, almost two and a half feet, since 1923, indicating a massive swelling underneath the park. "The impact of a Yellowstone eruption is terrifying to comprehend." says Professor McGuire. "Magma would be flung 50 kilometres into the atmosphere. Within a thousand kilometres virtually all life would be killed by falling ash" The Yellowstone caldera has been acting up in recent months and we're supposedly overdue for the big one. But don't flee to the East coast: A super tidal wave will get you there. I hear Tierra Del Fuego is nice, except for the Ozone Hole problem. Have a nice weekend. Y'all.
posted by troutfishing at 1:16 PM PST - 83 comments

ENJOY KIMONO PHOTO ALBUM Enjoy wearing kimono freely!
posted by Peter H at 12:58 PM PST - 9 comments

Search your TV. TVEyes offers real-time searching of closed captioned television shows, and alerts you through email, IM and wireless messages. The consumer level only provides excerpts, but what a step towards making all sources of information searchable.
posted by dragoon at 12:57 PM PST - 3 comments

CGchannel.com has a brief but fairly informative feature on the two CG effect "set pieces" in the recent movie S.W.A.T. I thought the movie was a quite respectable summer spectacle - the helicopter crash in particular was quite well-done - and it's usually fun and instructive to see how these things are done.
posted by GriffX at 12:44 PM PST - 3 comments

Fernando Pessoa was a Portuguese poet and mastermind. He created and maintained several heteronyms who each had their own distinct writings, went on to lead interesting lives, and even interacted with each other. All in the public eye.

The truth about their existence was only discovered after the death of Pessoa and the subsequent discovery of a trunk containing writings from all of them.
posted by ODiV at 11:32 AM PST - 14 comments

The colour scheme throughout this bright, airy chalet is a light jade green. In outside rooms, like the sun-parlour, chairs and tables are of white plated cane. Here Hitler will read the home and foreign papers which his own air-pilot, Hansel Baur, brings him every day from Berlin before lunch. Homes & Gardens magazine gushes over the Führer's Bavarian pad, circa 1938. (via boingboing)
posted by gottabefunky at 11:19 AM PST - 10 comments

Can't you get along with anyone? Allan Weisbecker, surfer, smuggler, writer, screen writer. A fun read.
posted by rich at 11:09 AM PST - 3 comments

Seeing The Horror. The Digital Journalist has interviewed several photographers about their experiences on September 11, 2001. The video interviews of James Nachtwey and David Handschuh (this man) describing their experiences, will stay with you.
posted by thisisdrew at 11:04 AM PST - 1 comment

How 'bout a little bookish fun. We're cool enough to have our own Action Figure, but did you know librarians star in at least 2 cartoons, Library Girl, the adventures of a library girl and her cat, and the fantastically funny "Unshelved".
We've been Featured in the funny pages numerous times, and have been the subject of a couple funny flash cartoons as well, The Library, a catchy toon [Warning: May stick in your head for hours], and a "Cops" parody "Overdue", featuring the library cops.
We're a Funny Bunch, not just a bunch of ol' ladies.
posted by Blake at 8:06 AM PST - 21 comments

Watch video projected in mid-air. IO2 Technology's ground breaking medium format 27-inch heliodisplay, developed by Mr. Chad Dyner, projects full color streaming video into mid-air. Don't know how I stumbled on this but it looks very cool. Imagine a fully interactive image that allows "a hand or finger to select, navigate and manipulate the image or video as a virtual touchscreen".
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 7:38 AM PST - 20 comments

Not many sites have a high "gee-whiz-neato!" factor anymore. But this one sure does. Can anyone read Hangul to let us know what the site is all about? Or is it better to just let your imagination run with it?
posted by Officeslacker at 6:25 AM PST - 16 comments

12 year old Aboriginal girl described as being "sexually aggressive" by Judge Fred Kovatch in a Saskatchewan court yesterday. Since the girl was raised in an abusive home, the judge concluded that she was partially responsible for three young white men picking her up, giving her beer and sexually assaulting her on a desolate country road.
posted by KathyK at 6:11 AM PST - 65 comments

"Come and knock on my door..." Actor John Ritter dies of aortic dissection, an unexpected rupture of the aortic wall.
posted by mischief at 3:51 AM PST - 44 comments

Amazing security! They’ll screen you at airports, they’ll check your emails, they’ll arrest and hold you without obvious reason. Yes, they say this is the way to make America safer. But, hell…
posted by acrobat at 3:38 AM PST - 20 comments

The man in black is no more. Johnny Cash passes away from diabetes complications early this morning.
posted by SuzySmith at 3:20 AM PST - 80 comments

I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
I keep my eyes wide open all the time.
I keep the ends out for the tie that binds
Because you're mine, I walk the line.

RIP Johnny Cash. He died last night at 71.
posted by PrinceValium at 3:17 AM PST - 9 comments

Essays on Physiognomy: Designed to Promote the Knowledge and the Love of Mankind. Eighty plates by the physiognomist Johann Caspar Lavater (1741 - 1801) who examined people's appearances and then made conclusions about their inner worth. His subjects included Socrates, drunken revellers, himself and many, many more. The original Eighteenth-Century engravings are also included. (via zfilter)
posted by Ljubljana at 1:59 AM PST - 3 comments

First-hand accounts of the 1973 coup in Chile. Thirty years ago yesterday.
posted by plep at 12:14 AM PST - 6 comments

Ahhh! 'tis only a week to go until ye land lubbers will be turned! September 19th is Talk Like A Pirate Day tell all ye mates!
posted by sycophant at 11:25 PM PST - 13 comments

Tommy Chong should have fled to Jamaica. Ain't that what bail's for?
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 11:01 PM PST - 17 comments

Annihilation Time in Milwaukee An abrasive flier for a house show on Sept. 11th, leads to a visit from the FBI an subsequent house eviction. Life under the Patriot Act or repeat of the assassination ball?
posted by drezdn at 10:42 PM PST - 30 comments

20 unanswered questions about 9/11 - "Why after 730 days do we know so little about what really happened that day? No one knows where the alleged mastermind of the attack is, and none of his accomplices has been convicted of any crime. We're not even sure if the 19 people identified by the U.S. government as the suicide hijackers are really the right guys."
posted by suprfli at 10:19 PM PST - 24 comments

DeanLink is a new service from the Dean Campaign. Dean + Friendster = DeanLink. The tech savvy presidential campaign strikes again. What's next? DeanTorrent? Where do you think all this technology will go after the campaign is over?
posted by cjoh at 9:26 PM PST - 10 comments

skulls
posted by crunchland at 8:25 PM PST - 8 comments

Apple Corps Ltd. sues Apple Computers over AppleMusic. "When it first happened with the iPod, we said, "What could they be thinking?" said a Beatles legal insider, who agreed that posters announcing the iPod from "AppleMusic" were among the most egregious violations. "They knew we had the agreement, and that we'd won a lot of money from them already."
posted by riffola at 8:02 PM PST - 31 comments

Is That A Masterpiece Or What? Oh, Give Me A Fucking Break! It's definitely a what, right? The great thing about growing up is you stop caring about what is admired and respected by those you admire and respect and settle down to liking what you actually like. I can remember studying and pretending to love, for instance, the films of Eisenstein; Syberberg or Jean-Marie Straub and Danielle Huillet; the writings of Kierkegaard, Proust, Musil, Robbe-Grillet or Michel Butor; the artworks of Joseph Beuys, Frank Stella or Morris Louis; the music of Ligeti, Stockhausen, Xenakis or Luigi Nono. Now, I admit I think they're all quite boring. All lies; damned lies! And yet...and yet I think this article by Tom Utley is thoroughly philistine and brutal. Still: could it be that we all fake it to some extent? When we're young, at least? Have you ever lied about your taste? Are you ashamed?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 7:32 PM PST - 45 comments

The Bush administration has today stepped into the Supreme Court’s next major church-state case, by siding with the ACLJ and asking the high court to allow a state merit scholarship to be applied towards a degree in theology at a Christian College. Is this a valid example of the separation of Church and State, or unreasonable anti-religious discrimination? More inside.
posted by gd779 at 5:48 PM PST - 16 comments

Tonight, for several Asian cultures, is the Mid-Autumn Festival. People gather to watch the full moon, tell stories, and eat mooncakes. San Francisco Chinatown is holding its own Moon Festival as well.
posted by casarkos at 4:33 PM PST - 4 comments

Bush Resignation Hailed by World Leaders
[Washington] The surprise resignation of the forty-third President of the United States, George W. Bush, on the second anniversary of the terrorist attack on America, was hailed by chiefs of state throughout the world.
posted by mapalm at 3:10 PM PST - 58 comments

Operation Find Don Operation Find Don. Sars, of Tomato Nation, is looking for a man that she met near the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and she's asking her readers for help. All she knows about him is that he lives in Jersey City and that September 11 is his birthday. Can a six degrees of internet separation approach work?
posted by amarynth at 2:11 PM PST - 8 comments

New Words! New Words! The OED's quarterly update is up. You can now officially use: 800 number, anime, first person, incentivize, ish, JPEG, Klingon, Kwanzaa and xeriscape, plus a whole mess of words between "necial to Nipissing."
posted by jengod at 12:13 PM PST - 31 comments

A really good reality show for gay people would be five gay men dying of AIDS. Changing the channel has gotten so much easier since the invention of the remote control. Who doesn't love free speech?
posted by archimago at 11:22 AM PST - 69 comments

Fantastic images of a Great White Shark breaching (leaving the surface of the water, like a whale or a dolphin would). Note - they apparently usually exhibit this behavior when they are killing/feeding, so those with delicate sensibilities shouldn't click.
posted by jonson at 10:40 AM PST - 48 comments

BlackSpotSneaker: Adbusters aims to take on Nike at their own game, by selling unionized, fair wage sneakers with the hopes of gaining marketshare that rival's Nike's multimillion dollar ad machine.
posted by mathowie at 10:29 AM PST - 60 comments

