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The Mother of All Maritime Links. Feeling a little landlocked? From "Pirates" (over twenty links) to "Weather & Tides," from plain old "History" to "Music" and beyond, this site is one of the more comprehensive available.
posted by datawrangler at 7:38 PM PST - 5 comments

Pseudonyms. Bibliography of pseudonym dictionaries. Noms de guerre, noms de plume.. Authors with ten or more pseudonyms. Noms de guerre of Palestinian leaders. Declarations of pseudonyms in the US Catalog of Copyright Entries (Renewals). The Brontë Pseudonyms. [Topic suggested by La Grande Rousse].
posted by Mo Nickels at 6:12 PM PST - 11 comments

Phantom Cosmonauts On November 28, 1960, a morse code transmission reading "SOS to the whole world" from an orbiting spaceship was picked up by the Judica-Cordiglia brothers with their home-made radio tracking station in San Maurizio Canavese, Italy. Sometime between February 2-4, they picked up telemetry of a dying cosmonauts heartbeat and breathing. Yuri Gagarin, the universally acknowledged first man in space, did not make his flight until April 12, 1961. These brothers claimed that they intercepted radio transmissions of other secret flights as well. Were there secret Soviet spaceflights that ended in the death of Cosmonauts? Most tend to disagree, and offer an excellent debunking. I started reading about this several weeks before the Columbia, but it now has a new poignancy. I agree that it is exceedingly unlikely that these alleged flights took, but the claims of these brothers, mingled with various other rumor and various Soviet urban legends, (along with the fact of Russian/Soviet general secrecy about most everything,) create an alternate history that is exceedingly disturbing.
posted by Snyder at 5:12 PM PST - 18 comments

The first cracks in the foundations of Colin Powell's "Case for War" speech are beginning to be uncovered by a Cambridge professor. Some of the information taken from an "up to date" British intelligence dossier was apparently plagiarized and dramatically spun from a California graduate student's paper, describing the Iraqi regime during the 1990s. Will it make any difference in U.S. public opinion if the Powell speech is debunked? Will the widening gap between U.S. and global opinion further weaken the UN?
posted by zekinskia at 4:35 PM PST - 42 comments

If you thought the Patriot Act was bad... It looks like it's going to get worse. Center for Public Integrity has the full text (pdf) for the "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003". Lowlights include a "DNA database on 'suspected terrorists'" as well as pretrial detention for "suspected terrorists" without bail. There's more. (via The Scoop)
posted by owillis at 3:37 PM PST - 45 comments

The play's the thing... From a flyer at a demonstration, earlier today: On March 3, 2003. Groups all over the world will perform readings of Aristophanes' anti-war play Lysistrata to show Bush and the world that war is not the only option. The list of performances is quite impressive. Pro-peace? Get involved!
posted by condour75 at 3:35 PM PST - 22 comments

Come and Be Black for Me. A gentle but pointed personal essay on Black History month. "I am glad February is almost over. It's during this month that everyone is looking for me - or rather, anyone who can come and be black for them."
posted by RJ Reynolds at 2:55 PM PST - 5 comments

I just discovered the answer to a question I asked here. Apparently, the police can get a DNA sample from a suspect without the suspect's knowledge or consent. The police probably had a warrant, but the article doesn't say.
posted by titboy at 2:39 PM PST - 7 comments

Björk's music videos (some NSFW) are among the best. Her directors are the cream of the industry, and draw affecting ideas from her music. Here's the latest one, and here's my favorite.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 1:37 PM PST - 47 comments

now available! As someone who loved T1 & T2 this looks like mostly a rehash of those two. What's your take?
posted by milnak at 1:17 PM PST - 31 comments

Hey you, XYZ! Look at your zipper -- was it made by Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha, or YKK? Probably. With seven million zippers produced every day at YKK America's National Manufacturing Center in Macon, Georgia, alone, it's no wonder that the zipper on whatever you're wearing right now is a YKK...or is it?
[a bit more inside]
posted by DakotaPaul at 1:07 PM PST - 28 comments

