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Hugo Chávez is crazy! Hugo Chávez is certainly making a lot of news these days. No doubt we'll find the truth somewhere between "evil dictator" and "third world savior," but the long, dark history of U.S. involvement in Latin America casts suspicion on everything. Chávez is gaining a heroic light in the third world for "standing up to" the United States. He's making friends with Cuba, China and Iran. Is Chávez heading up a new rogues' gallery ... or gearing up for the resource wars?
Previous MetaFilter coverage: [1,2,3,4]
comment posted at 7:41 PM on Aug-24-05

Ten years ago today, Microsoft released a massive overhaul of their flagship product — Windows 95. It added support for 256-character mixed-case long filenames, pre-emptive multitasking, and protected-mode 32-bit applications. Detractors noted that its updated interface owed a number of debts to Apple's MacOS and IBM's OS/2. Most importantly, however, Windows 95 included built-in support for dial-up networking and a TCP/IP stack. Once this technology was widely-available, it was only a matter of time until the Internet became a household word.
comment posted at 2:11 AM on Aug-25-05

Jon Stewart in Wired
comment posted at 2:14 AM on Aug-24-05
comment posted at 6:52 AM on Aug-24-05

Google Talk Connect with their client, or yours. It runs on the first Jabber network with more than two users!
comment posted at 2:37 AM on Aug-24-05
comment posted at 7:24 PM on Aug-24-05

Pat Robertson calls for the assassination of Hugo Chavez. Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition of America and a former presidential candidate, said on "The 700 Club" it was the United States' duty to stop Chavez from making Venezuela a "launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism."
comment posted at 11:24 PM on Aug-22-05
comment posted at 2:30 AM on Aug-23-05

Rankings of world universities as published by the Beijing Jiaotong University. This is the third year this list has been published.
comment posted at 11:27 PM on Aug-22-05

The Long Goodbye - A final farewell to a man regarded by many to be a legend, Hunter S. Thompson, who, according to his final wishes, will today have his ashes shot from a cannon.
comment posted at 6:52 AM on Aug-20-05

So you're on a trip to Japan with your mate before the World Cup. Your mate generously offers to wait for your bag at the carousel and tells you take his bag through customs. Next thing you know you are sitting in prison with frostbite possibly for the next 20 years. Your mum sets up a website to help get you out. Your "mate" is later arrested in Belgium for duping someone else, denies everything and is released on bail. Years later he is found dead on a railway line in Gloucester. You're still in jail after your final court hearing. Your 3 year old son doesn't understand where daddy has gone.

Nothing wrong with worldwide drug importation laws. Nothing at all.
comment posted at 2:32 AM on Aug-17-05

The coolest door ever.
comment posted at 11:15 PM on Aug-15-05

Four Amendments & a Funeral Rolling Stone accompanies Bernie Sanders (I-VT) before the Rules Committee. It ain't pretty. The aide laughed and explained that the best time for me to go would be just before the summer recess, a period when Congress rushes to pass a number of appropriations bills. "It's like orgy season," he said. "You won't want to miss that." ... Now, if Tom DeLay & Co. were going to disallow Sanders' amendment, they were going to have to openly defy a majority vote of the U.S. Congress to do so. Which, it turns out, isn't much of a stumbling block. ... In essence, the U.S. was giving $5 billion to a state-subsidized British utility to build up the infrastructure of our biggest trade competitor, along the way sharing advanced nuclear technology with a Chinese conglomerate that had, in the past, shared nuclear know-how with Iran and Pakistan. WARNING: Will not make you feel better about the Republican party leadership. Previous Bernie Sanders, and his battle with the PATRIOT Act
comment posted at 3:30 AM on Aug-14-05

A fascinating collection of flashlets and animated gifs. All black and white, most involving the same or very similar drawings of a man. Mostly SFW; there is sound though.
comment posted at 12:49 AM on Aug-14-05

Angelina Jolie: Cambodian. Has anyone else noticed that the press doesn't really know what to make of her lately, if ever. I mean, she broke up Brad and Jen! But she does good work for humanity! But she's crazy and seems like she may have had sex with her brother! But she's a good actress! Who makes bad movies! Well, apparently Cambodia wants her. Cambodia and every 16-year-old boy on the planet, as well as most of the girls.
comment posted at 7:25 AM on Aug-13-05

