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How many recent metafilter threads can you spot in this story? It seems no matter you become famous (or infamous) you need a spokesperson. Just in case you are ever sans spokesperson and standing naked before the ravenous third estate this article gives you a few canned sound bites. Look in a mirror and say these six lines with a straight face: "The best thing for everyone involved is to achieve closure and move on..."
posted by rdr at 10:36 PM PST - 2 comments

john cusack for president
Why Shouldn't John Cusack be President?

He made the tough decisions in Grosse Pointe Blank.
He couldn't be bought in Eight Men Out.
He's cooler than John Malkovich
And we like his politics so far.

interesting. what actor do you think should be president? and why?
posted by bwg at 10:26 PM PST - 57 comments

PacBell seeks to secure a monopoly Californians urged to contact the PUC to put the brakes on PacBell's plan to kill the independent ISP. Should they be allowed to take their toys and go home or be forced to share? And, what effect will this have on the future of tech companies if PacBell is able to lock out DSL competition?
posted by sillygit at 9:06 PM PST - 6 comments

The Olive Garden just says no to H2O! Water: it's necessary to sustain life, but it contributes to a dull dining experience.
posted by sassone at 7:35 PM PST - 101 comments

B&O goes virtual : Beoplayer 1.0 is a Windows application that sits on your desktop and, like everything Bang, works in a sleek, elegant, unintuitive manner (until you learn what the icons and doodads do, then you can show it off for all your friends). Guaranteed you've never seen a music player like this one.
posted by honkzilla at 7:32 PM PST - 14 comments

Cheat! Win a new car! Ford's website tie-in to the NASCAR race series looks fairly normal on first glance. It's a contest that offers prizes (Grand Prize a new Taurus) based on picking the top Ford finishers in each week's race. However, the website is riddled with issues. Enough issues that no one should win a prize when all is said and done. More inside:
posted by machaus at 5:44 PM PST - 4 comments

Pity The Poor TV Broadcaster It was obvious that Personal Video Recorders (like Tivo) were going to make it way easy to skip advertising. What I also realized, though, when talking to Lane about how Buffy is moving from the WB to UPN, is that folks who watch Buffy via a PVR could care less what channel it is on--they just tell the machine to "get me Buffy" and it does the rest. This study seems to affirm that, for a significant portion of the audience, this is true.
posted by peterme at 4:48 PM PST - 24 comments

Stories like this one always seems to bring a smile to my face. For the record, this is the second time in the last few years that some stupid (or very desperate) criminal has tried to rob a doughnut shop in the Chicago land area. You'd think that the concept alone would stop a would-be assailant, but I guess truth is stranger than fiction.
posted by Bag Man at 4:26 PM PST - 15 comments

Netninja Photo Contest There's a little more than a week or so left in the contest, and I doubt it's going to be the next All Your Base, but it looks like fun. Hell, I'm entering.
posted by dincognito at 3:56 PM PST - 2 comments

Scient and iXL Merge...and I'm wondering who thinks this is a really good idea. A big part of the problem these "iBusiness" consultancies have is that they're too big. Remember all those layoffs? It's in large part because of big overhead, which is a big problem in a tight market. So what problem is being solved by making these two companies into one bigger company?
posted by peterme at 3:48 PM PST - 14 comments

Buy me for $2,595,030.00 So I guess I fit on the "bargain" category... or what? Looks like "money changes everything" isn't just a Cyndi Lauper song title anymore.
posted by betobeto at 1:29 PM PST - 49 comments

The War on Drug Wars. "Ashkan Sahihi is a photographer who is infuriated by the hypocrisy of the war on drugs. It is this hypocrisy that inspired Sahihi to take eleven people out of their daily environments, get them high, and photograph them." Does this project warrant attention as a political statement, as an art project, as all of the above, or as none of the above? Please explain your answer. Partial credit will be given.
posted by conquistador at 12:07 PM PST - 23 comments

The Bush Dyslexicon Ever since the presidential campaign, George W. Bush's adventures in the English language have alternately amused and horrified the nation. But according to media scholar Mark Crispin Miller's scathing new book, The Bush Dyslexicon, to conclude merely that Bush is dimwitted would be a grave mistake. The President's linguistic fumbles, argues Miller, mask a deep and shrewd political vindictiveness; at the same time, the shallowness revealed in Bush's unscripted remarks has been largely ignored or coddled by a national media more interested in soundbites than in political substance.

