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"Without any particular training or background, this patient, just prior to his enlistment, enthusiastically embarked upon the writing of novels. He sees nothing unusual in this activity." Who was the patient? A 21-year-old seaman named Jack Kerouac, who would become the author of On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Dr. Sax, Visions of Cody and many other great novels that you should be reading instead of these gaddam websites. (The diagnosis from the Navy doctors, "schizoid personality," earned Kerouac a discharge.) A hilarious and poignant find from The Smoking Gun.
comment posted at 9:28 PM on Oct-2-05
comment posted at 5:48 AM on Oct-3-05

Sarah Polley, the little girl in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, finds out that another little Canadian girl is about to star in another Terry Gilliam film, and writes--and warns--about her experiences. Gilliam responds.
comment posted at 9:45 PM on Oct-2-05

Mystery respiratory outbreak in Toronto: 73 sick, 4 dead. Yesterday the media quickly snapped up assurances [video] that ruled out influenza or SARS. Said officials, "We can certainly reassure people that this is not SARS, um, there is no SARS in the world ... Can I give you a guarantee that it's not influenza, at this time not, in a few hours, probably ... as the day goes on the public health lab has more and more results." A day has passed with no word on these tests. Affected areas are reportedly quarantined, and some Internet communities are growing alarmed over the contradictions at yesterday's press conference.
comment posted at 10:21 PM on Oct-2-05
comment posted at 5:58 AM on Oct-3-05

boobiethon 2005 - 4th annual & All for a great cause
comment posted at 3:52 AM on Oct-1-05

Ethicsgate continues: Today, the bipartisan Government Accountability Office declared that the Bush administration broke the law by paying Armstrong Williams to write favorable columns about the No Child Left Behind Act, funneling public funds to a PR firm to sift through news stories and gauge media perception of Bush policies, and financing phony TV news reports giving the President's education policies "an A-plus," creating what the GAO called "covert propaganda." [Williams et. al. previously discussed here.]
comment posted at 6:40 AM on Oct-1-05
comment posted at 7:09 AM on Oct-1-05
comment posted at 8:00 PM on Oct-1-05

This is not good news. U.S. health officials have issued a warning about possible birth defects in infants born to women who take the antidepressant Paxil during the first trimester of pregnancy.
comment posted at 7:24 AM on Sep-29-05

Two white Republicans spoke about race yesterday. First Rep. Stacey Campfield (R-Knoxville) upon hearing that his membership to the TN Black Legislative Caucus was denied complained, "My understanding is that the KKK doesn't even ban members by race."

Meanwhile on his syndicated radio show, former drug czar Bill Bennett speculated on how roe v. wade could actually fight crime, "if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." Color me speechless.
comment posted at 7:42 AM on Sep-29-05

daily show slash fiction
comment posted at 1:57 AM on Sep-27-05
comment posted at 3:33 AM on Sep-27-05

Everybody Hates Chris : Everybody Hates the Pilot (Google Video: 21:03) is the funniest thing this Nebraska slice of white bread has seen in a while. (Show's home page here.) Let's just say it isn't exactly The Cosby Show. (Anybody notice that Google Video is using Flash™ now?)
comment posted at 6:09 PM on Sep-26-05

FeedShot.com: I just stumbled on a service named FeedShot that submits your RSS feed to 17 blog search engines. It covers the big ones: DayPop, Feedster, IceRocket, and Technorati, and it's free. It's not a pinging service, it's designed to handle the first submission to each of the search engines. I liked the report indicating which submissions were successful, which failed, and which were duplicates. The main drawback is it only submits to 17 sites out of the 50 or so available.
comment posted at 8:34 PM on Sep-25-05

You affect the world by what you browse! It's another quote site, named metaphilter.
comment posted at 4:36 PM on Sep-24-05

Barbarism or good ole American capitalism? If you want to see the true face of war, go to the amateur porn Web site NowThatsFuckedUp.com. For almost a year, American soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan have been taking photographs of dead bodies, many of them horribly mutilated or blown to pieces, and sending them to Web site administrator Chris Wilson. In return for letting him post these images, Wilson gives the soldiers free access to his site. American soldiers have been using the pictures of disfigured Iraqi corpses as currency to buy pornography.
comment posted at 8:56 AM on Sep-24-05

Is Bush back on the bottle? A few not-so-credible sources have been running this story, and people are starting to are starting to talk.