One Day's Pay is a not-for-profit org that promotes September 11th as a "national day of voluntary service, charity, and compassion." Why not take a few minutes or a few hours to help those in need? As an extension, we could all blog our efforts and share via trackbacks or links in the comments. In my mind, as good a way as any to commemorate a tragedy.
posted by pinto at 9:43 AM PST - 7 comments

Think We Can (French) Kiss and Make Up? Two years ago it was "I'll always love and support you". It only took a little while, though, before the arguments began. But there are always counselors to help you work on the relationship. There is even talk of reconciliation. And anyway, this love-hate relationship has been going on for almost three centuries.
posted by twsf at 9:27 AM PST - 10 comments

Like watching "moving picture shows" -- without all those annoying pictures.
posted by *burp* at 9:18 AM PST - 9 comments

Ahhh bacteria, our little friends, what can't they do? Fight Off AIDS Virus in Women? Check. light up our world? Check. Wipe out all the little fishies in the sea? Check. Eat our flesh? Check. Change out CDs? Check. Heck, they may even work together better than us so it's important you Know your good and bad bugs, or just Learn more. The cute little buggers even have their own Museum.
posted by Blake at 7:57 AM PST - 9 comments

40 Ounce Malt Liquor.com
posted by hama7 at 7:44 AM PST - 17 comments

They come in quest of the Grail. Some people believe the Holy Grail is hidden someplace in or beneath this small fifteenth-century chapel near Edinburgh. Or maybe it contains other knowledge and relics acquired by the Knights Templar in Jerusalem. Or perhaps . . . well, there's not much that someone at some time has not believed about Rosslyn Chapel.
posted by Man-Thing at 6:13 AM PST - 20 comments

Heraclitus of Ephesus, sometimes called Heraclitus the Obscure: We only know him through 100 gnomic quotes and aphorisms--I loves me some gnomic aphorisms!--all direct from or inferred in the comments of various authors of Classical literature, of which no one steps into the same river twice is the best known. Mark Cohen, J. H. Lesher and Cynthia Freeman provide excellent introductions. John Burnett's 1920 translation is another academic standard. Jonathan Barnes. whose Penguin Classic The Early Greek Philosophers has the best contemporary translation, wrote Heraclitus attracts exegetes as an empty jampot wasps; and each new wasp discerns traces of his own favourite flavour. Here are the jampots of Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell and Martin Heidegger. And here, in passing, is a taste of the jampot of Jorge Luis Borges. Heraclitus coined the word enantiodromia. John William Corrington's Logos, Lex, And Law is also of interest. Heraclitus figures strongly in the Archetypal Psychology of Carl Jung and James Hillman, the latter especially in his discussion of the Soul.
posted by y2karl at 5:59 AM PST - 22 comments

Listening through a telescope the Chandra X-ray observatory hears a black hole.
posted by wobh at 4:22 AM PST - 12 comments

Greenpeace obtains smoking-gun memo: White House/Exxon link Did conservative elements in the White House provoke an Exxon front group to sue EPA to suppress a report on climate change? That's the question that two State Attorney Generals have asked US Attorney General John Ashcroft to investigate, after Greenpeace uncovered a routine email in a Freedom of Information Act request.
posted by Espoo2 at 12:49 AM PST - 14 comments

Half an hour, two years ago.
[If the link won't work for you, copy it and open it with Quicktime. High bandwidth required.]
posted by Asparagirl at 12:11 AM PST - 26 comments

The Miracle Survivors - In Stairwell B of the North Tower, 16 people lived amid the avalanche of concrete and steel. But surviving was only the start of their struggle.
Everyone handles things differently. Some want to move on, others need to remember. Some thought that to commemorate 9/11, it might be appropriate to have a dedicated thread that would be a repository of links and comments. Miguel started such a thread for 9/11/2002. And for those who may not have read it, here is the Mefi 9/11/2001 thread.
posted by madamjujujive at 12:04 AM PST - 49 comments

Mistupid.com - The Online Knowledge Magazine "a collection of stupid stuff, not necessarily information you need to know, but who is to judge?"
posted by lola at 10:50 PM PST - 2 comments

Many MeFites have mentioned they love emusic. Today, I found out that the former General Manager was Dave Allen, one of the founding members of Shriekback and Gang of Four. He has a “new” site, oebase, which has a great selection of CDs and DVDs (for sale), a music (industry) blog, and a bunch of free mp3s.
posted by dobbs at 9:32 PM PST - 4 comments

Divine architecture or crafty workmanship? Mysterious guy shows up on a donkey to make a spiral staircase for the Loretto Chapel that defies structural possibility. Made mainly of wood, it contains no support beams and uses only wood pegs to hold it together.
posted by destro at 9:28 PM PST - 12 comments

Ol' Brown Eyes is back. Photo mosaic of POTUS. NSFW if someone's standing in your cubicle looking over your shoulder, but from a distance it's relatively innocuous.
posted by emelenjr at 9:25 PM PST - 32 comments

Testicle Theater - NSFW, if you can't close your browser before the person over your shoulder says "Oh, Scarface! What's that playing Pacino - is it... it looks like..."
posted by GriffX at 8:44 PM PST - 12 comments

HeavyTV screens different full-length movies every week for broadband users. Showing this week: Airheads, Live From Baghdad, Pacific Heights and Extreme Ops.
posted by crunchland at 7:53 PM PST - 10 comments

Privacy & Human Rights 2003. This report by EPIC and Privacy International reviews the state of privacy rights in 56 countries around the world. For anyone concerned about video surveillance, there are a variety of ways to respond.
posted by homunculus at 5:48 PM PST - 2 comments

Some believe, some don't. Welcome to the strange world of electronic voice phenomenon. Warning: some Real Audio formats.
posted by moonbird at 4:19 PM PST - 12 comments

Badgers badgers badgers badgers FLASH MOVIE FLAAASH MOOOVIE.
posted by rory at 3:32 PM PST - 36 comments

Metro Santa Cruz's 50 Reasons to Not Vote for Arnold for Governor

And no, none of the reasons are because of awful movies like Jingle All the Way or Junior. Real reasons like the fact that he's a chauvinist, his father was a Nazi, he used to run the President's Council on Fitness and now admits to using steroids to win bodybuilding competitions, he has no plan on how to fix the state's budget issues just that he's gonna clean house. Or the fact that he made up the story about gang raping a black woman for the Oui interview back in 77' (think about that, he lied about participating in a gang rape, that's pretty demented behaviour). Interesting reading and damned scary if this is the next governor of the 5th or 6th largest economy in the world.
posted by fenriq at 2:31 PM PST - 41 comments

Bear prowls Montana neighborhood. Climbs tree. Animal Control. Tranquilizers. Trampoline. Hilarity ensues . . .
posted by cinderful at 1:53 PM PST - 33 comments

Free.Pro.Blogger. Bucking the Free to Fee trend, Blogger Pro is going Free, and sending refunds/t-shirts to current Pro subscribers. (more inside)
posted by brownpau at 1:31 PM PST - 31 comments

Synthetic Nerves, the site lists a couple of applications any other ideas? I want my computer enhanced brain, and a running video dump in several spectrums.
posted by sourbrew at 11:20 AM PST - 3 comments

Scandinavia in shock Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh has been repeatedly stabbed in an attack in a Stockholm department store.
posted by dagny at 9:40 AM PST - 68 comments

THE PIXIES ARE BACK!!!! I'm so happy I'm crying!
posted by black8 at 9:21 AM PST - 54 comments

American Social Hygiene Posters from the University of Minnesota. Remember boys, You may think she's just your gal, but she may be everyone's pal.
posted by JoanArkham at 8:45 AM PST - 32 comments

The dicey dynamics of exposing untruths. An interesting bit in the Columbia Journalism Review on why journalists tend to focus on politicians' small lies and let the big ones slide.
posted by gottabefunky at 8:32 AM PST - 39 comments

Thank God for Airport Security. Can you believe this?
posted by ZenMasterThis at 8:26 AM PST - 24 comments

In space, you can hear a black hole sing (WaPo link). Using the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, astrophysicists have detected a supermassive black hole in the Perseus Cluster which has been "playing" a B-flat for 3 billion years.

Fascinating as this seemingly counterintuitive discovery (sound carrying through space) is, the real significance lies in that these "sound waves" may explain why the superhot gases in such regions aren't cooling down and forming more stars.
posted by GreyWingnut at 8:20 AM PST - 19 comments

Wisconsin cheese names in jeopardy The European Union is trying to impose restrictions (a la champagne) on what you can call certain cheeses that are produced in locations other than their 'native' region. Is this purely an economic ploy, or is there some merit behind it?
posted by pizzasub at 8:10 AM PST - 39 comments

Scribe, schedule and send a soliloqy to the self. [more inside]
posted by pedantic at 8:10 AM PST - 6 comments

Luciferous Logolepsy: Dragging obscure words into the light of day.
::with thanks to Madamjujujive
posted by anastasiav at 8:03 AM PST - 3 comments

Columbia Univ. severs ties with Biosphere 2. I remember when Biosphere 2 opened and watched as the team of starry-eyed scientists entered the self-sustaining environment. It's even been the subject of a bad Hollywood movie. But now the structure may become nothing more than a giant scrap pile of steel and glass in the desert. The mission of the project was impressive, and despite glitches such as acidic water and "crazy ant" infestation, should an experiment be abandoned because it didn't go as expected? Or is it just man's folly to try and replicate intelligent design?
posted by archimago at 7:19 AM PST - 11 comments

A vision of the future? "Although there is debate over the exact date it started, on November 02, 2000, a person calling themselves Timetravel_0, and later John Titor, started posting on a public forum that he was a time traveler from the year 2036." What follows are tales of the "future" involving civil and global nuclear war, schematics for a "time machine", and an IBM 5100 computer from 1974. (Grain of salt not included.)
posted by emptybowl at 6:51 AM PST - 30 comments

