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It's getting to be that time again. Some people like it. Some people feed it to the homeless. Some people seek to destroy them since they last forever . Some people find them funny. You can make your own; free range, drops, stuffed in meat, with SPAM or Vegan.
posted by srboisvert at 8:45 PM PST - 3 comments

Time Magazine's 2002 Best Inventions
I love my toys and gadgets, and I especially fancy the Air Surfer, @ $75 it looks like the glider for klutzes like me. However, I'm not ready just yet to take the hoots of derision that this Bluetooth Mobile Phone Headset will bring. This new chip looks set to improve digital photography... I do fancy that! But will Foveon have the muscle to bring the X3 to fruition?
This, though, is as close as we'll ever get to 'vaporware': Nasa's AeroGel... find out what earthly purpose it could serve.
Some on the list are little more than product placements (I'm looking at 'Breathe Strips' and 'Ultra-Cashmere' now), and some - Mr. Dyson's Cyclonic spin vacuum, I'm surprised to see - are hardly new. Others [Nano-Tex, Date Rape Drug Spotter & The Scramjet] I'm sure we've discussed before (but they don't figure in Mefi searches).
How many of these will change our lives - and how many will improve them? Is there something cool missing from the list? - something tells me that their gushing over their discovery of '3D Online Entertainment' ["...you can do it all and more in Second Life, a startlingly lifelike 3-D virtual world now evolving on the Internet"] gives it the Kiss O' Death. [...via blogdex]

posted by dash_slot- at 8:26 PM PST - 11 comments

Tracing Baby Boomer Attitudes Then and Now: A Comparative Look at the Attitudes of Baby Boomers in the 1970s and 2002 From an AARP study..."we gathered attitudinal surveys conducted in the early to mid 1970s, when these leading edge baby boomers were in their 20s. We then asked the same questions of this same group today, now that they are in their 50s."
posted by Oxydude at 6:13 PM PST - 6 comments

The National Religious Partnership for the Environment is preparing a grass roots campaign linking fuel economy to morality. The group includes members from the Catholic, Jewish and Evangelical faiths.

Why is this important? With BIG religion vs BIG Oil, where does this leave the Republicans?
posted by CrazyJub at 4:50 PM PST - 21 comments

Black Holes Merge. Massive layoffs expected throughout galaxy. Analysts predict big payoffs for the economy, however. "A burst of gravitational waves that could warp the very fabric of space will go a long way towards increasing shareholding value," said one economist. Both black holes had recently suffered a dramatic drop in stock price, and were under the threat of hostile takeover from industry leader Black Hole 86184-B before the merger was announced, which took Wall Street pundits off guard. "Much to our surprise, we found that both were active black holes," Stefanie Komossa of the Max Planck Astro-Economics Institute in Germany, said in a statement. Proponents of big business greeted the announcement with pleasure: "This supports the idea that black holes can grow to enormous masses in the centres of galaxies by merging with other black holes."
posted by tweebiscuit at 2:43 PM PST - 17 comments

Art Crimes. With a new Tracy Emin exhibition at the Stedilijk, who knows what an afternoon holds.
posted by plexi at 1:33 PM PST - 18 comments

Another massive celestial object, with a companion star in tow, has been discovered hurtling through the Milky Way. Unlike similar discoveries confirming the bow shock theory of stellar dynamics, this week's phenomenon is considerably older, as it's an aftereffect of the galactic core's formation. The French and Argentine astromoners making the discovery believe what they've witnessed may be a black hole, though theoretically, the collasped matter may be a gravistar.
posted by Smart Dalek at 1:29 PM PST - 10 comments

We all knew the day would come, the time to put the "you" in P2P: Buy your own piece of Napster at their bankruptcy auction. December 11th, live and webcast, their impressive set of top o' the line (for 2001) equipment is up for grabs.
posted by mathowie at 12:56 PM PST - 9 comments

Orbitz Marketing head says Pop-ups are Great! Yes, I got this from Fark, but it is still worth a look. The article includes the marketer's e-mail address. Let him know what you think about his ads!
posted by trigfunctions at 11:53 AM PST - 27 comments

Cloaca While it's a shame that contemporary "art" seems to require some form of bodily waste product in order to be considered an act of genius, I have to say that this particular one is fascinating. It eats a meal, digests it, and then ... does the obvious.
posted by oissubke at 11:46 AM PST - 38 comments

Inside the JFK medical files. Very interesting article from Sunday's NY Times (reg. req'd) about the long-term health of John F. Kennedy, from World War II to his death. Corresponding Yahoo News item here also. [more inside...]
posted by PeteyStock at 11:26 AM PST - 11 comments

