MetaFilter

Cindy Sheehan says Bill O'Reilly is an "Obscenity to Humanity" [...]Asked how she feels about the MSM devoting so much time to the Natalee Holloway story, Sheehan said "Holloway is a tragedy for one family" but what she's doing is trying to help thousands of families avoid tragedy.[...]
comment posted at 7:22 PM on Aug-10-05
comment posted at 7:33 PM on Aug-10-05
comment posted at 7:51 PM on Aug-10-05
comment posted at 1:58 PM on Aug-11-05

Blog readers are young and rich. A study [.pdf] released today concludes that as blogs continue to grow, blog readers are tending to be geekier and more affluent than previously thought. Nick Denton who helped sponsor the study (with SixApart) is delighted with the results.
comment posted at 10:30 PM on Aug-9-05

"Gimme the beer money back," says South Carolina's GOP, after corporate largesse from brewer Anheuser Busch is accidently sent to and cashed by the state's Democratic organization, which were out to happy hour at press time.
comment posted at 11:24 AM on Aug-8-05

Man fatally shot in Kentucky over argument about Iraq war I know. I couldn't help myself. Newsfilter, Iraqfilter, Crapfilter, Onelinkpostfilter. I couldn't HELP myself, okay?
comment posted at 11:38 PM on Aug-7-05

Peter Jennings Dies of lung cancer at 67.
comment posted at 10:46 PM on Aug-7-05
comment posted at 11:42 PM on Aug-7-05

"A Souter in Roberts clothing" was the accusation made by Ann Coulter in one of her recent screeds. Maybe so. In 1995, Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. worked behind the scenes for gay rights activists. His legal expertise helped them persuade the Supreme Court to issue a landmark 1996 ruling protecting people from discrimination because of their sexual orientation. A ruling Lamda called the "single most important positive ruling in the history of the gay rights movement." In the blistering dissent, Scalia, joined by Rehnquist and Thomas, said "Coloradans are entitled to be hostile toward homosexual conduct." Thanks to John G. Roberts, the U.S. Supreme court decided that no, Coloradans are not so entitled. The National Legal Foundation (supporting the Biblical foundations of America's Laws) called it "the worst decision in the history of the court." Will Robert's nomination now be opposed by the Christian Right? In any case, watching the GOP cat fight will be fun!
comment posted at 11:39 AM on Aug-5-05
comment posted at 12:04 PM on Aug-5-05

A Brief History of Slime , or How The Current Wave Of Global Islamic Terrorism Was Precipitated By A B-Movie Actor.
comment posted at 1:04 PM on Aug-3-05

Ghost Cycle is a group in Seattle raising awareness for bike safety by displaying whited-out old bikes in places where cars have hit cyclists. They've also got an ingenious use of Google Maps to show you all the spots where accidents have been reported and where they've placed a ghost cycle, like this one. They also compile statistics on their reports ("1 in 5 accidents were hit and runs").
comment posted at 10:38 PM on Aug-2-05
comment posted at 12:03 AM on Aug-3-05

This is why we're a fat country
comment posted at 6:15 PM on Aug-2-05

Bush Flips Out. Or does he? Debate is raging throughout the various interweb cliques over whether or not Bush gave reporters the finger. Even Jay Leno did a monolouge on it. But did Bush really flip reporters the bird? Possibly. After all, it's not the first time he's done it. Or was whatever it was he was doing with his hand simply some sort of innocuous gesture? Metafilter decides, inside.
comment posted at 1:21 AM on Aug-2-05

Hu is the new leader of China. George: That's what I want to know. Condi: That's what I'm telling you. George: That's what I'm asking you. Who is the new leader of China?
comment posted at 7:08 PM on Aug-1-05

Bush to Senate: Go to Hell. As expected, President Bush bypassed the confirmation process and made a recess appointment to elevate John Bolton to the post of US ambassador to the United Nations, brushing off what he calls "partisan delaying tactics by a handful of senators." Bolton was previously discussed on MeFi here.
comment posted at 10:08 AM on Aug-1-05
comment posted at 10:11 AM on Aug-1-05
comment posted at 10:33 AM on Aug-1-05