Two civil liberties groups sued Pennsylvania's attorney general, saying Attorney General Mike Fisher has created a "system of secret censorship" that goes unchecked by state courts. You can read The Law, a Release from The CDT, a News Story, or the CDT Page for more, or maybe use the Tattle Tale form to report Child Pornography (only for PA residents). According to the lawsuit, the only way most Internet providers can block access to a particular Web site is to block its server computer, which may be shared with unrelated Web sites - preventing subscribers from viewing any of those sites (it's a Vhosts thing). And since such blocks can apply to all of a provider's subscribers, not just Pennsylvanians covered by the law, this law has been seen as troublesome since day 1.
posted by Blake at 5:30 AM PST - 2 comments

The Emma Goldman Papers. "I Want Freedom, the Right to Self-Expression, Everybody's Right to Beautiful Radiant Things"
posted by plep at 2:04 AM PST - 2 comments

Ever been to Merlefest? If you're a returning guest, Merlefest tickets are now available online. (more inside). Wear your overalls and enjoy some good 'ol "Americana." ( More info inside)
posted by bradth27 at 12:20 AM PST - 4 comments

Macromedia Flash Player 7 for your Web browser is now available for a platform near you. ...Upgrade at your own discretion.
posted by Down10 at 12:05 AM PST - 35 comments

Edward Teller dies What would it be like to have your obit identify you as "Father of the Atom Bomb?" "Teller exerted a profound influence on America's defense and energy policies, championing the development of the atomic and hydrogen bombs, nuclear power and the Strategic Defense Initiative...."
posted by Lynsey at 11:26 PM PST - 21 comments

RIAA settles with a disadvantaged, now sick, 12-year-old girl. Read CNN's brief of the settlement and the feel-good synopsis by Gary Sherman, president of RIAA. OR, head over to the UK to learn that the 12-yr-old has been getting sick from anxiety, feels terrible for the fragile artists and lives in a rent control apartment with her family. I'd take the UK's cynicism over the US slant anyday.
posted by omidius at 9:01 PM PST - 44 comments

if you haven't already sold it on ebay, WeWantYourSoul.com will analyze your lifestyle and make you an cash offer for your eternal soul.
posted by crunchland at 7:43 PM PST - 49 comments

Two Years After 9/11: Ashcroft’s Assault on the Constitution. "Under the direction of Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Department of Justice has undermined the constitutional rights of all Americans as it has prosecuted a war on terrorism since the September 11, 2001 attacks, according to a new report released today by People For the American Way Foundation" [via TalkLeft.] On the bright side, I hear the Patriot Act Summer Tour rocked [flash.]
posted by homunculus at 5:06 PM PST - 9 comments

How not to move a satellite "As the NOAA-N Prime spacecraft was being repositioned from vertical to horizontal on the "turn over cart" at approximately 7:15 PDT today, it slipped off the fixture, causing severe damage."
posted by Mwongozi at 4:52 PM PST - 19 comments

Kenny VS. Spenny is a new reality tv show on Canada's CBC network. The premise? Two friends "battle" in a different competition each week to see who is "better". What types of competitions? Who can lose the most weight. Who will be the first to use their arms. Who can make the most money in three days... [more inside]
posted by dobbs at 3:50 PM PST - 9 comments

The great comic Red Meat. Here's how to make your own Red Meat Comic. Here's the one I made.
posted by basilwhite at 2:28 PM PST - 47 comments

Almost two years later and they're still finding remains from the World Trade Center. Hopefully one more family gets a call they've been waiting for/dreading that their loved one is found.
posted by MediaMan at 2:17 PM PST - 6 comments

Al Gunther's Egg Art. Finely detailed sculptures and carvings.
posted by Ufez Jones at 2:11 PM PST - 9 comments

What Made Gas Prices Spike So Sharply in California? One hint, it has something to do with greed and the ability to arbitrarily raise one's profit margin.

The oil refineries decided that they weren't making quite enough money so they decided to gouge California by nearly tripling their profit margin to $.69 a gallon.

My response is to say I'll vote for which gubernatorial candidate that's going to go after the corporate greedheads who seem to think its perfectly acceptable behaviour to bleed people because they can.

Are you listening Arnold, Gary or Georgy?
posted by fenriq at 2:00 PM PST - 20 comments

Back In the Funny Business. "After eight years away from newspapers, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Berkeley Breathed is creating a new comic strip called Opus, starring his beloved penguin of the same name." (Washington Post)
posted by LinusMines at 1:46 PM PST - 29 comments

Some Action for Jackson A peek at the new $20 bill that will be dropped into circulation Oct. 9.
posted by FearTormento at 1:16 PM PST - 17 comments

I'm Michael Jackson - No, I'm the real Jackson. All you other Michael Jacksons are just imitators. So won't the real King of Pop please stand up please stand up please stand up.
(Warning: Angelfire and Geocities links = extreme pop-up action)
_{With apologies to Eminem. Deep apologies.}
posted by Joey Michaels at 1:03 PM PST - 9 comments

Don't just stand there - Bustamante!
Arnold Schwarzenegger would lose to Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante by five precentage points if the election were held today, according to a Field Poll of likely voters released today. Margin of error: 4.5%. How useful are polls like this when there are so many undecided factors still floating about? Poll tabs and analysis here. [PDF]
posted by GriffX at 12:52 PM PST - 38 comments

All US Air Passengers to be Profiled, and 1% Will be Banned from Boarding. In the most aggressive -- and, some say, invasive -- step yet, the federal government and the airlines will phase in a computer system next year to measure the risk posed by every passenger on every flight in the United States. Up to 8 percent of passengers who board flights will be coded "yellow" and pulled for additional screening. An estimated 1 to 2 percent will be labeled "red" and will be prohibited from boarding. These passengers also will face police questioning and may be arrested. [More Inside....]
posted by Dunvegan at 11:01 AM PST - 95 comments

catchThirtyThree - a simple little diversion to drive you to distraction. flash
posted by madamjujujive at 10:45 AM PST - 16 comments

Can't wait to see your new baby? Now you don't have to. Umm, but maybe it's better to be patient.
posted by alms at 10:30 AM PST - 12 comments

"Murder all journalists, I beg you!" That's just one of the strange phrases that have appeared on tiles embedded in roads in locations as diverse as Cleveland and South America. The tiles also contain cryptic phrases regarding Stanley Kubrick and English historian Arnold Toynbee. Strange stuff.
posted by hipnerd at 10:24 AM PST - 17 comments

The Doe Network: An international volunteer organization dedicated to missing persons and unidentified victims' cold cases. Another example of networking via the Web creating powerful new solutions to old problems?
posted by rushmc at 8:11 AM PST - 4 comments

The cable clock. This clocks tells time, just like any other clock, but the movement of the hands is hypnotic and beautiful. To physicists, time is defined by quantum mechanics. A photon with energy h (Planck's constant) behaves as though it were oscillating once per second. For Philosphers, time is less concrete, and they love to talk about it. Western society lives by the clock - does it make a difference if this is the kind of clock that you live by? After all, everyone knows that time is money. If you have to be a clock watcher, does it help if the clock is as calming as the Cable Clock is?
posted by kristin at 8:05 AM PST - 20 comments

Ling Lung Women's Magazine: Shanghai, 1931 to 1937.
posted by hama7 at 8:01 AM PST - 4 comments

Happy birthday Google! Today's edition of the Guardian congratulates Google on its 5th birthday 5 years ago - and suggests the company go mutual rather than public to ensure quality over shareholder pressure for profits and be "a living monument to the founding principles of the internet". Good plan?
posted by Pericles at 7:47 AM PST - 8 comments

Iraq Estimates Were Too Low, U.S. Admits
The White House acknowledged Monday that it substantially underestimated the cost of rebuilding Iraq and that even the additional $87 billion it was seeking from a wary Congress would fall far short of what is needed for postwar reconstruction. Administration officials said President Bush's emergency spending request - which would push the U.S. budget deficit above the half-trillion-dollar mark for the first time - still left a reconstruction funding gap of as much as $55 billion.
Reserve Tours Are Extended
With U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq and the Bush administration still searching for additional international peacekeepers, the Army has ordered thousands of National Guard and Army Reserve forces in Iraq to extend their tours in the country to a year, months longer than many of the troops had anticipated, Army officials said yesterday.
$87,000,000,000 + $55,000,000,000=$142,000,000,000
One year tours for National Guard and Army Reservists
Hope you enjoyed your meal--here's your bill...
posted by y2karl at 7:14 AM PST - 91 comments

Salam Pax's book is published.
posted by Blue Stone at 4:46 AM PST - 9 comments

Tax the tan? a new study shows more than a quarter of white female teenagers have had at least three sessions in a tanning booth, Forty-seven percent of 18- and 19-year-old females made three or more visits. The overall rate for boys was far lower, around 7 percent. Note to teenage boys: Go hang out at the tanning booth.
Concerned dermatologists made a bold proposal: Slap a $20 tax on every visit to the tanning salon for people under 18, after all, we tax Smokes for just the same reason. Needles to say The Indoor Tanning Association (Don't miss the upcoming ITAWorld Expo, Huey Lewis and the News show included!), which represents the nation's 6,000 tanning salons, denounced the idea, noting that moderate exposure to ultraviolet light may actually promote health. UV light helps the body absorb vitamin D, which is important in the development of bones. After all Nicotine 'reduces Alzheimer's symptoms'. Are taxes a good behavior modification tool?
posted by Blake at 4:43 AM PST - 25 comments

Leni Riefenstahl, dead at 101 In response to her film making for the Nazi regime, she said "It reflects the truth as it was then, in 1934. It is a documentary, not propaganda." (more inside)
posted by tomcosgrave at 4:31 AM PST - 30 comments

World Map of the Mind is an an experimental, collaborative world map: users click to choose whether a pixel is land or water. IP logging will eventually allow us to see the world from different points of view. In the meantime, watch how it has progressed. (Via kuro5hin).
posted by TheophileEscargot at 1:47 AM PST - 14 comments