Previously discussed here, the Body World exhibition in, London, Brick Lane is hosting what is to be the last publicly performed autopsy before they are banned. I've seen the exhibition and felt that it was done very well, but I'm not sure ill be attending the autopsy with as much haste. Macabre voyeurism or lay man intrigue? Its being rumored that is may also be televised on channel 4
posted by monkeyJuice at 11:12 AM PST - 15 comments

Before there were blogs, before there was the Web, there were zines. Most MeFi folk know this - right? - but it seems to be astonishing news to the Washington Post. Maybe not everybody here was part of the zine scene back in the 80s and early 90s, but I bet a lot of you were. My question: Am I just an out-of-touch curmudgeon or is it insulting to do an article like this on a "Zine Guide" (which I haven't seen - I haven't touched a zine in about five years, probably) without even mentioning the Alpha and Omega of the genre, Mike Gunderloy's Factsheet Five?
posted by soyjoy at 10:13 AM PST - 48 comments

The United States Senate's Website has been redesigned. Checking on today's Senate activities, I was pleasantly surprised to find the redesign. Poking around it is very easy to use, in comparison to other Government websites.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 9:48 AM PST - 14 comments

Seattle - Then & Now It's wider than you think. It's an old image atop a modern one of the Seattle "coastline." Javascript enables one to reveal the new image. Wow.
posted by folktrash at 9:38 AM PST - 37 comments

Can Poetry Matter? Written 11 years ago but still relevant today. Will the spectacular $100 million gift to Poetry Magazine (see below) make a difference? Or will the spark be ignited as poetic forms muscle their way in and around other mediums, as with Def Jam Poetry which will now looks like will have another season on HBO, and has now opened on Broadway; “singing poets” such as Floetry (soon to play live at SOB in NYC), Abiyah , and revivals of classic masters The Last Poets. Purists may cringe.
posted by Voyageman at 9:30 AM PST - 10 comments

Bread and Circuses The Texas Prison Museum as an odd mix of entertainment and education. If someone gives it $100 million will the prison museum unenroll from the Kroger Share Card Program and lose the value of 1% of participants' grocery purchases? A veritable treasure trove of the absurd and frightening. What's your favorite? Mine are the pavers. We could get up a collection for one from Metafilter. Who's with me?
posted by elgoose at 9:26 AM PST - 2 comments

Let your voice be heard. The Copyright Office is Taking Comments On The DMCA, starting today. You can read the law as a PDF Here. They are requesting written comments from all interested parties, including representatives of copyright owners, educational institutions, libraries and archives, scholars, researchers and members of the public, in order to elicit evidence on whether noninfringing uses of certain classes of works are, or are likely to be, adversely affected by this prohibition on the circumvention of measures that control access to copyrighted works.
posted by Blake at 6:51 AM PST - 26 comments

Here is the News. The old news, that is: the entire 3500 hour British Pathé Film Archive covering news, sport, social history and entertainment from 1896 to 1970, with low-res clips available for free, was launched today.
posted by rory at 4:45 AM PST - 15 comments

To Boggan Or Not To Boggan On A Tuesday: that is the question. Jus don't let the disrespect shown to Johnny Cash or the deliberately annoying Schwarzenegger commentary put you off this great little game - or dare get past level 6 either! [Flash required and via Bifurcated Rivets, of course.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:58 AM PST - 15 comments

James Coburn passes on...
RIP James...
posted by tomcosgrave at 2:37 AM PST - 20 comments

Secret U.S. court OKs electronic spying Big Brother much? John Ashcroft is well on his way to becoming the next J. Edgar Hoover, or worse. The government can already secretly spy on what books we're reading, thanks to the Patriot Act. Previous MeFi threads have covered the evils of Total Information Awareness and how it makes everyone a suspect. Now a "secret court" gives the government a green light to spy while the ACLU tried to figure out if there is any recourse.
posted by Dok Millennium at 2:29 AM PST - 39 comments

Collateral Damage: The Health and Environmental Costs of War on Iraq. The terror of the war on terror: "A war against Iraq could kill half a million people, warns a new report by medical experts - and most would be civilians." The report (pdf format) is from Medact, the British affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. One of the report's conclusions: "It cannot be emphasised too strongly that even a best-case scenario of a limited war of short duration, perhaps comparable to 1991, would have much greater impact on the Iraqi people and would initially kill three times the number who died on September 11."
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 12:29 AM PST - 49 comments