The decadence of American democracy is the subject of Daniel Ellsberg’s memoir. In 1971, as a disillusioned Pentagon staffer, he leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times. As usual for London Review of Books, it’s a long-ish essay but para 17 alone is a breathtaking confession of top brass arrogance. Link to the second half of essay at foot of page or here.
posted by skellum at 12:31 PM PST - 12 comments

Wine, Chicago, and Bob. Sounds like a dangerous combination, but fortunately the GUI Gallery keeps 'em separated for your safety. Via my good friend wysinger.com
posted by WolfDaddy at 12:29 PM PST - 3 comments

The US Department of Education - Or Not?
A link or two for those who don't own a television. Or a Michael Jackson CD.
Reaction to federal initiatives like No Child Left Behind (which is directed purely at education, and has been discussed here before ) and Head Start (which has a social component, and has not (I think)) is starting to filter in.
Should the Federal Government worry about disparities in educational expenditures? Should it worry about how services are delivered?
posted by 314/ at 12:13 PM PST - 4 comments

heather champ is looking to get moby to submit a shot himself to the mirror project by her fortieth birthday. now moby's taken shots of himself in several reflective surfaces before and he even keeps a weblog - so he's pretty much the mirror project's target audience. as of today, there's only eighty.one days left for heather's dream to become a reality. spread the word and make one gal's dream a reality.
posted by boogah at 11:38 AM PST - 34 comments

Not your average athlete He walked away from pro football glory to serve his nation, and he's loving every minute of it.
posted by oissubke at 11:36 AM PST - 51 comments

In an article called "The Sociobiological Conceit", Gene Callahan says darwinism is logically flawed and inherently self-contradictory: "if moral ideas are simply an 'illusion' fostered on us by our genes then so are all of our other ideas – including the ideas of sociobiology!". Callahan, fyi, belongs to the ultra-libertarian circles of the Mises Institute and LewRockwell. Would any of the evolutionists among us care to politely refute him?
posted by 111 at 11:16 AM PST - 20 comments

Soda Jerks Flash fun for a Friday afternoon. Couple of funny cartoons, the most recent a spoof of Joe Millionaire.
posted by billman at 11:16 AM PST - 3 comments

the message board messageboard
(friday amusement - all text but maybe nsfw if they can read your screen)
a sock-puppet show of numerous odd stories. witness harold tucker's hallucinations in the cornfield, olivia's search for sterling bridgeport, and give sympathy to wally simmons tragedy with internet procured sperm pills or tyler grubb's suicidal bout with alcohol. lots of other strange sad and hilarious stuff there too. a fine lampoon on truth or identity as it's represented in forums or metafilter itself ...i mean, we're all real people right?
posted by Peter H at 10:33 AM PST - 3 comments

"We decided not to run it..."
In the surreal world that is today's media, Colin Powell has no opposition. None. There is no alternative view. None. In this Kafkaesque place, Reps. DeFazio and Paul didn't conduct a press conference yesterday. Nor did they introduce legislation that counters George Bush and Colin Powell's world view...a world view, mind you, that the world doesn't share.

Does corporate media serve the interests of the people and democracy or the elites and profit? Did you hear about this bill? Do you think this is an important story that deserved media coverage?
posted by nofundy at 10:09 AM PST - 45 comments

Psychotherapy and an Arrow Key Workout Armwrestle with Sigmund Freud, the greatest "it's all related to sex and your childhood" minds ever to walk the earth. Friday Flash.
posted by gramcracker at 9:37 AM PST - 5 comments

Bush will raise the national terror threat level today from yellow to orange (CNN). This means little to us here in NYC where we've already been at orange. (At least that's what I've heard, although orange looks like a brownish color on my TV screen and a sort of muddy green on my computer monitor.) What, if anything, will your town, city, state, company, family do in response to this heightened threat level?
posted by jellybuzz at 8:54 AM PST - 58 comments

