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I found an American "Grand Prior Chevalier" Knight Templar challenging Osama Bin Laden to a sword duel in the sand while I was trying to find the cool Mac / Neverwinter Nights project Open Knights. The whole thing seemed so much like an outtake from the wonderful Foucault's Pendulum that I had to share.
posted by freebird at 11:03 PM PST - 12 comments

State of the Media Report 2004 by journalism.org, which seeks to improve news coverage in a more neutral fashion than those who cry bias from the left and right. The group offers advice for average citizens and others. The report focuses mainly on US media and identifies eight trends. The content analyses finds that newspapers have more lifestyle news than in the past, but less government and foreign affairs, even with wars abroad. More front page articles about issues, less on crime and disasters. Network news was heavy on foreign affairs, government, accidents, disaster, crime and health care. The cable networks had a lot of politics and Iraq stuff, but also a lot more celebrity/entertainment/lifestyle stuff than the big four. Local TV news treats crime as topic A. The magazine audience is aging, and total pages are declining, but some, like The Economist and the New Yorker, have found success in niches. Internet journalism is "still largely material from old media rather than something original." And it's still text-y. But it is clearly the future of journalism. But don't pronounce the dinosaurs dead yet. Radio once ruled, and in a way it still does: 94 percent still tune in to radio news at least once a week.
posted by Slagman at 11:01 PM PST - 7 comments

Ghosts of Rwanda
10 years later, FRONTLINE delivers one of the most powerful episodes in their excellent series of reports. Also covered in The Economist last week, and a couple years ago in The Atlantic in a sublime article: "Bystanders to Genocide". When you first heard about the tragedy did you wish you could have done something, if you had only known more?
posted by specialk420 at 9:20 PM PST - 40 comments

Propeller Island City Lodge "Universal Art Objects & Hotel"
posted by Feisty at 7:23 PM PST - 4 comments

Takagism. This link was posted just a short while ago; so sorry for the sort of double post. However, the posted link was to the Crimson Room game, not the main site. It was Meta bombed so hard that I would bet that most people never got a chance to explore the main site. This guy is really creative. If you did get a chance to see it, I apologize for the double post.
posted by caddis at 7:21 PM PST - 4 comments

From the Sign Of The Times Department: Gateway closes all of it's Country Stores, which once numbered over 300. 2,500 workers laid off.(Full disclosure: I worked at 3 different Country Store locations over the years, two of which closed down prior to this mass closing). It's hard to believe that it wasn't that long ago that they seemed like money factories. The boom is now not just dead, it's decaying and rotting. What a strange trip it was.
posted by jonmc at 6:21 PM PST - 27 comments

With Ahmed Chalabi poised to take control of post-occupation Iraq--one year after the start of the war--Congress' General Accounting Office is beginning to ask questions about the operations of his Iraqi National Congress. A piece of evidence submitted by Chalabi was a list of 108 news items which were placed in mainstream media by INC-coordinated (and Pentagon-funded) defectors. Who are other Mefites' favorite fraudsters?
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 3:14 PM PST - 44 comments

East Coast Greenway is a community project to build a 2600 mile urban greenway from Canada to Key West. Bike, walk, rollerblade or Segway from Canada to Florida.. This "urban Appalachian trail" is twenty-percent trail complete now with %80 by 2010. Route Maps for each state.
posted by stbalbach at 2:24 PM PST - 11 comments

Star Wars Trilogy DVD Commentaries Leaked. Five three-ish minute clips of Lucas-audio leakery! w00t! I can't wait til September!
posted by armoured-ant at 2:21 PM PST - 12 comments

Little Fluffy Industries: Posted on a Thursday for all your Friday Flash needs.
posted by UKnowForKids at 1:41 PM PST - 6 comments

Regularly-updated listing of today's April Fools jokes on the web. Add 'em if you've got 'em.
posted by Fourmyle at 12:48 PM PST - 16 comments

Va. Man Claims $239 Million Jackpot Note in passing that this took place during the Bush administration! "A retired truck driver claimed a $239 million Mega Millions jackpot Thursday, calling the second-largest lottery payout in history "no big thing to me." His wife vowed to "shop till I drop.""
posted by Postroad at 11:44 AM PST - 27 comments

"The OSCE focuses only on establishment of democracy, the protection of human rights and the freedom of the press. I am now questioning these values." -Uzbek President Islam Karimov
Can we really wage an effective war on terrorism by aligning ourselves with villains? Does it strike anyone else as silly that we've justified our invasion of Iraq with the removal of Saddam while pairing with his Uzbek counterpart? Lack of political freedom and rampant poverty has tensions mounting in Uzbekistan(1 2 3 4).
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 11:19 AM PST - 19 comments

Top 100 April Fools Hoaxes of all time. Also, April Fools on the Net - a history of newsgroup April Fools posts.
posted by badstone at 11:00 AM PST - 3 comments