Although you may sneer at the National Enquirer, it actually has a track record for factual accuracy, which even the CJR acknowledges. Hey, enquiring minds want to know…
comment posted at 7:02 PM on Sep-23-05

"Somewhere in the Bible it is said: "If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off." I used to think the remedy somewhat radical. But to-day, being imbued with the wisdom of the prohibitionist, I have to acknowledge that, if the Bible in general, and that passage in it in particular, has a fault, it lies in its ultra-conservativeness. What? Merely cut off my own right hand if it offend me? What business have my neighbors to keep their right hands if I am not able to make mine behave itself ? Off with the lot of them! Let there be no right hands; then I am certain that mine won't land me in trouble."
So wrote Percy Andreae in 1915 when arguing against Prohibition. That excerpt is at the OSU Prohibition History site, along with such delights as Prohibition Party Cartoons (check out this adorable camel: "Vote as if your vote would be the last straw"). At the LOC, along with this page of Prohibition information, and this panoramic shot of the 1915 Anti-Saloon League of America, there is also this reminder of the link between temperance and women's suffrage. If you don't want to join The Temperance Crusade in song, or admit that (I Never Knew I Had A Wonderful Wife Until The Town Went Dry), you can listen to these mp3's at the LOC: The Drunkard's dream, The Drunkard's child, and, of course, Goodbye, booze. Prohibition and moonshining; the rise of bootlegging gangs; more primary sources at the National Archives. And no post on prohibition or temperance would be complete without Carrie Nation's Hammer.
comment posted at 7:11 AM on Sep-23-05

Despite our predominantly post-modern society in Canada, there are still pockets of ignorance and intolerance. The City of Surrey a very suburban suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia, is pretty much the capital of Canada when it comes to this. A high school (ages 13-18) was rehearsing to perform "The Laramie Project" - a play about the murder of an American student Matthew Shephard (who was gay) and tolerance when the Surrey School Board pulled the plug on it. The play had recently been performed in a high school in a smaller, but less rednecky suburb, Mission. This is the same school board that tried to ban two excellent books teaching children tolerance for their friends that may have two dads or two mums. The ban was overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada. Perhaps a play of this nature is appropriate for high school students? Whaddya think?
comment posted at 6:44 PM on Sep-22-05

Recent research claims that even smoking a few cigarettes a day is dangerous according to Tobacco Control . This is bad news for millions of smokers who have cut-back their daily consumption of cigarettes. It is also contrary to previous research which claimed that light smoking had little impact on health.
comment posted at 7:13 PM on Sep-22-05

Oh my. This could get very ugly.
comment posted at 9:56 PM on Sep-21-05

Interview with Stella : a comedy troupe of three guys in suits. Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter, and David Wain have already hit Comedy Central and tonight, they premiere their show on Canada's Comedy Network. An older interview can be found here, from the newspaper that Michael Showalter reads while he's taking a poo.
comment posted at 9:52 PM on Sep-20-05

NFT (not for tourists) has relaunched their web site. Their city guide books are excellent and they offer free city guides in PDF format (editorializing inside).
comment posted at 11:37 PM on Sep-20-05

Oh... My... God. I can't tell if this is a hoax, but it would seem genuine enough if it weren't so surreal. I mean... advertising. On homeless sign boards. I'm going to go hold my head under the bathwater until I stop struggling, now.
comment posted at 9:59 PM on Sep-20-05

Explosion Over the N-Word When Kanye West blasted President Bush’s treatment of poor black people in New Orleans after Katrina hit, the rapper unintentionally set off a hurricane of words in Florida. The Independent Florida Alligator, the student newspaper, ran a cartoon last week that criticized West’s statements by showing him holding a large playing card marked “The Race Card,” and having Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, exclaim with scorn at West: “Nigga Please!”
comment posted at 8:10 PM on Sep-20-05
comment posted at 10:08 PM on Sep-20-05
comment posted at 10:14 PM on Sep-20-05

Consensus View
New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki's book The Wisdom of Crowds "explores a deceptively simple idea that has profound implications: large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant—better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future." Now this idea has been put into practice with Consensus View, a site where you can enter your predictions on stocks, commodities, and currencies, and view the group consensus. (from wsj.com)
comment posted at 4:31 AM on Sep-19-05

George Bush Doesn't Care about Black People: The Remix? Kanye West's anti-Bush ad lib on a telethon for the victims of Hurricane Katrina has already attracted considerable controversy, but now Legendary K.O. of the Houston rap group, the K-Otix, has decided to immortalize Kanye West's soundbite by incorporating it into a mash-up with Kanye's song Golddigger. The K-Otix rewrote Golddigger's lyrics to serve as an indictment of Bush and his sluggish response to Katrina, while simultaneously promoting Houston Hurricane Aid to help displaced residents of New Orleans. Other rappers including Mos Def have already recorded songs in response to the disaster, while other performers such as Jay-Z and Usher have rallied to Kanye West's defense.
comment posted at 5:03 AM on Sep-18-05

Smaller than a DVD player - small enough to sit comfortably under the hood of any truck or car - it could be big enough to solve the world's greenhouse gas emission problems, at least for the near future. In fact, it could make the Kyoto protocol obsolete.
comment posted at 10:36 PM on Sep-17-05