Best of the web: Metagoogle.
comment posted at 7:21 AM on Aug-13-05

The secret behind George W Bush's appeal to the majority of Americans has been revealed at last (warning: embedded quicktime video); it's all the work of his professional speechalist.
comment posted at 6:18 PM on Aug-12-05

This guy is pretty much living the dream of many MeFites, I'd wager.
comment posted at 6:32 PM on Aug-10-05

For all you cutters - Scar Wars. If you think that ink is too dirty and want to go au natural.
comment posted at 6:23 PM on Aug-10-05
comment posted at 6:43 PM on Aug-10-05

Easier defrauding with unicode. Google China is a veritable treasure trove of warez; here's a handy guide to the cut n' paste unicode characters you will need to score that "evaluation" copy of Photoshop CS.
comment posted at 3:04 AM on Aug-10-05

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 6:06 PM on Aug-10-05

Blogger Twins, and fellow MeFi members, camworld and mrbarrett, want to take part on TAR9. Help them get noticed by the casting directors of The Amazing Race, currently undergoing casting call review.
comment posted at 5:13 PM on Aug-4-05

Terry Pratchett isn't a happy muggle! In a letter to the Sunday Times, Pratchett's had a go at the media for 'the continued elevation of JK Rowling at the expense of other writers'. The letter appears to be in response to a Sunday Times article from last week (sorry, archived) and possibly this article in Time magazine.

I agree that JK has had significantly more press in the last few years than any other author. I'm a Pratchett fan, however, I suspect her success is down to a mix of good marketing and the simple truth that Harry Potter is (and don't shout at me), slightly less geeky and more accessible than the Discworld series. Although I wouldn't be too surprised if, eventually, the streets of Ankh Morpork are alive with “knights and ladies morris-dancing to Greensleeves"...
comment posted at 2:00 AM on Aug-1-05

Atoning for World War II, 60 years later (and Japan should continue to do so) It's no news regarding Japan's role during WWII. However, unlike Germany, Japan has yet to fully apologize and repair strained relations in Asia. However, it is complete crap that U.S. Ambassador Thomas Schieffer thinks that people should glaze over the atrocities in light of Japan's monetary donation. Let's not forget that the US benefitted from the medical experiments that were conducted by the Japanese and that in the fight against communism was willing to quickly establish an outpost and let bygones be bygones.
comment posted at 1:51 AM on Aug-1-05

Stupidest. Awards. Show. Ever. The results are in for the 2005 World Stupidity Awards, hosted by Daily Show Guy Lewis Black and presented as part of the Just-for-Laughs Comedy Festival, and Host Country Canada was the upset winner of "Dumbest Government", beating out the U.S., Iran, North Korea and the whole damn United Nations. All the nominees are here, but don't bother voting, because the awards have been awarded, and that would be stupid.
comment posted at 8:09 PM on Jul-23-05

Information Aesthetics is a weblog of experiments in visualization: a power cord that glows as one draws power, a crocheted Lorenz manifold, a live display of a computer thinking about chess, a color-changing flower that detects nearby wifi. To be sure, there are lots of old favorites here but probably some new ones as well.
comment posted at 11:53 PM on Jul-15-05
comment posted at 11:54 PM on Jul-15-05

Thor rolls a joint
comment posted at 5:01 AM on Jul-15-05
comment posted at 6:08 PM on Jul-15-05

RoveFilter (via Drudge): Where does it go now? The AP is now saying Bob Novak told Karl Rove about Valerie Plame, who then passed it on to other journalists. So who told Novak? Pass the popcorn, this could get interesting.
comment posted at 11:39 PM on Jul-14-05

The Shins Will Change Your Life A collection of fawning music "criticism" updated a few times a week. No commentary from the author, just excerpts from reviews.
comment posted at 12:55 AM on Jul-15-05
comment posted at 8:11 AM on Jul-15-05

Van Gogh’s murderer “would do it again” Mohammed Bouyeri said that he had allowed himself to be led by the Islamic "law that orders me to cut off the head of anyone that insults Allah and the Prophet." Go ahead Mohammed, the West deserves this and Van Gogh did insult Allah so his death was justified....The worst that can happen to you Mohammed is a nice room in Dutch prison with TV and a Gym pass plus 3 meals a day free of cost !!!
comment posted at 8:10 PM on Jul-12-05
comment posted at 8:47 PM on Jul-12-05
comment posted at 2:46 AM on Jul-13-05