Current TV --Al Gore's new news channel, just launched. What began as an effort to challenge Rupert Murdoch and the right-wing domination of the corporate media has transformed into a business proposition to lure a youth audience with lofty rhetoric, new technology and pop-culture content, says The Nation. So, CNN for MTV viewers? or a real alternative voice? the status bar onscreen is just ridiculous, i already find.
comment posted at 10:18 AM on Aug-1-05

Howard Dean Again Ratchets up Anti-Bush Rhetoric, this time blaming the President's right-wing supreme court for the recent Kelo ruling. These comments strike some as confusing, seeing as how none of the justices at the time were appointed by the President, and 3 of the dissenters are considered to be the most conservative members on the bench.
comment posted at 10:21 AM on Aug-1-05

上海自杀地图 (找个地方去死) — 「直达动物园可自投虎口等」。
comment posted at 10:54 PM on Jul-28-05
comment posted at 12:02 AM on Jul-29-05

Cool Heinken ad features amazing (cgi?) dancework, catchy jingle, quicktime direct download link.
comment posted at 10:57 PM on Jul-28-05

Daily Mail Watch keeps an eye on some of Britain's more right wing newspapers.
comment posted at 1:19 PM on Jul-28-05
comment posted at 9:47 PM on Jul-28-05

The war in Iraq is now joining the South African War (1899-1902) and the Suez crisis in 1956 as ill-considered ventures that have done Britain more harm than good. It has demonstrably strengthened al-Qaeda by providing it with a large pool of activists and sympathisers across the Muslim world it did not possess before the invasion of 2003. The war that started out as a demonstration of US strength as the world's only superpower has turned into a demonstration of weakness. Its 135 000-strong army does not control much of Iraq. The suicide bombing campaign in Iraq is unique. Never before have so many fanatical young Muslims been willing to kill themselves trying to destroy those they see as their enemies. On a single day in Baghdad this month 12 bombers blew themselves up. There have been more than 500 suicide attacks in Iraq during the past year. It is this campaign that has now spread to Britain and Egypt...
Iraq has descended into chaos way beyond West's worst-case scenario
comment posted at 1:23 PM on Jul-28-05

Walmart vs the free press again... other examples: the book mentioned in this thread is no longer available. This and that and the other thread too. Another point in a pattern of steadily increasing restriction of the press by this taxpayer funded mega -corp? Or simply a case of private enterprise making decisions in its own interest - nothing to see here, move along...
comment posted at 2:38 PM on Jul-27-05

The best American hamburgers? The American Hamburger is one of those things that I truly miss about the US and one of those things that we Brits try to copy but, for some reason, just never seem to get right.

Forget the golden-arches, we need some proper hamburger joints serving up half-pound burgers, real milkshakes and endless refills...
comment posted at 2:18 PM on Jul-26-05

The Left's Dissection of Patriotism. via
comment posted at 2:13 PM on Jul-26-05

Lt. gov. crashed Marine's funeral, kin say | This story has caused quite a stir: "The family of a Marine who was killed in Iraq is furious with Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll for showing up uninvited at his funeral this week, handing out her business card and then saying 'our government' is against the war." Knoll has since apologized, as has PA Governor Rendell, but does combing through a simple Google search of the soldier's outraged sister-in-law shed some light on what influenced this 'misunderstanding'?
comment posted at 12:00 PM on Jul-26-05

Microsoft wipes Apple from the face of the Earth. Virtual Earth, that is. A search for "1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA" renders only an empty field and some sort of barn. This is what it really looks like. Finding that other microcomputer company is obviously not a problem. Microsoft blames old photographs (from 1991) for the omission, but copyright notices on the images go only as far back as last year.
comment posted at 12:04 PM on Jul-26-05

"The biggest downside to the war in Iraq is what you could do with the money," he said. "What does the war in Iraq cost a week? A billion? Maybe a billion a day? The budget for the National Cancer Institute is four billion. That has to change... Polls say people are much more afraid of cancer than of a plane flying into their house or a bomb or any other form of terrorism. It is a priority for the American people." Does this sound like the next governor of Texas to you?
comment posted at 8:10 PM on Jul-25-05

tru_m4n: NUKES! HOLY **** I GOT NUKES -- If World War II were a multiplayer real-time strategy game.
comment posted at 10:54 AM on Jul-23-05

