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Study Warns of Stagnation in Arab Societies. "The report, the first United Nations human development report devoted to a single region, was prepared by Arab intellectuals from a variety of disciplines, who do not fault others for what they see as the "deficits" in contemporary Arab culture, Ms. Khalaf Hunaidi said."
posted by Zool at 11:51 PM PST - 11 comments

The Age of Simulation. Do we live in Reality or do we live in a Simulation? Following themes most popularly found in movies like The Matrix or in books like Stanislaw Lem's Futurological Congress, we are being told via email and even by philosophers at Yale, that what we perceive is not what is. Is this merely paranoia?
posted by vacapinta at 9:59 PM PST - 31 comments

"The War Against Bad Things" - A blogger's one-act / one screen play. Politicians with a new and improved metaphor to describe the campaign for civillian safety may stand to win votes. A journalist notes: "If I have learned anything in four decades of covering politics, it is to pay heed when you hear the same questions -- in almost the same phrases -- popping up in different parts of the country ..."
posted by sheauga at 7:32 PM PST - 6 comments

Did you install it yet? You may want to think twice. That new software update for Windows Media Player isn't just a security update, if you read the End User License Agreement carefully, it states:

"In order to protect the integrity of content and software protected by digital rights management 'Secure Content', Microsoft may provide security related updates to the OS Components that will be automatically downloaded onto your computer."

Does anyone know anything more about this? How about recommendations for a suitable replacement for WMP?
posted by Hackworth at 7:05 PM PST - 31 comments

Pixeljam is a "celebration of the pixel." Tiny GIF animations are resized to fill your browser window, resulting in giant blocky washes of color. Make sure to read the info, as there are some potentially important notes in there.
posted by Su at 6:42 PM PST - 9 comments

The other way around. This time a female teacher has been accused of sexual advances on a 13 y-o boy (now 18). The two had passed love notes in class, and when there weren't enough players for a pickup basketball game the then 26 y-o would join and press her hard body against the boy when guarding him.
posted by ( .)(. ) at 5:05 PM PST - 59 comments

Are these the hardest domains in the world to register, despite the changes that took effect 1 July 2002? Businesses can now own more than one domain name and the new .id.au domain space provides somewhere for individuals to live, but there are still many restrictions, not the least of which is the 21,322 word exclusion list. Given the recent instances of domain hijinks discussed here, it is not surprising to see that it has already started in the .au world. Are these restrictions good or bad news for the .au domain space?
posted by dg at 4:43 PM PST - 6 comments

Tupulev and Boeing crash in Germany A tupulev and a boeing crashed in southern germany. Number of victims yet unknown.
posted by knutmo at 4:08 PM PST - 24 comments

J.K. Galbraith shocked at scale of corporate failures. "I can only say I hadn't expected to see this problem on anything like the magnitude of the last few months – the separation of ownership from management, the monopolisation of control by irresponsible personal money-makers." Myself and chrispy came to the same conclusion on the drive home from the resolutely un- (rather than anti-) corporate Glastonbury Festival today. Profit is valued and rewarded by the vast majority of corporations above all else. As a consquence, people with the same values dominate executive positions, to the exclusion of those with more 'humanitarian' or longer-term outlooks. Where is the balance? Should we make hippie non-exec directors compulsory? Or should I just go back to bed and let the drugs wear off???
posted by barnsoir at 3:20 PM PST - 9 comments

The answer to file sharing? Woodstock Systems is Beta testing an Instant Message type music thinger. Essentially, the MP3's on your hard drive can be streamed by people on your buddy list, and vice versa. It also acts as a media player where you can play cds, streaming audio/video and mp3s in addition to ripping cds directly on to your hard drive. You can't download the MP3's though, so will any of those pesky laws that shut down Audiogalaxy and Napster apply?
posted by remlapm at 2:15 PM PST - 23 comments

Should punishments be "creative"? Judge Michael Cicconett has sentenced a kid with a loud radio to sit quietly in the woods, a man to hang out with a pig, at least one guy to run a race to diminish his jail sentence. Now Judge Michael Cicconetti is back in the news for sentencing a couple to print apologies in the local newspaper for their tryst on a public beach. These are rather inconsequential sentences for very minor crimes, but one might still ask: Does creative sentencing seems intuitively more fair and/or effective, or does it seem to leave justice up to the capriciousness of the judge?
posted by sj at 1:50 PM PST - 23 comments

Rep. J.C. Watts to Retire. The only Black Republican in Congress is retiring to spend time with his family. Dems say they have a shot at winning his seat, and hopefully, the House. Republicans are already vying for his #4 position in the House. I'm giddy already.
posted by jennak at 1:20 PM PST - 27 comments

U.S. aircraft attack local Afghan wedding... several were injured and killed, such as Haji Mohammed Anwar, a friend of President Hamid Karzai. But, we've seen this before.
posted by Dean_Paxton at 1:01 PM PST - 38 comments

The Grapes of 8th Grade Wrath.
When Andy Johnson refused to participate in a class reading assignment, his teacher gave him an alternative to detention or suspension: after getting permission from his mother, Johnson showed up at school in grungy clothes, goggles and a shower cap. His classmates lined up and pelted him with jelly. They laughed, he laoughed, the teacher and principal laughed...the school board called for a review of discipline policies at the school.
[via Opinion Journal's Best of the Web.]
posted by me3dia at 12:38 PM PST - 37 comments