So, how to explain the incorrect allegations about Iraqi WMD? Lies? Self-interest? Ideology? Clerical error?
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 10:02 PM PST - 23 comments

19 artists create russian nesting dolls. (be sure and move your pointer over each one to examine the each figure.)
posted by crunchland at 7:34 PM PST - 21 comments

"One call to AAA and your worries are over," says the brochure. That's what Melissa Gosule's family thought, but she was kidnapped and murdered during the hours it took for AAA to get its act together. So the family is suing. Do they have a case? After all, she's not the only one who's waited and waited and waited and waited for multiple hours after calling AAA. I oughta know. [more inside]
posted by soyjoy at 7:30 PM PST - 23 comments

IBM serves download of new Linux ad. IBM launched a TV ad this week featuring a nine-year-old boy named Linux. To their credit, they have enabled some computer users the ability to watch the ad as a download. Strangely, though, they don't make it easy to watch the spot on a Linux box. There's plenty of support for Closed Source operating systems and apps, but don't expect to view it with the popular Open Source movie viewer, xine.
posted by tbc at 6:20 PM PST - 31 comments

Renaissance, the Elizabethan World. I particularly like the Compendium of Common Knowledge. Via The Cartoonist, which also introduced me to the 18th century work, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and its accompanying illustrations.
posted by homunculus at 4:17 PM PST - 4 comments

White Wolf sues over copyright infringement in Underworld. Their complaint via Penny Arcade, and a comic from same.
posted by e^2 at 2:49 PM PST - 45 comments

U.S. Army Used Media Cover in Iraq for Own Ends which sounds like a big old bowl of yellow journalism but isn't really, at least I don't think so. It was more to refute the Iraqi Minister of Lies talking about the whooping the Iraqi war machine was delivering to the coalition forces.

The main issue that the reporters had was that they were only getting the one side of the story and not the Iraqi perspective.

But it raises some questions about the supposed objectivity of the media. Is this a proper use of them? To help achieve military goals? Or to try to avoid more unnecessary deaths?
posted by fenriq at 1:51 PM PST - 13 comments

The Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal "...to provide a searchable registry of objects in U.S. museum collections that were created before 1946, and changed hands in Continental Europe during the Nazi era (1933-1945)." Families who had art confiscated by the Nazis can search US collections for it here.
posted by liam at 1:30 PM PST - 2 comments

Waxing lyrical or something Never mind Doonesbury. Have a crack at this review.What a read that promises to be.Via popfactor.
posted by johnny7 at 12:57 PM PST - 11 comments

Why Hindu's make better teachers than gays. Eric Rasmusen, professor of Economics and Public Policy at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, has been allowed by the University to continue to update his occasionally homophobic weblog in the interests of free speech. Should this be allowed? Allowing due consideration for free speech, how does this type of speech disrupt open participation in an academic setting?
posted by cohappy at 10:47 AM PST - 114 comments

The best high school in America? WaPo's Michael Dirda reviews Edward Humes' School of Dreams: Making the Grade at a Top American High School.

Gretchen Whitney High is an incredible success ("People move to the Cerritos area so that their children can attend this school... And by move I don't mean from Los Angeles: They relocate from India, from Korea") story academically, especially considering its origins But there's always a price, typically exacted by the parents, who display the same good sense and no-pressure behaviors they've displayed at Little League and Pop Warner games. But no one's killed anybody over Whitney admission, at least that we know of. The story of Cecilia's art portfolio, though, will break your heart. Humes offers larger lessons, too, about how to improve our schools. I am buying this book today.
posted by mojohand at 8:27 AM PST - 31 comments

Harlem 1900-1940, a site full of pictures and history. The scope of this portfolio is Harlem from the years 1900-1940. Various elements of the history of the urban experience in Harlem's early days as the Cultural Capital of African Americans are represented here by graphic and photographic images from the Schomburg Center collection.
posted by Ufez Jones at 8:23 AM PST - 3 comments

go-go-boots.com [via Geisha asobi blog]
posted by soundofsuburbia at 8:00 AM PST - 3 comments

Who Was General Tso And Why Are We Eating His Chicken? Unlike Chicken Marengo, a dish created to celebrate Napoleon's victory, or Beef Wellington, named, it seems for the Duke's boots, General Tso's Chicken has a humbler origin as a traditional Hunan dish revived in a New York Chinese restaurant in the 1970s, when Szechuan was the latest craze. But this article will teach you a bit about the General Sherman of Ch'ing-period China.
posted by briank at 7:28 AM PST - 23 comments

We already knew that frequent masturbation might cut prostate cancer risk. But it turns out that this is not a message fit for American families. The details of the Lewinsky episode splattered across front pages of the US and abroad come to mind, but also Nancy Reagan pleading for stem research.
posted by magullo at 6:49 AM PST - 86 comments

Warren Zevon, RIP Born January 23, 1947. Died September 7, 2003. Now I guess he can get some sleep.
posted by alms at 6:49 AM PST - 33 comments

White house open to tours again to the public on September 16th-only by reservation that is. How do you get a reservation? Submit your full name, date of birth, social security number and a copy of a photo ID-to your member of Congress for a security "screening". Visit the house paid for by you.
posted by omidius at 6:06 AM PST - 16 comments

Mark Ryden is to the iconic saucer-eyed urchins of the '60s as Salvador Dali is to Hickory Dickory Dock. His delicate palette, fine details and classical references offer compelling counterpoint to the deliciously disturbing imagery of les tykes terrible in collections such as "Blood: Miniature Paintings of Sorrow & Fear"; "Bunnies and Bees: Paintings Created to Illustrate DIVINE TRUTH in Accordance with the Secret Principles of SCIENCE AND SOUL"; and "The Meat Show: Paintings about Childen, God, and USDA Grade A Beef". Plus, they're kids - with big eyes!
posted by taz at 4:39 AM PST - 25 comments

Guantanamo Bay inmates willing to talk in exchange for McDonald's burgers. "Guantanamo's basic message is clear: If you never talk, you might never get out, even if you're never charged with a crime."
posted by spazzm at 3:39 AM PST - 36 comments

The locals simply called it Carville. Known more formally as the The Gillis W. Long Hansen's Disease Center, it was transformed in July 2000 into The National Hansen's Disease Museum. What is Hansen's Disease? You may know it better by its biblical name - Leprosy. From the founding of the National Leprosarium in 1917 until the hospital closed in 1998, The stories of the people of Carville, their isolation, and finally their fight for civil rights combine to make one of the most important stories in American public health history.
posted by anastasiav at 9:11 PM PST - 15 comments

The First Rule of Multibabel Club is you do not talk about MultiBabel Club (French & back:) The first rule of the club of Multibabel is you do not speak about the club of Multibabel.
(German & back:) The first guideline the association of Multibabel is not you speaks about the association of Multibabel.
(Italian & back:) Before the guide of reference that the association of Multibabel is not you speaks about the association of Multibabel.
(Portuguese & back) Before the guide of the reference that the association of MultiBabel is not you speak on the association of MultiBabel.
(Spanish & back:) Before the guide of the reference that is not the association of MultiBabel you speak in the association of MultiBabel. (Japanese & back:) Multibabel club without having expressed, there is a first rule of Multibabel club.
(Chinese & back:) The Multibabel club has not been expressed, has the Multibabel club first rule.
(Korean & back:) The Multibabel the club under expressing is highland Anh and a Multibabel club first rule.
posted by me3dia at 8:57 PM PST - 27 comments

They've booked arenas, and have an announcement scheduled for Tuesday. Simon and Garfunkel, together for their first tour since '93 (if they don't get into an argument first). I'd suggest those interested get a ticket for one of the early shows, just to be safe...
posted by ehintz at 6:49 PM PST - 28 comments

Dr Richard Lord has shown in a controlled experiment that the extreme bass sound known as infrasound produces a range of bizarre effects in people including anxiety, extreme sorrow and chills -- supporting popular suggestions of a link between infrasound and strange sensations.
Here's the Reuters Story, He's done some other cool stuff as well at the National Physical Laboratory.
I can't help but think of The Brown Note, am I so imature?
posted by Blake at 6:34 PM PST - 16 comments

all about TV.
posted by crunchland at 6:29 PM PST - 9 comments

Why do so many scientists believe in God? "Modern science did not emerge 400 years ago to challenge religion, the orthodoxy of the past 2,000 years. Generations of thinkers and experimenters and observers - often themselves churchmen - wanted to explain how God worked his wonders. Modern physics began with a desire to explain the clockwork of God's creation. Modern geology grew at least partly out of searches for evidence of Noah's flood. Modern biology owes much to the urge to marvel at the intricacy of Divine providence. But the scientists - a word coined only in 1833 - who hoped to find God somehow painted Him out of the picture... So although the debate did not start out as science versus religion, that is how many people now see it. Paradoxically, this is not how many scientists see it."
posted by gd779 at 5:57 PM PST - 48 comments

B Movie Specialists Siren Tales make B movies for your delight and delectation. I'm not sure that 'B' is the right letter, they might want to pick one further down the alphabet. See the trailer for "The Gosh Darned Mortgage" (Realplayer required), and make your own mind up. If you like, they'll turn your script into a movie.. cheap!! Links are worksafe but discretion advised.
posted by chrid at 4:45 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

The wildest bassist ever...and the only to play notes like moving checkers on a board! Ever since legendary bass player Joey Arkenstat made a rare appearance in Mike Gordon's documentary Rising Low, he's been a mystery. Occasional catastrophic live performances, a cancelled tour and his ongoing songwriting contest did nothing to solidify his reputation. Reclusive genius or the jam scene's Tony Clifton?
posted by muckster at 3:12 PM PST - 6 comments

Thinking of reading Moby Dick? Let David Sedaris do it for you. And don't forget the amazing Assassinations Foretold in Moby Dick!
posted by Outlawyr at 2:51 PM PST - 12 comments