Baby, It's Cold Outside: Perhaps it's unethical - well, it's certainly incestuous - to draw your attention to one of madamjujujive's great links on quonsar's brilliant Meepzorp blog ("Where, thank the Lord, it is always Friday" - Christian Science Monitor, 18.12.76). But what about linking two? Bouncing Baby and Gulp are two great Flash pieces that address the question of nurture; motherhood; the oral nature of pleasure; the ontology of fuzzy gratification; the metaphysics of the transition from womb to nipple and other meretricious bullshit justifications for fun.
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 8:52 AM PST - 3 comments

Martian Law: From the Cato Institute comes this paper exploring the best choices for law on the red planet when colonization occurs.

Mars is a case of what political theorists would call a perfect state of nature. No one lives on Mars. No one currently has legal title to any part of Mars. On what basis then can Mars be exploited by individuals or consortia?

Of course, Kim Stanley Robinson has already explored this subject in his ground-breaking Martian trilogy.
posted by jdroth at 8:48 AM PST - 10 comments

Michael feels betrayed and I'm kind of with him on this one. I thought I would just check in on the Jackson special for a few minutes, but I stuck around, mainly because I literally could not believe what I was seeing. What I was waiting for never actually happened: some concession that what was being exploited was not so much a celebrity as someone who is mentally ill. The interviewer's questions (often repeated emphatically for shock value) and Barbara Walters' snarky commercial-break comments seemed a bit on the cruel side when discussing someone who has so little grounding in reality. I can understand the concern about children, Jackson's and others; there is clearly a cycle of abuse (though clearly unintended on Jackson's part), and it is something legal authorities should address; however, I would question opening those issues up on television and trying to assign Jackson motives he is clearly not mature enough, sexually or otherwise, to comprehend, not to mention their own exploitation of the children for ratings.
posted by troybob at 8:42 AM PST - 67 comments

A Vanity Fair advice writer thinks you shouldn't learn Spanish. Unless of course you want to talk to the Help. Got word of this in one of those darn petition emails this morning...anyone have a copy available to confirm this? Maybe they thought Latinos wouldn't read this issue? except...Oh yeah, Salma Hayek is on the cover.
posted by th3ph17 at 8:22 AM PST - 38 comments

Wembley Stadium - Arguably the most famous sports ground in the world, host of the 1966 World Cup final and the 1948 Olympics is being rebuilt. Today the famous twin towers go under the wrecking ball. You can see it all on webcam. Sad end to one of our sporting treasures.
posted by brettski at 8:00 AM PST - 11 comments

What's wrong with these pictures? I thought I knew at least a little bit about art until I took this quiz. That, plus the blurb about spider-goats (eew!) makes me think that maybe decaf isn't strong enough to kick-start my brain this Friday morning.
posted by Oriole Adams at 5:48 AM PST - 22 comments

Bush orders guidelines for cyber-war Is it my old age that makes me wonder what else might be in this secret directive as regards computers and the Net? "First set of rules for attacking enemy computers studied." Perhaps you support the president or you are the enemy (recall: you are with us or against us)....
posted by Postroad at 5:27 AM PST - 7 comments

Gifts & Blessings. The textile arts of Madagascar.
posted by plep at 5:15 AM PST - 10 comments

Stones in My Pathway - in the tradition of Alan Lomax, Bill Steber is a photojournalist who is documenting Mississippi blues culture. His work includes an array of photos, music clips and interviews capturing the environment that spawned the music, spanning "juke joints, cotton farming, sacred music, rural church services, river baptisms, folk religion and superstition, life on Parchman penitentiary, hill country African fife and drum music, and diverse regional blues styles." A beautiful site and jewel of a find for blues buffs. via Portage
posted by madamjujujive at 5:09 AM PST - 15 comments

Cosmic bolt probed in shuttle disaster - Scientists poring over 'infrasonic' sound waves Federal scientists are looking for evidence that a bolt of electricity in the upper atmosphere might have doomed the space shuttle Columbia as it streaked over California, The Chronicle has learned.
posted by y2karl at 12:32 AM PST - 29 comments