Testimony of former CIA case officer James Marcinkowski on the Plame Affair, via David Corn. Now that the US government has exposed a CIA case officer and endangered her contacts, it will be much more difficult for CIA officers to recruit informants in the future. Any undercover officer, whether in the police department or the CIA, will tell you that the major concern of their informant or agent is their personal safety and that of their family. Cover is safety. If you cannot guarantee that safety in some form or other, the person will not work for you and the source of important information will be lost. ... What has suffered perhaps irreversible damage is the credibility of our case officers when they try to convince our overseas contact that their safety is of primary importance to us.
comment posted at 9:44 PM on Jul-24-05
comment posted at 12:01 AM on Jul-25-05
comment posted at 9:24 AM on Jul-25-05
comment posted at 9:28 AM on Jul-25-05
comment posted at 11:22 PM on Jul-25-05

Robert Parry disentangles the Plame game. He uncovered the Contra/Cocaine story. Now he's got a very sensible hypothesis on Plame. Lots more good stuff at Consortium News.
comment posted at 8:33 AM on Jul-22-05

Morgan Spurlock Watch
comment posted at 4:11 PM on Jul-19-05

Lanchester's Law (pdf file) broadly states that in warfare it takes an N-square-fold increase in quality to make up for an N-square increase in quantity. In other words, gains in technological superiority do not multiply as fast as increases in in troop strength. When the warfare is asymmetrical, numerical superiority become even more important. With complaints that the US Army is understaffed (there are 1/3 fewer troops now than in 1991 when the US fought the first Gulf war) Democrats in the House and Senate - led by Joseph Lieberman and Hillary Clinton - are proposing to increase the size of the US Army by 80,000 troops - more than twice what the Army asked for and counter to the argument made by the the CATO institute that troop strength should be decreased.
comment posted at 11:18 AM on Jul-14-05

The media's pursuit of Karl Rove was inevitable. Faced with the persistent hammering by the press on the issue, Scott McClellan seems to channeling former Nixon Press Secretary Ron Ziegler. And of course the scent of a big scandal around Rove has some people asking if the "Turd Blossom Express" has reached the end of the line?
comment posted at 11:25 AM on Jul-14-05

Cat-Scan.com is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their cats wedged into their scanners, or why.
comment posted at 10:46 PM on Jul-13-05

Don't dump your webmaster.
comment posted at 4:02 PM on Jul-13-05

Children gathered round the Americans who were handing out sweets. --yet another suicide attack following the opening of a water treatment plant. Our soldiers hand out candy, attracting children, and someone attacks, killing the kids. "Many Iraqi civilians, mostly children, were around the Humvee at the time of the blast," US military spokesman Sgt David Abrams told the Reuters news agency. This same thing happened before--in May 05, and most deadly, in Sept. 04. How many times does the same thing have to happen before we change our policy and stop endangering the lives of children?
comment posted at 10:35 AM on Jul-13-05
comment posted at 10:44 AM on Jul-13-05

In November 2003, Weekly Standard writer Stephen Hayes published a report alleging collusion between terrorist agents and Saddam Hussein which received little attention in the press. In June of '04, Hayes published another article called "The Connection" excerpted from his book of the same title. His newest follow-up, with economist Thomas Joscelyn, entitled "The Mother of All Connections" goes one step further to illustrate the alleged connections, contradicting what the 9/11 Commission & Bush himself have claimed.
comment posted at 10:29 AM on Jul-13-05

Devils Lake is the largest body of water in North Dakota, and it's growing. Landlocked and continuously fed by surrounding rivers and lakes, its size corresponds to the amount of rainfall and can vary dramatically. In fact, recent changes aren't even on the map yet. With more rainfall on the horizon, the government of North Dakota is building an artificial outlet for the lake, channeling the water northwards. But Manitoba doesn't want the water, fearing that an invasion of Devils Lake species will seriously upset the Red River's ecological balance and harm the Manitoban fishing industry. Nonetheless, the ND government seems determined to prevent the loss of any more trees and farmland and roadways and villages.
comment posted at 11:50 PM on Jul-12-05