The Snow Leopard is a magnificent animal (and the cubs are adorable,) but also a very endangered one. A recent study by TRAFFIC, Fading Footprints: The Killing and Trade of Snow Leopards (PDF), describes the threat faced by the species, including in Afghanistan. The International Snow Leopard Trust has released the Snow Leopard Survival Strategy (PDF) to try to aid the species.
posted by homunculus at 2:43 PM PST - 2 comments

Streetart is a collaborative weblog for photos of DIY posters, guerilla stickers, home-made stencils, and etc." I'm pretty sure all those giant penises are prior art. That's pretty much one of the first things you're required to draw when you tease the waters of hilarious vandalism.
posted by Stan Chin at 1:51 PM PST - 8 comments

With Amazing Push-Button Shushing Action the librarian action figure is coming this fall. Not surprisingly, some people aren't too keen on it.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 1:12 PM PST - 23 comments

A widely-reported study that showed recreational use of MDMA to cause Parkinson's diesase was found to be botched and has now been retracted. The results were not skewed, the margin of error wasn't miscalculated--the primates were given the wrong drug.
posted by brittney at 12:50 PM PST - 19 comments

"Gaydar Direct brings you the first electronic device that allows gay men and women to meet safe and discreetly!" Guess the inventor's never heard of the Internet. Oh, yeah, this gaydar? It vibrates. Links are safe, but standard pop-up warnings apply.
posted by WolfDaddy at 12:48 PM PST - 19 comments

The Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo’s masterpiece from 1966, was studied closely by the Black Panthers as a training manual for violent uprising against a colonial overlord. Similarly, the Israeli government banned the film until 1975 for fear that the nascent Palestine Liberation Organization would use it as an inspiration for attacks on Israelis. Now, the Pentagon is sitting down with popcorn and notepads. While the film is difficult to find in the U.S., the script is online here. Can (or will) the Pentagon make use of the lessons it contains? Is it too late? What film of literary works would you recommend to teach people about resistance... or how to overcome it?
posted by stonerose at 8:38 AM PST - 29 comments

Engines of Our Ingenuity is a web site run by John Lienhard of the University of Houston. The site includes almost 2000 short, three minute talks on the history of science, technology, and engineering. The talks are in the form of RealAudio files, with accompanying transcripts which often give you more links and references. The transcripts themselves are indexed by keywords and are also fully text-searchable. A simple idea but very effective, and kind of addictive. I've been finding out about Jacquard and Babbage, German women astronomers of the seventeenth century, and the deisgn of the zipper. There's also other cool stuff: what did people say about books in 1498?
posted by carter at 8:01 AM PST - 5 comments

IHateMyLife.Us. Homeless advocacy and support, from someone who's been there.
posted by PrinceValium at 12:07 AM PST - 26 comments

Gang Stories "The goal here is to tell some stories of what goes on behind the guns, drugs and crime in the headlines. These stories are the oral history of my old neighborhood. Figured it might do some good to write them."
posted by jdroth at 9:41 PM PST - 9 comments

The BBC Is Looking For The Best Sandwich In The World: Can you help? Sandwiches are supposedly easy but, come to think of it, perfect sandwiches are actually quite difficult to invent and produce. Bread gets wet; lettuce wilts; flavours and textures clash. Personally, I like English tea sandwiches best; though the Mediterranean versions are a meal in themselves. But if you had to stake your life and reputation on one fulfilling and tastebud-enticing sandwich, which one would it be? To go.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 7:43 PM PST - 63 comments

"Viking's is an all inclusive erotic adult fantasy resort located in the Caribbean with a full staff of the world's most beautiful and exotic escorts."
posted by sharksandwich at 7:31 PM PST - 34 comments

Old Orient Galerie
posted by hama7 at 7:24 PM PST - 2 comments

The Skittlebrau Experiment : "As with most crazy ideas, the Simpsons thought of it first."
posted by Space Coyote at 7:00 PM PST - 7 comments

bazooka joe comics
posted by crunchland at 6:24 PM PST - 15 comments

A Rare View of 9/11, Overlooked From the NY Times: "They did not even see the pale fleck of the airplane streak across the corner of the video camera's field of view at 8:46 a.m. But the camera, pointed at the twin towers from the passenger seat of an S.U.V. in Brooklyn near the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, kept rolling when the plane disappeared for an instant and then a silent, billowing cloud of smoke and dust slowly emerged from the north tower, as if it had sprung a mysterious kind of leak." I can't even look at the pictures, just too painful for me, but this will probably be a major development in the next week.
posted by billsaysthis at 6:19 PM PST - 8 comments

Craig Blog launched today, the latest endeavor by Craig Newmark, the amiable founder of Craig's List, one of the most inarguably good things on the Net. Eight-and-a-half years ago, Newmark was a security analyst at Schwab. Inspired by The Well, he created his own community resource, a boon to anyone looking for a job, an apartment, a used DVD player, or... um, sex. This time it's personal.
posted by digaman at 4:34 PM PST - 5 comments

The Brief History of the Dead (printable) imagines the afterlife as a thriving city, where the poor choices of the living affect everyone, including the dead. A New Yorker short story by Kevin Brockmeier.
posted by waxpancake at 4:31 PM PST - 7 comments

The BBC tested the British nation again tonight. Amid imperial measurements and wierd science I managed to score 53/70. According to the overall results you can learn more reading books than using the internet. You can take the test online (via the magic of flash). See how well you do.
posted by feelinglistless at 4:03 PM PST - 26 comments

Steam Trek - an enterprising individual has masterfully melded two classic SF genres, Star Trek and Steampunk. The result is a wonderful universe with a rich history where Her Majesty's Aether Ships explore the solar system and protect the United Kingdom of Planets. Long live Queen Victoria, and may her glorious reign continue as it has for the past 165 years! (preserved by Lunar Selenite technology captured from the evil Moon-dwellers).
posted by adrianhon at 2:28 PM PST - 12 comments

Five second rule? There is no five second rule.
posted by SuzySmith at 12:39 PM PST - 37 comments

con·struct: To form by assembling or combining parts; build.
de·con·struct: To break down into components; dismantle.
posted by poopy at 10:55 AM PST - 17 comments

Sausagemania We love a gourmet story. I know we love em.The Brits love em.Even the Yarpies love em.Bit surprised this is a US site.I thought they were limited to a sort of badly produced chipolata type thing @ breakfast only.Get stuffing. Via coolios.
posted by johnny7 at 10:28 AM PST - 17 comments

Vintage Chicago Street Gang Compliment Cards. Current and Extinct Chicago Street Gangs
posted by macadamiaranch at 8:37 AM PST - 23 comments

A single photograph taken in 1913 of Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba Mbacké—the Santé Serigne Touba, founder of the Sufi sect known as the Mouride (Murid) Way, followed by millions in Senegal and elsewhere—when he was put under house arrest by the French, has provided remarkable consistency to the sect's iconography. Images of the cheikh: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and more. Story on an art exhibit and the web site of the exhibit, including more images of the cheikh. History of Bamba's life in French and in English. More on Muridism.
posted by Mo Nickels at 7:50 AM PST - 4 comments

Thug 4 Life, "For this project I intend to transform myself into Tupac Shakur..." Expenses include tatoos, a case of Hennesy, a weight bench and plenty of marijuana. No mention of tanning booth costs.
posted by cedar at 5:34 AM PST - 19 comments

Debunking The Debunkers? A few days ago I had posted a piece asserting that the Saudi royals, along with members of Bin Laden's family , were given hasty approval to flee the U.S. directly after 9/11, with the highest clearance from top govt officials. That post was "shot down" by comments stating that Snopes noted the falsity of that claim. Now it seems Snopes has reneged and Google has removed cache items about the story. See for yourself what seems to be taking place.
posted by Postroad at 4:57 AM PST - 31 comments

Met by "howls of outrage" and questions about his sanity, Michael Meacher, the ex-Environment Minister for the UK, known mostly for his opposition to GMOs, and revelations about the less than honest and upright behaviour surrounding the issue, has spent some time thinking, free from the constraints of Ministerial duties. "the PNAC blueprint of September 2000 states that the process of transforming the US into "tomorrow's dominant force" is likely to be a long one in the absence of "some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor". The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the "go" button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement."
- Commentary - Commentary - Commentary
posted by Blue Stone at 2:45 AM PST - 22 comments

" Socialism teaches you to avoid taking care of other people. The state will – why should you?  If people in France and elsewhere in Europe take less care of their aging parents, it is because they are taught from childhood to allow others – i.e., the state – to take care of everybody... The bigger the government, the worse the people."
posted by gregb1007 at 1:34 AM PST - 45 comments

Stealth Disco. This is why I don't work in an office. People like this. Doing shit like that. [Sensible Erection]
posted by Stan Chin at 12:30 AM PST - 25 comments

a few quotes to remind us how we got where we are today via atrios
words from our leaders, and ms. ivins to mull over on saturday. while we are at it - perspective from baghdad might be worth your while as well.
posted by specialk420 at 11:24 PM PST - 6 comments

Once you have your secret name, we'll teach you the secret handshake and then you can be part of the cabal.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 6:48 PM PST - 55 comments

"I think the word they are replacing is 'invention.' Only now we innovate, which is deliberately vague but seems to stop somewhere short of invention. Innovators have wiggle room. They can steal ideas, for example, and pawn them off as their own. That's the intersection of innovation and sharp business. " Cringley puts his finger on a crucial difference, touching not only on the core of ethics but on the connection to real progress.
posted by weston at 5:44 PM PST - 9 comments

Rennes-le-Chateau is a small French village with a grand cathedral of mystery and speculation. Read up on the mad priest, the Knights Templar, the Cathars, a lost treasure, coded parchments, including unusual spinoff theories.
posted by moonbird at 5:16 PM PST - 12 comments