An excellent piece of media analysis by Michael Wolff in New York Magazine looking at the current summer-movie-plot version of Al Qaeda being artfully constructed by the NY Times ...
Then, perhaps most disconcertingly, the overall narrative itself is patently a dumbed-down rehash. It's Cold War stuff. There is the ubiquitous and yet unknown and unknowable enemy. There's the international jihad, which, with only minor adjustments, replaces the international communist conspiracy. There's the sudden purported hegemony of the Muslim world -- a new Soviet-bloc-style ideological monolith. There is the otherworldly dedication of operatives bent on overthrowing the West. There are the cells. There is the myth of superhuman discipline. There is now, even, the developing Kremlinology of the next tier of men who replace Osama. And at the center of the story, of course, is the bomb. Whether in massive retaliatory form or as a dirty-bomb package, it serves the same effect.
(link cribbed from Altercation)
posted by mantid at 12:14 PM PST - 8 comments

I designate today 'Government Failure Day'. The Feds can't catch Osama, they can't stop 1 in 4 weapons getting through airport security (but they'll get those nail clippers, mind you!), and government employees again display their penchant for setting thousands of acres ablaze. This problem isn't unique to American government. While we like to burn large tracts of lands and play mind games with airline passengers, a British museum has decided that tins full of human feces are worth more than gold.
posted by insomnyuk at 12:02 PM PST - 33 comments

Outsider Music. From a mailing list, here's a concise description of what is really more an idea than a genre, per se. The Hip Surgery Music Guide has some info on the essential artrists of the phenomenon. If you wanted to stretch the definitions of the form you could include, some better-known artists as well. Unspoiled genius in the rough or merely crude freakshow appeal? The answer I believe is somewhere is somewhere in between. But in an age where most music is either a copy of what is currently popular or a revival of what used to be popular, Outsider Music is a place to go for a "Wow! What was that?" musical experience.
posted by jonmc at 11:53 AM PST - 11 comments

Department of Homeland Security to be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act and the Whistleblower Protection Act? The last episode of NOW ran a piece on the FOIA which described how back in 1974 President Ford and his staff, which included Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, opposed Congress' strengthening of the FOIA, and Ford tried unsuccessfully to veto it. Now this new exemption looks like the continuation of a 28 year-old feud. Ridge says it is in order to not "draw a road map of critical infrastructure vulnerabilities," but are complete exemptions really necessary for that? The potential for abuse seems quite dangerous. (Some previous discussions of FOIA revelations here and here).
posted by homunculus at 10:12 AM PST - 17 comments

Mashup of Salt 'n' Pepa with The Stooges! This is similar to the recently popular mashup of Destiny's Child's "Bootylicious" + Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit."
posted by engelr at 9:58 AM PST - 10 comments

A U.S. District Court judge rules that the federal death penalty is unconstitutional. In related news, the Washington Post reports that everyone's favorite cabinet member, Mr. Ashcroft, has been pushing for the death penalty in federal cases and "frequently overruling his own prosecutors in the process". Here we go...
posted by gimonca at 9:18 AM PST - 68 comments

Spam King Living High In The Bayou Ronnie Scelson, a professional spammer, openly discusses his business and attitudes about spam. Reminiscent of Barry Dennis's infamous "Why I love spam" article recently featured on C|Net.
posted by dayvin at 9:17 AM PST - 33 comments

Steven Berkoff deported from the USA for overstaying his visa by 24 hours, five years ago. Such heavy-handed behaviour must be more harmful than good for the USA as a country. Surely the rules can't be so rigid as to force the authorities into doing this, so why do it? Couldn't they just caution, or even fine him? Or has he upset someone?
[via Wibbly Weblog]
posted by southisup at 6:28 AM PST - 31 comments

Apple Computer buys Emagic, an industry-leading audio software and hardware manufacturer who produces Logic Audio, the professional-level software used to make thousands of records (incl. Radiohead's KidA and Amnesiac.) The announcement heralds the end of Emagic's Windows offerings as well, which will orphan hundreds of thousands of people who paid upwards of $1000 for their software. em411 has some commentary on the announcement.
posted by n9 at 6:02 AM PST - 18 comments

US Ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte, speaking on behalf of the Bush administration, vetoes extension of Bosnia's UN peacekeeping force. Negroponte, citing that the US is a "special target" who "cannot have its decisions second guessed by a court whose jurisdiction we do not recognize" has pretty much sealed it up that we're now entering the phase in world history known to western civ students of the 23rd century as: American Imperialism Comes of Age. BBC's (realmedia) streaming coverage shows how (possibly) reluctant Ambassador Negroponte was reading the US's justification for the veto from his script. In other news, the opposition to American Imperialism grows in the heartland of the redstates. Is this just anti-bush, anti-capitalistic, prevaricating peacenik, bleeding heart, wish our president was a liberal--propaganda?

I know this looks like two posts, but I have to ask: Are there other options as to how America (its people, its traditions, its innocents) fits within the rest of the world? Or is how the Bush administration views it, the ultimate in the Progress of Civilization--worthy of preservation? Capitalism as utopia while I juggle these pins, swords and torches and get you to believe I'm talented enough to keep it all in the air infinitely.
posted by crasspastor at 2:01 AM PST - 116 comments

Happy Canada Day! I'm off to celebrate at The Maple Leaf in Covent Garden London tonight. Have a good one eh?
posted by Frasermoo at 1:51 AM PST - 21 comments

FBI enforcing the bandwidth CAP. With broadband caps spreading across North America, I wonder if we will see more stories like this, as users find they want to use more than 4 to 6 gigs a month.
posted by Iax at 1:19 AM PST - 18 comments

The UCSD administration was recently defeated by The Koala, a student satire publication that it attempted to shut down. Said an administrator: "We condemn the Koala's abuse of the constitutional guarantees of free expression and disfavor their unconscionable behavior." The paper's staffers have now sold their blood plasma to raise money for a lawyer to file a countersuit against the administration. Good to see that free speech is alive and well on college campuses, this school's administration to the contrary. And its always good to see an active college humor magazine.
posted by gsteff at 12:13 AM PST - 6 comments