I don't know what is more frightening: that this guy is right, and we have much more to fear about Bush, Jr. than we thought...or that he is wrong, and we do indeed live in a land whose president is an imbecile.
posted by mapalm at 11:23 AM PST - 54 comments

MSN blocks its subscribers from sending mail with non-Outlook mail clients, as of last week. Like AOL, MSN hasn't allowed its subscribers to check their MSN mail with non-MS mail clients since the beginning. Last April, they banned access to non-MSN SMTP servers (to block spam relaying), but you could still send mail to other ISPs through MSN's SMTP server using your mail client of choice with a simple fix. Now, you can only do so if you switch to Outlook or Outlook Express (quietly announced on their site and via e-mail). All others (Eudora, Pegasus, Agent, Yahoo Mail, Netscape Messenger) are left cold. (more inside...)
posted by waxpancake at 11:09 AM PST - 30 comments

Special Delivery Like a plot out of a movie (or TV show): "You know, my daddy's name was Johnny Johnson," Simmons said, figuring that it was little more than a coincidence. The man paused for a moment and then asked Simmons what his name was. When Simmons told him, he saw tears well up in the man's eyes. "David, is that really you?" the man asked, his voice quivering. Link courtesy Obscure Store.
posted by internal at 10:56 AM PST - 13 comments

I'm not sure I want my ketchup "funky". Heinz announces "funky purple" ketchup, because their green ketchup was so successful.
posted by binkin at 10:46 AM PST - 36 comments

F*ckedEconomy? Cuts in interest rates don't seem to be helping. Layoffs persist (and not just tech/dotcoms). The market bounces, but can it sustain itself? Some say the market will rebound in the 2nd quarter of next year, but these are the same people who saw an uptick coming this fall. Are we headed towards a recession, again? Lucent even had to sell their golf course.
posted by owillis at 10:30 AM PST - 12 comments

Looking for a catchy ICQ number? How about a short one? I can understand domain name reselling, but this is ridiculous. What's next, a market for easy to remember IP addresses?
posted by ry at 10:22 AM PST - 47 comments

He sees dead people. (NYT link) John Edward, host of Sci Fi channel's "Crossing Over", can "read" his audience and pass messages from the deceased. Or is it just like a game of 20 questions? After a few questions he can make guesses and be close enough to right that people believe it. Have you ever seen the show, and do you believe him? Have you ever been read by a psychic? Do you have psychic powers yourself?
posted by msacheson at 9:59 AM PST - 60 comments

Taliban seeks "friendship" with the U.S. Despite their myriad human rights violations and long-standing involvement in a brutal and bloody civil war, the Afghani Taliban government wants to open diplomatic relations with the U.S. Is there really anything to gain by having friendly relations with a nation under UN sanction which treats their own with brutality and has threatened and defied us at every turn?
posted by Dreama at 9:23 AM PST - 15 comments

New web site helps Venezuelans emigrate. The website www.mequieroir.com, which means "I want to leave" in Spanish, offers advice on foreign visa regulations, work permits and even culture and climate for citizens of whatever age who are considering emigrating. Its pages cite recent opinion polls that show that more than 30 percent of Venezuela's 24 million inhabitants would emigrate if they had the opportunity.
posted by 120degrees at 9:21 AM PST - 5 comments

"Sony Corporation of America and Yahoo! Announce Multi-Faceted Relationship. Agreement Includes Co-Branded Web Site, E-Commerce, Enterprise Advisory Services, and Content Integration and Promotion".
posted by valerie at 9:19 AM PST - 5 comments

Clippings is the GPL-ed code behind IHT's news-clip feature, which has been discussed on MetaFilter before. This is very cool code and I think any site with many front page links could benefit from it. Serendipitously found at smokinggun, which is not the smoking gun.
posted by icathing at 8:57 AM PST - 19 comments

Mr. Blue is ill. Garrison Keillor, the host of A Prarie Home Companion and writer of numerous books, will be undergoing open heart surgery sometime in the near future.
posted by isildur at 8:52 AM PST - 9 comments

just say no to sex it gets worse...
posted by christina at 7:02 AM PST - 58 comments

MRI machines -- I always knew they were dangerous, though I never imagined how.
posted by dfowler at 6:31 AM PST - 13 comments