Although such records weren’t kept prior to 1968, it is widely accepted that had they been, Uncle Tonoose would be the hands down leader in the category of "most spit takes caused."
It's The Top 10 Uncles in TV Comedy History, guaranteed to bring back TV memories (including many justifiably repressed ones). Regrettably, with one glaring omission that any MeFite should notice. But hey, what about an equivalent list of notable TV Aunts? Or are there any beyond Aunt Bee (or as most Mayberry residents pronounced it, Aint Bee)?
posted by wendell at 5:06 PM PST - 8 comments

The Futile Pursuit of Happiness. ''Things that happen to you or that you buy or own -- as much as you think they make a difference to your happiness, you're wrong by a certain amount. You're overestimating how much of a difference they make. None of them make the difference you think. And that's true of positive and negative events.''
posted by Tin Man at 4:33 PM PST - 31 comments

Just how rich are you? The worlds 225 richest people have a combined wealth greater than the poorest 2.5 billion people. Where do you fit into the picture? via b3ta
posted by carfilhiot at 4:30 PM PST - 63 comments

tibetan yak butter, reindeer hash, crocodile paté, and smoked cobra. All this and more at edible.com.
posted by crunchland at 4:26 PM PST - 8 comments

The Small World Project was an online experiment (sponsored by Columbia University) involving over 60,000 email users, developed to test Stanley Milgram's famous "six degrees of separation" hypothesis. In the 1960's Milgram tested his theory that members of any large social network would be connected to each other via short chains of intermediate acquaintances by sending small packets via the USPS to individuals in Nebraska and Kansas, with the hope that the packets would eventually reach the intended recipients in Boston. The 21st century Columbia project used email to attempt to verify Milgram's findings on a global scale, and to see if the length of the contact chains have shortened in the 'virtual' world. Project Description - Procedures - Initial Results as published in Science Magazine, August 2003
posted by anastasiav at 4:13 PM PST - 7 comments

1930 Shanghai style advertising posters
posted by hama7 at 2:35 PM PST - 6 comments

Depp: Dumb Puppy Comment Wasn't Anti-U.S. "I am an American. I love my country and have great hopes for it. It is for this reason that I speak candidly and sometimes critically about it."
posted by Twang at 2:22 PM PST - 48 comments

How To Be A Jug or String Band MVP - starting with guitar: It's all in tablature, by the way, something easy enough to understand. Three finger fingerpicking guitar is easy to learn--start with Mississippi John Hurt: Payday was the first song I ever learned. Of course, it's a cinch, being in Open D--but open tunings are a cinch, too. With open tunings, how about learning some slide guitar? Beyond John Hurt, slide or not, open or standard, , there are the ever expanding Fahey Tablatures at John Fahey.com, where Melissa keeps the flame burning ever brightly.
There's Much More Within...
posted by y2karl at 2:06 PM PST - 17 comments

While there may be controversy over global warming, whichever side of the fence you stand on, you can't help but enjoy the colorful spectacle that is temperature variation from 1970-1999, presented as a MPEG from NASA (4.5 Mb). Yellow-to-red means higher temps and the last few years are a doozy. [via the Viridians]
posted by mathowie at 12:28 PM PST - 24 comments

Kir Bulychev died today. (Also here.) Those of us familiar with Russian sci-fi will always remember him for such masterpieces as Poselok (Those Who Survive) and a famous children's series Devochka s Zemli (The Girl from Planet Earth). More than just a writer, he was a profuse translator, East Asian researcher, and playwright. Over ten films were produced from his books and scripts. Almost all works are online in Russian, but I could find no online translations.
posted by azazello at 10:54 AM PST - 9 comments

Bush signs a bill into law that very few people will have anything bad to say about. Most of those who would oppose the new law can't vote, anyway, being members of predatory prison gangs, so I think we're pretty much good on this one.
posted by majcher at 9:25 AM PST - 49 comments

San Francisco mayorial candidates take the Voight-Kampff test. You know, from Blade Runner. For the children.
posted by xmutex at 9:08 AM PST - 35 comments

You're not from around here, are you? On Tuesday in Wellesley, MA a kindergartener was put on the wrong bus to go home from afterschool care. The boy is black, and the bus is for the Metco program, which buses minority kids from Boston to suburban schools. Random mixup, or racial bias at work? Much hand-wringing ensues.
posted by serafinapekkala at 7:55 AM PST - 34 comments

Make-a-Quake is discovery.com's simple, fascinating and creepy Flash interactive in which you choose the ground quality and construction prevention method for your multi-story building, then select a quake magnitude before you "Begin Quake" to find out how your property fared. Make-a-Quake is a feature of the "San Francisco Earthquake of 1906" (also featuring a video gallery and audio slide show), a part of Discovery's "Unsolved History" series. Past Unsolved History features here.
posted by taz at 7:08 AM PST - 19 comments

The 20 worst movie titles in the history of Hollywood. I'm guessing that these were so bad the the pr0n industry didn't even deign to spoof them...My personal fave: "THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED-UP ZOMBIES"
posted by vito90 at 6:47 AM PST - 74 comments

Carter defends GM crops



40 years?
posted by magullo at 3:19 AM PST - 20 comments

This is not a love song - The new movie written by The Full Monty creator Simon Beaufoy distributed over the web. Though before you download you may want to read a review. The future of movie distribution?
posted by brettski at 1:59 AM PST - 9 comments

"In 1942 my father, George Rarey, a young cartoonist and commercial artist, was drafted into the Army Air Corps. During his service he kept a cartoon journal of the daily life of the fighter pilots. His journals are a part of his legacy to me - one that I want to share with others through this web page. Browse through his drawings and words. Their joyful spirit dwarfs the background landscape of war." via gmtplus9
posted by Stan Chin at 12:06 AM PST - 15 comments

Test your scientific literacy. 'Do you think you know what science is? You may be surprised.'
posted by plep at 11:03 PM PST - 22 comments

A new study of climatic history says that the Earth is warmer now than it has been at any time in the past 2,000 years (contradicting another study discussed previously.) The Kazakhs probably agree. If correct, we may be joining the list of societies which made fatally disastrous decisions. Decisions like these [flash.]
posted by homunculus at 9:26 PM PST - 6 comments

Know Your NeoCons. Already the name "NeoCon" is used as an invective from the Left. But who are they? Here are some of their faces, brief biographies, and information about what a NeoCon is, at least as how they define it.
posted by kablam at 8:40 PM PST - 26 comments

When Bad Singers Happen To Good Songs: The Songicides! In today's Spectator Markus Berkmann amusingly raises the deadly spectre of the worst covers ever recorded. We're talking assassins here. I nominate Phil Collins's massacre of Holland/Dozier/Holland's "You Can't Hurry Love", as originally sung by Diana Ross and the Supremes; U2's goring of Cole Porter's "Night and Day", best sung by Sinatra or Ella and, worst of all, though he's my favourite artist, Leonard Cohen's mangling of Irving Berlin's classic "Always". What's the worst cover version you'd like to report to Musical Homicide?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 6:20 PM PST - 136 comments

RIAA to give file swappers amnesty. Provided they delete all unauthorized music files from their computers, destroy all copies (including CD-Rs) and promise not to upload such material in the future. Each infringing household member will have to send a completed, notarized amnesty form to the RIAA, with a copy of a photo ID. Those who renege on their promise will be subject to charges of willful copyright infringement.
posted by riffola at 5:32 PM PST - 33 comments

Alfred Hitchcock meets Star Wars Kid [note: 7 mb WMV (Windows Media) file]
posted by crunchland at 4:20 PM PST - 9 comments

Yo Pimp Daddy, whatchu drinkin' there?
posted by adamms222 at 3:03 PM PST - 13 comments

If you've ever wanted to own a Subterranean Fortress in the Pacific Northwest but didn't want to spend 14 years digging out and building one, your opportunity has arrived at last, priced at only $259,000. Conveniently located underneath a nondescript suburban home, you can use the shelter for fun, play, or surviving nuclear holocaust. Or, if you've seen Silence of the Lambs, you may have other ideas for possible uses.
posted by jonson at 2:45 PM PST - 32 comments

This year, MIT is free. Well, not really -- you won't get the degree, and you won't get to talk to the top minds in science or stay in a really cool dorm. But OpenCourseWare provides, as Wired puts it, "Every lecture [sometimes on video, sometimes only the notes], every handout, every quiz." Curious about Psycholinguistics? Urban Transportation, Land Use, and the Environment? Non-linear Programming? Cognitive & Behavioral Genetics? String Theory for Undergraduates? They are in Kenya.
posted by Tlogmer at 2:42 PM PST - 14 comments

Rage against the machine
The last link is the best!
posted by tr33hggr at 1:51 PM PST - 8 comments

William James Sidis: Collector of streetcar transfers and child genius. More in depth information here. (via a discussion on Boing-boing)
posted by sharksandwich at 1:36 PM PST - 6 comments

The Air Loom Gang were undercover Jacobin revolutionaries, bent on forcing Britain into a disastrous war with Revolutionary France; operating a device hidden in a London basement, they beamed their diabolical rays directly into the brain of James Tilly Matthews, who drew detailed technical diagrams of the device while confined at Bedlam. The spiritual father of all paranoid schizophrenics since, he had a fascinating set of delusions. [More inside.]
posted by languagehat at 1:35 PM PST - 8 comments

PSA: BBC News is having a moldy coffee cup contest. Closing date for photos of your hairy cup-o-joe is Sept. 10. Got Culture?
posted by titboy at 12:58 PM PST - 8 comments

Bouncing Bottoms to Freedom, Britons pull together to show Bush there sour face, and tell him what they think about the war.
posted by sourbrew at 11:52 AM PST - 25 comments

The Encyclopedia of Cajun Culture features everything from Acadiana to Zydeco. Two of the more interesting entries I've found are the Un-Cajun Committee and the unknown to me genre of Swamp Pop
posted by Ufez Jones at 11:31 AM PST - 15 comments

Music label Universal to lower CD prices. Is this move a bit like raising a white flag? (via Curlio)
posted by msacheson at 9:22 AM PST - 47 comments