The laugh judgement our competition to find the funniest and most offensive religious jokes, in response to the British government's proposed anti-religious hatred legislation, is finally over. And we have two winners. Our funniest religious joke is about sectarianism gone mad, while our most offensive is a sick tale of tragedy on a clifftop – as voted for by Ship of Fools readers. Read on for the jokes.
comment posted at 2:30 AM on Sep-12-05

9-11 I've never posted a link before and don't mean to create any debate or make any statement. I just thought that before the day was out we do the obvious and remember.
comment posted at 1:50 AM on Sep-12-05

Weasel words 'Spare Don Watson, author of Death Sentences from all of these weasely, wishy-washy, and worst of all, ugly bits of management-speak that have drifted out of consulting sessions and into the social realm.' Forbes.com..................... Your favourite spin doctoring ?
comment posted at 2:26 AM on Sep-7-05

International Dialects of English Archive
comment posted at 11:45 PM on Sep-6-05

Leonard Cohen is broke. The legendary singer's manager allegedly helped herself to more than $5 million of Cohen's savings while he was busy training as a Buddhist monk. Cohen's manager also convinced him to sell his back catalogue and continuing royalties—profits from both sales were allegedly taken by the same manager.

At the age of 70, Cohen's retirement savings have been depleted to under $150,000 and he is being forced to return to full-time touring and recording.
comment posted at 7:18 PM on Sep-5-05
comment posted at 2:18 AM on Sep-6-05

Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died. What is Cuban President Fidel Castro's secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in Latin America, "the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to go. Cuba's leaders go on TV and take charge," said Valdes... "Merely sticking people in a stadium is unthinkable.. Shelters all have medical personnel, from the neighborhood. They have family doctors in Cuba, who evacuate together with the neighborhood, and already know, for example, who needs insulin." They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV sets and refrigerators, "so that people aren't reluctant to leave because people might steal their stuff," Valdes observed.

The Two Americas. See also A Nation's Castaways, 'To Me, It Just Seems Like Black People Are Marked' & White Man's Burden
comment posted at 7:48 AM on Sep-5-05

BurgerTheft! Fuddruckers steals a flash based clone of BurgerTime from an indie developer without telling him. But rather than download it and host it themselves, they just point directly to his version of the game, which is spectacularly dumb. For a short time only, you can view the results if you click here. Wait till the annoying animation ends, go to the "Fuddrockers" tab, and try to play Burger Time.
comment posted at 12:00 AM on Sep-3-05
comment posted at 2:04 AM on Sep-3-05

CNN of all places has a great overview of the BS coming out of washington about Katrina - "security is really good", the bodies in the convention center are "rumors" - versus reports from the ground. Fantasy land.
comment posted at 3:51 PM on Sep-2-05

Longtime Mefi member chuq offers a tiny respite from the misery with his report on the survival of many of Louisiana's beloved musicians, including the good news that Fats Domino was rescued from his roof. More coverage here and here. (more)
comment posted at 7:23 AM on Sep-2-05

They are feeding the public a line of bull, and they are spinning, and people are dying down here: A post with a link to MP3 of an explosive WWL radio interview in which New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has a message for politicians: "I don't want to see anybody do any more goddamned press conferences... put a moratorium on press conferences, don't do another press conference until the resources are in this city, and then come down to this city and stand with us... Don't tell me 40,000 people are coming here - they're not here; it's too doggoned late. Now get off your asses and let's do something..."
comment posted at 7:12 AM on Sep-2-05
comment posted at 7:20 AM on Sep-2-05

Language Corner by Columbia Journalism Review, is incredibly helpful when it comes to learning the English language's subtle nuances and rather obvious rules.
comment posted at 11:23 PM on Aug-29-05

Placebos Trigger Opioids. New research indicates that the placebo effect is physical, not merely "psychological." Brain scans show that people who believe they are getting a medication to control pain trigger the release of opioids in their brains. Those natural endorphins reduce pain.
When Karl Marx said that religion in the opiate of the masses, he may have been literally correct. If faith in an useless medication can release natural painkillers, won't faith that God will make your life less painful do the same? This might also help explain why religion is so addictive, and why many people like the POTUS pass through the gateway drugs of alcohol and cocaine only to migrate to religion and jogging, which also releases endorphins.
comment posted at 7:33 PM on Aug-29-05

Gas prices too high? Try Europe. $7 a gallon? That's what drivers in Amsterdam pay. But Europeans have long adapted to high prices.
comment posted at 11:47 PM on Aug-28-05

How to strip down your computer for playing games (via the ever-useful Frog Blog)
comment posted at 3:07 AM on Aug-27-05

WeblogsInc Contract for Bloggers. If you have ever been curious what the writers for Weblogs Inc are held to, and get paid. I imagine that there are contract tweaks here and there for more in-demand talent, but it breaks down to $500 for 125 posts a month.
comment posted at 7:37 AM on Aug-25-05
comment posted at 8:12 AM on Aug-25-05