MetaFilter

Bush Insists on Iraq-Al Qaeda Links Despite Report
Not knowing when to give up and admit that he was wrong, Mr. Bush is digging in his heels and insisting, in spite of the 9/11 commision's findings to the contrary, that Saddam Hussein and Al-Queda are linked.

Said Mr. Bush, "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda."

I guess that'll be good enough for just under half the population.
posted by fenriq at 11:39 PM PST - 90 comments

Michael Moore witheld Abu Ghraib torture footage - So, when do we get to see it, Michael ? Liberal torture apologia is OK then ?
posted by troutfishing at 10:58 PM PST - 43 comments

Findory Bloggery is an an aggregator with a difference--this one (supposedly) learns which types of stories you enjoy reading, automatically suggesets more, and doesn't require a login.
posted by arto at 9:12 PM PST - 8 comments

Hammers, once the pop culture for music, suddenly become popular weapons of death. Why? Anyone else find this odd?
posted by shepd at 8:26 PM PST - 23 comments

Do you have an ATI Radeon video card? If so, Adrian's Rojak Pot has a story up that shows you how to convert your Radeon based video card into a Fire GL card, with no physical modification through a process which modifies the video BIOS. The difference primarily between a normal Radeon video card and a Fire GL card is (drum roll.....) $120+ dollars, and enhancements designed for CAD and rendering programs. (entire list of certified programs that take advantage of Fire GL are in this PDF, including Adobe Premier) Video BIOS images are available here. Of course, modding your video card is certainly nothing new, as hacking ones BIOS can be an easy (if not somewhat dangerous) way to get more power from your investment. (Note: Although you can save a bad flash, the process is somewhat difficult. Attempt mod at your own risk.)
posted by Keyser Soze at 7:28 PM PST - 34 comments

Revenue Watch, yet another project from Soros' Open Society Institute, brings you research, information, and advocacy on how revenues from natural resources are being invested and disbursed--and how responsive governments and companies are to demands for accountability. Currently focused on Azerbaijan, Iraq, and Kazahkstan, you can find information on everything from the CPA's rush to award contracts in Iraq before June 30, to reports on the Caspian Oil Boom, to journalist training and full transcripts of international conferences.
posted by amberglow at 3:21 PM PST - 4 comments

Galleries of the Society for Art of Imagination. [via Clifford Pickover's Reality Carnival]
We intend to assist the resurgence of interest in fantastic and visionary art and make the Art of Imagination accessible to all...
posted by moonbird at 3:14 PM PST - 4 comments

Meet the Weblog. Time Magazine describes the trendy fascination with online digests.
posted by plexi at 2:04 PM PST - 30 comments

Doctors put spotlight on Plan B pill The American Medical Association voiced its support for over-the-counter sales of morning-after birth control, saying the Food and Drug Administration was wrong to reject such sales and urging doctors to write advance prescriptions.
posted by Postroad at 1:24 PM PST - 9 comments

Prom Story In a series of essays at Slate (1, 2, 3) a journalist in his mid-20s lightheartedly recounts the experience of escorting a 17-year-old girl to her high-school prom (purely for journalistic purposes, it's worth noting). Posters at Slate's reader discussion forum, in spite of its supremely cumbersome interface, express their strong (and not always coherent) disapproval, based mostly on the age difference between the author and his prom date. The author of the essays responds: "As the film critic Richard Roeper (who is much older, and much more influential than myself) pointed out in Esquire recently, this is indeed a strange cultural moment, one made all the stranger by the fact that we're not supposed to admit [it] actually exists." I'm not the biggest fan of journalists who engage in seemingly socially taboo behavior for the sole purpose of writing an article, but this made for interesting reading nonetheless.
posted by Prospero at 11:52 AM PST - 53 comments

Fed up with anti-piracy warnings in your local cinema? Why not take a picture?
posted by Katemonkey at 10:40 AM PST - 54 comments

Ray Abeyta. "At first glance, many of Abeyta's works appear to be Spanish colonial paintings dating from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. However, the artist incorporates present-day imagery with Spanish colonial and indigenous elements." A short bio and history here. Here's one of my favorites.
posted by protocool at 10:15 AM PST - 4 comments