Italian spammers face jail. The ruling follows estimates by the European Commission that spam e-mails cost EU companies approximately 2.25bn euros in lost productivity last year.
posted by MintSauce at 8:26 AM PST - 7 comments

WHO were you on September 11th? To paraphrase the political cliche, are you really different now from what you were two years ago? A collective blog project taking place in one week (of course) will try and answer that question.
posted by clevershark at 8:01 AM PST - 59 comments

«Clearly, one of the most critical questions of the twenty-first century concerns why the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were not prevented. As I outline below, there are numerous aspects regarding the official stories about September 11th which do not fit with known facts, which contradict each other, which defy common sense, and which indicate a pattern of misinformation and coverup. The reports coming out of Washington do very little to alleviate these concerns.» 22 questions to chose from and decide which ones are nightmares of a conspiracy theorist and which ones must be answered.
posted by acrobat at 7:30 AM PST - 70 comments

Disneyland obsessives. Some people live out their lives on Main Street.
posted by xowie at 7:09 AM PST - 51 comments

Behold the subtle hand of Karl Rove at work on the still distant 2004 election... Its 14 mos before the 2nd term elections and the numbers are falling fast (unless you're talking to this guy) What to do? Draw the ace up your sleeve, and start firing up the 70 million Christian fundies. BIGTIME.(note what state it happened in. Ain't that a coincedence?) Doesn't it seem a bit odd to be foregoing the more traditional strategy of reelection on the merits and opting instead to simply rely on the Karl Rove approach, at least this early in the campaign?
Note also, how it appears that someone is trying to again stack the deck in states holding larger shares of electoral votes.
(Coordinated events or is my tin foil hat just in need of a good polishing?)
posted by Fupped Duck at 6:07 AM PST - 25 comments

Nerd Gym (43 pages o' flash) is about 80% hackneyed obvious jokes, but there's some gems here and there. Which is dissapointing, because I don't get enough of the "Cleaning the Spitten Coffee off of the Monitor" workout. It also has very little to do with driving a tricycle drunk or throwing a javelin limpwristed against the Alpha Betas.
posted by Stan Chin at 12:02 AM PST - 7 comments

The Big Urban Game: Minneapolis and St. Paul have just been turned into a 108-square mile game board. The game ends Sunday, so you still have plenty of time to play.
posted by mrbula at 9:36 PM PST - 4 comments

Sherman Austin started his 1-year prison sentence on Wednesday, about seven months after the Raisethefist.org shutdown. During his three-year probation after getting out, he'll be barred from “associating with any person or group that seeks to change the government in any way be that environmental, social justice, political, economic, etc.”. Democracy Now! spoke with him right before he joined the prison population.
posted by gluechunk at 9:33 PM PST - 6 comments

Pull my finger. Despite my ambitions to be a sophisticate, I must confess that this is the most entertaining thing I've found on the Web in weeks. Flash fun, although it's not Friday.
posted by hipnerd at 9:15 PM PST - 21 comments

"The Spanish School of Swordsmanship, 'La Destreza,' is the most misunderstood subject in the history of fencing. It has been misrepresented by fencing scholars for the past one hundred years as an ineffectual and artificial system of swordsmanship full of absurdities. The intent of this article and others to follow is to present a clearer and more accurate picture of what 'La Destreza' is." 'La Destreza' was created by Jerónimo de Carranza in the 16th century. The system was featured in an episode of Highlander, and there are instructional videos.
posted by homunculus at 7:07 PM PST - 14 comments

Hand to hand combat [note: flash]
posted by crunchland at 4:02 PM PST - 8 comments

The Compendium of Lost Words
posted by ttrendel at 2:41 PM PST - 8 comments

John Walker Lindh, Hip Hop MC? Before John Walker Lindh became the American Taliban, he hid his whiteness, excoriating wack MCs on Usenet hip-hop bulletin boards. Attracted to Islam after listening to hip hop influenced by the Five Percenter movement, he later abandoned rap to denounce Nas as a fake Muslim. An interesting, but previously unexamined side to the American jihadist.
posted by jonp72 at 1:55 PM PST - 13 comments

The genger genie purports to guess the gender of an author by reading a sample of their writing. The program is based on an algorithm describe here, at nature.com. [Via Hit Or Miss.]
posted by silusGROK at 1:07 PM PST - 59 comments

PA helmets repealed from heads. At midnight tonight, Pennsylvania will become the sixth state since 1997 to repeal its mandatory motorcycle helmet law. Actually, there are a few qualifications. The guys who put this together are probably keen on PA's state store new Sunday hours, too.
posted by ringmaster at 12:25 PM PST - 50 comments

"This is an experiment in property rights in the digital age, something that's gotten surprisingly little attention." An intrepid netizen is auctionioning a song he bought from the iTunes Music Store on eBay. The license doesn't seem to explicitly cover (much less prohibit) this action. As more and more things become digital, what do we do with things we no longer want that have "value" but no physical substance?
posted by mkultra at 11:31 AM PST - 37 comments

'Bush government sanctioned bin Laden family repatriation' Two days after 9/11, planes grounded, and Bush gave ok for Saudis (including Bin Ladens) to fly out of country. This left me with tummy ache.
posted by Postroad at 11:20 AM PST - 34 comments

Ozu Yasujiro.com: "This site is non-profit, based in England, and maintained as a shrine and resource dedicated to the late director."
posted by hama7 at 7:49 AM PST - 9 comments

Ms. Gonick is a dooshe bag. Unfortunate experiences with a gaggle of teenagers in an enclosed space.
posted by kozad at 7:21 AM PST - 43 comments

Waiting in line won't help you. According to the New York Times, Ticketmaster plans to begin auctioning off the best concert seats to the highest online bidders. The paper says there would be no limit on how high prices could go - it would be simply a matter of how much people were willing to pay. So, with ClearChannel, the RIAA and Ticketmaster now officially boinking the fan base...what other methods can the music industry use to drive away fans?
posted by dejah420 at 6:22 AM PST - 66 comments

A neato collection of Russian eBooks translated into English mostly for propaganda purposes, which while not in the public domain are available for non-commercial use after the fall of the Soviet Union and certain copyright peculiarities, as described here. The archivist says: The main aim of this collection is to preserve the work of translators and give some information to historians. But whatever the reason, there's some good reading here to be had.
posted by chrisgregory at 4:31 AM PST - 6 comments

American values brought to you by the letters... In the Islamic world the USA doesn't appear to be making too many friends recently. But is it all a big misunderstanding? Perhaps the middle east simply need to learn more about American values. Who can teach them about American culture, morality, and cookies? You'd be surprised...
posted by kaemaril at 4:28 AM PST - 15 comments

The prison diary of Scottish Parliament MP (and successful self-publicist) Tommy Sheridan, jailed for seven days (not for the first time) for refusing to pay a fine imposed after he was found guilty of a breach of the peace while demonstrating at Faslane against nuclear weapons.
posted by ascullion at 11:34 PM PST - 7 comments

Let's say you're MacGyver and you were stuck in a room with 3 Bar Stools and the only way out is through a ceiling window. What would you do? Well... that's certainly an option I suppose. There's plenty of other useful tips for the cunning do-it-yourselfer at Homemade Sex Toys. I assume it would be a smart idea to have some Boy Butter on hand before you try the one with the PVC Pipe. It's all possibly easier than the real thing, which seems unecessarily loud and complicated. All Links NSFW
posted by Stan Chin at 11:32 PM PST - 14 comments

Cincinnati's Abandoned Subway.
posted by plep at 11:21 PM PST - 18 comments

An article in the upcoming issue of Playboy (via MAP) examines in more detail a lethal standoff between a pot-smoking festival organizer and the government. Another attempt to drop out and do as one pleases met with another unhappy outcome. Rainbow farms was previously discussed here.
posted by trondant at 9:59 PM PST - 9 comments

A SERIES OF ADS "Consider the following scenario: a series of TV ads begin to appear nightly immediately after the Republican convention is over next year. They will be negative ads. They will promote no Democratic candidate. They will therefore not be under the tight restrictions of the Federal Election Commission.

Each ad will begin with a video clip of President Bush's "Bring 'em on!" challenge. Then the screen will shift rapidly to the burned-out remains of a building or a Humvee. Underneath will be these words: a date, a location, and a death count. Then a black screen with white print will announce: America needs a new policy. There will be an ID of some kind: "Citizens for a Lasting Peace" or "Mothers to Stop the Bloodshed."

There will be no bodies on screen. There will be only bombed-out buildings and equipment.