'The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign—over 95 percent of all the incidents—has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.'  The Logic of Suicide Terrorism The American Conservative interviews Robert Pape, author of Dying To Win: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism:
comment posted at 7:50 PM on Jul-12-05

"Guns, Germs & Steel" premieres tonight on PBS. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Jared Diamond, and hosted by the same. The mini-series consists of three, one-hour episodes tackling many of the same issues in the book.
comment posted at 7:34 PM on Jul-12-05

Can't Find On Google . Com While many people seem to think that Google can find anything (and knows everything), experienced web surfers know the results are often a bit lacking. So this site allows you to post what you are really looking for and what you punched in to the "Big G" to try to find it. The owner claims to know someone who works at Google that is "always interested in what people can't find on Google" - doubtful IMHO if they will really change anything based on this site. But semi-interesting stuff that highlights the inadaquacy of search engine technology.
comment posted at 2:19 AM on Jul-11-05

"More than 10-million U.S. homes are equipped with [wi-fi] routers that transmit high-speed Internet to computers using radio signals. The signals can extend 200 feet or more." And Benjamin Smith was just arrested for going online through an unsecured one that didn't belong to him.

It begs the Doonesbury question: Isn't it still a free country?
comment posted at 1:24 AM on Jul-8-05

Major Incident on London Underground reported. Anyone have any further information?
comment posted at 2:18 AM on Jul-7-05
comment posted at 2:35 AM on Jul-7-05

findarticles.com is a very cool archive of a bazillion, well, articles on just about everything. And it's free.
comment posted at 11:15 PM on Jul-6-05

Bush sort of answers lots of serious questions This transcript of Trevor McDonald's interview with Bush is actually quite interesting. I find myself agreeing with his stance on Africa, which is probably a first for me with ANY of his stances on ANYTHING. His climate change and Iraq stances, on the other hand, I didn't quite agree with.
comment posted at 5:39 PM on Jul-4-05

Karla Homolka is due to be released today. For those of you who don't keep up with this story, Homolka and her husband Paul Bernardo kidnapped, raped and killed two teenaged girls in the St. Catherines (Ontario) area a few years ago, with one of the women being Homolka's own little sister. Homolka is getting away pretty lightly because of sheer stupidity on the part of the then-prosecutor. Well she's about to get out now. While the official Karla Internet Death Pool no longer exists, one does wonder how long she will last, assuming she's still planning on moving to Montreal's NDG district.
comment posted at 5:31 PM on Jul-4-05

Jorn Barger found homeless in San Francisco after losing the domain registration to robot wisdom. Happy end to story is he's off the street and has his site back (with plenty of up-to-date links). Jorn, for those who need reminding, is credited with coining the term "weblog", but for a larger sense of his role on Usenet and the Web over the years, browse the 19,000 newsgroup posts that reference him over the years. Jorn was reported missing here in late '03 , provoking Wired to track him down at that time.
comment posted at 6:16 AM on Jul-4-05

Greenlighters are an emerging underground movement of sexually promiscuous teenagers, including bisexual, homosexual, and heterosexual members. Members of this movement wear a green polo shirt with the collar up, indicating that they are open to pretty much any sexual adventure. When someone comes up to them and puts the collar down, they are "collared" and will go with that person and do whatever sexual act they ask. Transfer of money is not usually involved. Some parent groups are starting to get involved - urging parents to go through their kids clothes and confiscate green shirts and polos. Supposedly this has been going on since mid-2004 and may be related to the "chavs" in Britain somehow.
comment posted at 3:21 AM on Jul-3-05
comment posted at 3:36 AM on Jul-3-05

Fan Death is death resulting from hypothermia or lack of oxygen, caused by the vortex that is created by an electric fan, or air conditioning in closed rooms. Strangely, it only occurs in South Korea.
comment posted at 4:32 AM on Jul-17-05

Yahoo gets social. Yahoo's new search is designed around your contact list. Save a few bookmarks with some notes and the next time anyone within two degrees of you searches on that topic, they'll see your bookmarks above random search results. Oh, and it's got tags too. Will this kill search engine gaming? What's Google going to do to compete, buy delicious and incorporate that?
comment posted at 5:34 AM on Jun-29-05