Pentagon officials tell NBC News that late last year, at the same time U.S. military police were allegedly abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered that one Iraqi prisoner be held “off the books” — hidden entirely from the International Red Cross and anyone else — in possible violation of international law.
posted by hipnerd at 9:32 AM PST - 60 comments

splinter -- despite an 11pm curfew imposed by your girlfriend, you have returned home very late from a drink fest with your mates. You've forgotten your keys and you must now gain entrance to your flat and get into bed without upsetting your light sleeping girlfriend. [note: shockwave, alt link <--- nsfw banner ads]
posted by crunchland at 8:53 AM PST - 23 comments

Doctors refuse laywers. So your last client managed to get restitution from that quack who left the clamp in her abdomen, just in time to pay for your daughter's delivery. Good luck finding an OB. Or perhaps your husband works for a law firm. Good luck with that nursing job. Maybe you're a neurosurgeon making less take-home than your insurance premiums. What are you going to say to the next ambulance chaser with migrane trouble? The war between the two solitudes could start racking up a real body-count.
posted by bonehead at 8:36 AM PST - 60 comments

The Churchmouse: Ecclesiastical Architecture, Stained Glass, Church Monuments and other Funerary Monuments such as Cast Iron Grave Markers.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 7:56 AM PST - 3 comments

Dear Leo, Dear Mohandas "The longer I live -- especially now when I clearly feel the approach of death -- the more I feel moved to express what I feel more strongly than anything else... the doctrine of the law of love unperverted by sophistries. Love... the highest and indeed the only law of life". The Kingdom of God Is Within You (full text available) is Leo Tolstoy's tractatus of "Christianity Not as a Mystic Religion but as a New Theory of Life", a primer of (among other things) the doctrine of non-violence. Among the many fans of the 1894 book was an imprisoned Hindu barrister, a "half-naked fakir" if you want, a certain Mohandas K. Gandhi who was fascinated by "the independent thinking, profound morality, and the truthfulness" of the book. So he ended up writing fan letters to the great Russian man: who warmly wrote back to his young Indian "friend and brother". The old wise Christian anarchist literary giant and the shy, insecure young man who sparked a revolution: to paraphrase another wise, badly-dressed , pacifist old man, "Generations to come, it may be, will scarcely believe that such men ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth."
posted by matteo at 7:48 AM PST - 16 comments

Weapons that can incapacitate crowds of people by sweeping a lightning-like beam of electricity across them are being readied for sale to military and police forces in the US and Europe. From guns that shoot streams of conductive fibers to plasma that will stop a truck, the military and the police are getting whole new ways to deal with protestors.
posted by dejah420 at 7:10 AM PST - 30 comments

A 350 pound black bear wandered through the automatic doors of Carilion Franklin Memorial Hospital. After being trapped in a computer room, law enforcement officers killed the bear. Sadly, as suburbs and towns grow out into the country, more bears are getting the worse of their relationship to humans.
posted by borkus at 7:04 AM PST - 18 comments

Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design. Tanenbaum and Torvalds discuss the future of kernel design.
posted by the fire you left me at 6:22 AM PST - 13 comments

It's time to send the team home: "England has bred a contemporary culture of immoderation at every level, with particular reference to drinking and fighting. The recent Panorama programme on weekend binge-drinking in city centres provided a wake-up call, as should the novelist Andrew O'Hagan's admirable essay on current British attitudes to masculinity, reprinted in yesterday's G2." (via The Guardian)
posted by n o i s e s at 6:17 AM PST - 27 comments

Young But Legal, Shays Lounge and the Swinging Johnsons, and Pete Sessions and the Wicked Kitten Militia. This year's battle of the bands losers? No, it's just a small selection from the roster of the Congressional Softball League. Some of the teams even have their own blogs.
posted by jessamyn at 5:53 AM PST - 4 comments

Music That Paints a Picture
Whether you're a fan of Biggie or Dylan, this Flash project has you covered.
posted by yerfatma at 4:43 AM PST - 9 comments

Why does no-one recognise my genius? A guide for aspiring authors on how not to deal with rejection slips.
posted by etc at 2:47 AM PST - 21 comments