Each ad will last no longer than 15 seconds. There will be a new ad every night
posted by troutfishing at 9:56 PM PST - 46 comments

Muzzle Mike Farrell. Plump for a graphical sarcasm emoticon. Save East Coker. Get a fifteenth-century Papal Bull revoked. Restore original music to Felicity DVDs. Stop the spread of undignified autopsy photos and end the "Fake Friends" problem. Whatever your goal, use grassroots power and dream big.
posted by BT at 9:15 PM PST - 3 comments

McDonald's launches global campaign featuring Justin Timberlake in an attempt to target kids and teens. Forget the "Smile" campaign, it's "I'm lovin' it" now. (NYT account required)
posted by valerie at 9:13 PM PST - 16 comments

James Webb, former Secretary of the Navy: "I am very troubled by the fact that we went into Iraq and very troubled about how we're going to get out of Iraq.'' Recently ousted Army Secretary Thomas E. White, in his new book/Iraq blueprint concurs: "Clearly the view that the war to `liberate' Iraq would instantly produce a pro-United States citizenry ready for economic and political rebirth ignored the harsh realities on the ground." Is the rift between military and civillian leadership in the Pentagon growing?
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 7:08 PM PST - 19 comments

Bird-Dogging involves showing up at a presentation or speech by a public figure and asking well-informed, pointed questions. Now Bird-Doggers are getting organized. Live near New Hampshire? The American Friends Service Committee has a handy set of tips and a schedule of appearances by the Democratic contenders. What questions would you ask?
posted by alms at 6:22 PM PST - 23 comments

Mad, Cracked, & Weirdo magazine cover archives.
posted by crunchland at 3:59 PM PST - 13 comments

A Big Balloon will be launched from a ship off the coast at St Ives, Cornwall. In it, two brave (or foolhardy) men are going very, very high "to the edge of space"; in a f**!ing balloon! If that's not exciting enough for you, you can always go to the Tate, take in some industrial archeology, learn kernewek or go to Eden But don't forget to have a pasty
posted by lerrup at 3:03 PM PST - 6 comments

The smoking gun has the arrest report for Jeffery Lee the kid just arrested for releasing a variant of the blaster virus. Without spoiling much it's safe to say the kids methods were idiotic , but it's a fascinating read on how the FBI caught this guy.
posted by bitdamaged at 2:51 PM PST - 28 comments

Sales results on the Franken book... Sales results post-Fair and Balanced Day... (Possibly offensive to Fox fans, also...) (via Fark)
posted by Samizdata at 1:46 PM PST - 12 comments

Eolas® Technologies Inc. owns the plugin concept. Meet US Patent 5,838,906: "The patent claims to cover mechanisms for embedding objects within distributed hypermedia documents, where at least some of the object's data is located external to the document, and there is a control path to the object's implementation to support user interaction with the object." Eolas sued Microsoft, was awarded $521 million, Microsoft is appealing, and the W3C held (Macromedia hosted) an ad hoc meeting on the recent court decision and launched a discussion list. Microsoft plans to promptly make changes to Internet Explorer. If this follows through, what are the negative and positive implications?
posted by aaronshaf at 1:40 PM PST - 29 comments

Asteroid orbits Enter the designation or name of any asteroid or comet, and a 3D orbit visualization tool will appear for that object. If Chicken Little had this link he might have calmed down a little. Or not...Find out if your favorite asteroid is about to rock your world.
posted by konolia at 1:07 PM PST - 5 comments

Explore the work of the father of the modern submarine. John P. Holland, an Irish-American born in 1841, designed and built many early submarines including the first in the U.S. Navy. The Irish Fenian Brotherhood’s Skirmishing Fund financed his early work, including the Fenian Ram, the imagined scourge of the British Navy. They eventually stole it from him but were confounded by its controls. Instead it was displayed in Madison Square Garden to raise funds for victims of the 1916 Irish Uprising.
Geocities: tread lightly.
Site uses frames, use the first link.
posted by putzface_dickman at 12:50 PM PST - 3 comments

The Gallery of Monster Toys. "...for all those boys and girls who grew up watching Creature Features and Chiller Theaters (embedded QT clip), reading Famous Monsters of Filmland, and playing with these cherished toys...and for all those who wished they had."
posted by LinusMines at 12:30 PM PST - 2 comments

A google search for kazaa lite now yields the following disclaimer (scroll to the bottom of the results page): In response to a complaint we received under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 9 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint for these removed results.
posted by totee at 8:20 AM PST - 33 comments

The Last Bastion Of Serious Sexual Discrimination: Booze! Do men and women really have different tastes when it comes to drinking? What does it all mean? Do girls really like girly cocktails? Do men hate sweet, fruity drinks? Are rye and malt whiskeys, cognac, red wine and beer resolutely masculine? Are gin, cocktails, liqueurs, white wine and champagne eternally feminine? Is vodka neutral? Is a gin and tonic always truly gay? Is tequila bisexual? Too neat? Perhaps. I wonder whether guy booze, girl booze and gay booze can ever be satisfactorily mapped out...
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:10 AM PST - 96 comments

Obitpage, dedicated to the writer's art of the obituary. Recommended among the greats in the (partial) "hall-of-fame" archive is Idi Amin's: "One of the Most Reviled Figures In Recent History."
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 7:15 AM PST - 5 comments

Since Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea FC at the beginning of July, he has spent over £111.15m on eleven new players prior to yesterday's transfer deadline. Some think that attempting to buy success in football (soccer) in this way is tantamount to cheating. This has really shaken things up in the genteel world of football - but is football still 20-30 years behind US sports? (salary caps, etc.)
posted by daveg at 6:33 AM PST - 42 comments

George W Bush analysed by psychologist Oliver James.
posted by Blue Stone at 3:30 AM PST - 34 comments

Near Earth Objects A newly discovered 1.2 km wide asteroid has been given a Torino hazard rating of 1. Astronomers will continue to observe the space rock carefully to determine its orbit more accurately. [link via BBC Radio 5]<
posted by Frasermoo at 1:14 AM PST - 13 comments

California senior driver pressed the accelerator instead of the brakes ? For 2nd time in 2 months a 85-something driver hits accelerator instead of breaks, this time there where no deaths only 4 serious injuries ? What can be done about this ? Are you scared to walk down the street, afraid a senior driver might kill you ?
posted by bureaustyle at 11:58 PM PST - 45 comments

Backmasking Soundclips. Backwards speech and music have been many, many times here, but here's some more clips. And then here's some more clips on top of that. [Horrible embedded soundclip].
posted by Stan Chin at 11:18 PM PST - 5 comments

"Documents of Freedom" is a nine-part series of articles in Salon "highlighting the historic essays, speeches and court rulings that have advanced the cause of free speech and other civil liberties." Each article focuses on one document, offering commentary and a link to the document. The latest piece is on freedom of the press in the days of Benjamin Franklin and his grandson. The article on John Stuart Mill was discussed here.
posted by homunculus at 8:31 PM PST - 3 comments

A Guide To Music Changes In "WKRP IN CINCINNATI" (via The Morning News)
posted by monkeymike at 7:56 PM PST - 22 comments

Sick on the Inside. Published in Harper's August 2003 issue but not online, the full text of Wil S. Hylton's exposure of the medical conditions in United States prisons has been put on the web by the Wrongful Death Institute with the author's permission. The gravity of the situation for more than 2 million people behind bars can hardly be exaggerated.

"We have almost 30 percent of our prison population in Texas infected with hepatitis. That’s not so different from the numbers you see in the Dark Ages with the plague."
...
"[Correctional Medical Services] is an HMO with a captive audience," says David Santacroce, the professor who is spearheading the Michigan lawsuit. "The fewer patients they treat, the more money they make."

[more inside]
posted by Eloquence at 7:39 PM PST - 11 comments

The American Diner Museum is ready to serve you, 24 hours a day. You can buy one if you want, or just find one near you. But most important, you can finally understand what they're saying to the folk behind the window when you order your eggs and hash.
posted by dchase at 5:23 PM PST - 5 comments

the world's first personal DNA storage & sampling kit ~ Save, share, and celebrate your DNA. ”Your very being, saved on a swab, for all eternity”
posted by crunchland at 3:48 PM PST - 9 comments

Flashing Candidates Sometimes strident, sometimes funny, straight, or a quickie, sometimes all of the above -- I guess it's better than plain wallpaper.
posted by victors at 3:41 PM PST - 3 comments

Safety Patrol, take note: It's back-to-school time all over the world, including the West Bank.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 12:15 PM PST - 6 comments

"I am an American, I am a Muslim and I vote." That was one of the themes at the Islamic Society of North America convention this weekend, and Muslim leaders, who endorsed George Bush in 2000, may be looking elsewhere as a result of the government's actions against Muslims since 9/11. There are plans to register 1 million new Muslim voters, out of an estimated 2 to 6 million population.
Until recently, the plight of the Palestinians dominated political discussion among American Muslims. But Muslim leaders say they must now be pragmatic as they seek greater influence in government.
A newly-energized U.S. Muslim population up for grabs--but would their endorsement be a liability in our current climate?
posted by amberglow at 11:16 AM PST - 18 comments

Benedicte Wrensted: An Idaho Photographer in Focus.
posted by plep at 10:11 AM PST - 2 comments

Dutch government is distributing cannabis as a prescription painkiller to pharmacies to treat chronically ill patients. The Netherlands are the first country to supply the drug itself, in accordance with United Nations rules on narcotics. This Radio Netherlands article contains an interview with an American expatriate who is now a licensed supplier.
posted by prolific at 8:37 AM PST - 23 comments

"This is not what Saddam attributes to himself." This? What is This? According to the BBC and Al Jazeera, This is the assassination of Iraqi Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, the source of far more mourning amongst the Shiite community than, say, the death of Uday and Qusay Hussein. Apparently, Saddam pointed out how quickly the West rushed to judgment against him, then denied he had anything to do with the bombing. CNN and the Associated Press concur with that assessment, though they do not use the above (translated) passage in their report. And that would be it, save for the BBC providing a full text translation of the primary source for the story. A slightly larger excerpt:

[The invaders say without evidence that some of my supporters were responsible.] Saddam Hussein is not the leader of the minority or a group, with whom he is affiliated or who are affiliated. He is the leader of all the great Iraqi people - Arabs and Kurds; Shias and Sunnis, Muslims and non-Muslims. Saddam Hussein does not attribute this saying to himself. This[emphasis added] is what was decided by the great Iraqi people themselves in free, public elections.

Contextual shift between translations has always been a contentious issue, but precisely how does the message "I am not just the ruler of a few shattered remnants of Iraqi society" get warped into "I did not order the death of this man"? The two messages are, after all, mutually exclusive. The only thing that's clear is that it's unlikely this was a militarily-sourced obfuscation; Heatley's comments on CNN clearly address the obvious interpretation. Thoughts?
posted by effugas at 8:14 AM PST - 16 comments

Charles Bronson (1921 - 2003)
The BBC were showing Once Upon a Time in The West last night. I guess he died while I was watching it, which is kind of odd...
posted by tomcosgrave at 2:50 AM PST - 17 comments

This review from ABC News, covers a new version of the New Testament - designed to look like a fashion magazine, and marketed towards teen girls. [more inside]
posted by ArsncHeart at 1:00 AM PST - 120 comments