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Sonata for the unaware.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 8:43 PM PST - 7 comments

Isometric goes anime.
posted by Tlogmer at 3:36 PM PST - 2 comments

Feeding on Itself: the list of lists This is a metalist, that is, a list of all the lists produced for each category of the usual year's end roundups. Example for best book there are some 18 different lists (link to) places presenting such lists. check your favorite list topics and list sources and see whether you agree. Or not.
posted by Postroad at 3:26 PM PST - 7 comments

Elliot Smith : Murdered. Some may say.
posted by the fire you left me at 3:20 PM PST - 17 comments

Want to get lucky? Just start thinking like you already are.
posted by thomascrown at 2:47 PM PST - 8 comments

The Retcon Files Chronicling and attempting to explain discontinuities in movies, TV shows, and comic books. (warning: GeoCities link).
posted by WolfDaddy at 2:35 PM PST - 4 comments

Can't make it to Times Square to see the crystal ball drop? Well, in Atlanta, they're dropping a peach. In Raleigh, an acorn. In Miami, an orange. In Mount Olive, NC, a three-foot lighted pickle. My favorite? In Lebanon, PA, they're dropping a six-foot-long bologna....and in nearby Cleona, they're dropping a two-foot-wide pretzel. (The state capital, Harrisburg, is dropping a cow painted to look like a strawberry.) But they really pull out the drops in Key West, where there are not one, not two, but three drops: a pirate "wench", a conch shell, and a drag queen named Sushi, who will descend in an eight-foot-long red high-heeled shoe.
posted by Vidiot at 2:24 PM PST - 12 comments

101 Ways to Save the Internet ... 102 Stop listlessly posting Wired articles to Metafilter. Oh dagnamit.
posted by feelinglistless at 1:52 PM PST - 16 comments

The Word(s) Is Out. One of my favorite things about New Year's Eve/Day is the annual announcement of the Hall of Shame of Linguistic Incorrectness: The Lake Superior State University List of Banished Words. Metrosexual... bling-bling... embedded journalist... shock and awe... not much to argue with here. Uh, oh, they've banished Smoking Gun. And "LOL"? WTF? (The latest list hasn't hit the U's own website yet, but here's their complete listing of the previously banished, going back to 1976.)
posted by wendell at 1:41 PM PST - 10 comments

Iraq or bust! Usama Alshaibi, an Iraqi-American filmmaker whose flight from Saddam's Iraq and experiences in the U.S. were recently featured in Studs Terkel's latest book, is returning to Iraq after over 20 years to film a documentary, and is using his weblog and website to raise funds for the trip. Contributors will be given a producer credit, so this might be your big chance to make it on IMDB someday.
posted by insomnia_lj at 12:09 PM PST - 1 comment

The Longevity of Homosexuals - Life insurance companies advertise lower rates for lifestyle choices that positively effect mortality. No smoking. No drugs. No scuba diving and crop dusting. No criminal record. Should they be able to offer better prices to heterosexuals versus homosexuals?
posted by treywhit at 11:57 AM PST - 45 comments

Nude Year's Resolution. SFW. Nude travel makes the pages of USA Weekend (a USA Today magazine). Will it become mainstream? And will the message of "body acceptance" ever have a noticeable impact on industries which prey on our fears of inadequacy?
posted by ZenMasterThis at 8:45 AM PST - 22 comments

Examining the Roots of Hoarding - A "mini-collyer" is saved from his junk hoard. As for the real Collyers, "The bizarre collection of objects included 14 grand pianos, two organs, and a clavichord; human medical specimens preserved in a glass jars; the chassis of a Model-T Ford; a library of thousands of medical and engineering books; an armory of weapons; the top of a carriage; 6 U.S. flags and one Union Jack; a primitive X-Ray machine" - Langley was crushed to death by his own garbage boobytrap, leaving blind, helpless Hiram to die trapped in their junk packed labyrinth of a mansion. Accused of living like the Collyer Brothers? - Here's a photo (NYT, reg. req.).
posted by troutfishing at 8:27 AM PST - 19 comments

Primates as Programmers. New firm breaks the mold. Hires primates as programmers leading to significant cost savings!
posted by SandeepKrishnamurthy at 7:39 AM PST - 9 comments

Christiania, the spunky Danish autonomous zone near Copenhagen, may soon be shut down after 32 years of self governance. "I built my own house here. I have two young children who are third generation Christianites. I am not going to give all that up without a struggle."
posted by moonbird at 5:57 AM PST - 23 comments

"Brandon Teena lived and loved as a man. For that, she paid with her life." Exactly ten years ago today , John Lotter and Tom Nissen hunted down Teena Brandon on a quiet farm near Humboldt, Nebraska (just west of Falls City) and brutally murdered her along with two of her friends (Lisa Lambert and Phillip DeVine), leaving only an eight-month old baby at the bloody crime scene. They had raped her that Christmas and when she reported it to Richardson County Sheriff, Charles Laux (currently working at the Tecumseh prison, where Lotter is ironically housed), she was subjected to a humiliating line of questioning that the Nebraska State Supreme Court would later call "beyond all possible bounds of decency". No action was taken to apprehend the cowardly pair until it was too late. [more inside]
posted by RavinDave at 12:07 AM PST - 13 comments

An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror by David Frum and Richard Perle. Firing the opening shot in a bid to set the agenda for a second Bush presidential term, Frum and Perle have issued a manifesto advocating a comprehensive expansion of the Bush Doctrine. [more inside]
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 12:01 AM PST - 158 comments

JNet's Top Picks of 2003 : a random selection of some of the best, most topical or just plain fun sites for journalists.
posted by boost ventilator at 9:09 PM PST - 2 comments

Build your own radio. . . Or anything else, for that matter. Go ahead, release the hidden scientist in you and enjoy discovering and creating.
posted by ashbury at 8:21 PM PST - 5 comments

Army Stops Many Soldiers From Quitting According to their contracts, expectations and desires, all three soldiers should have been civilians by now. But Fontaine and Costas are currently serving in Iraq, and Eagle has just been deployed. On their Army paychecks, the expiration date of their military service is now listed sometime after 2030 -- the payroll computer's way of saying, "Who knows?" The three are among thousands of soldiers forbidden to leave military service under the Army's "stop-loss" orders, intended to stanch the seepage of troops, through retirement and discharge, from a military stretched thin by its burgeoning overseas missions. As Helena Cobham notes, They don't want to call it a draft but it sure ain't your father's "all-volunteer military" any more... Marine's Girl, Cobham's cause celebre of some time ago, writes about stop-loss here and here. See also Army reservists choosing to be citizens, not soldiers.
posted by y2karl at 7:58 PM PST - 32 comments

BollyWhat. Making Bollywood accesible to all. Including such wonders as lyrics translations, newcomer's guides and intriguing articles such as Masculinity, Bollywood-Ishtyle and a Hollywood FAQ for a different perspective. Explore and enjoy.
posted by Mossy at 7:16 PM PST - 8 comments

Penguin Warehouse.
posted by hama7 at 6:38 PM PST - 15 comments

Here's the perfect gift for the person who has everything: bedpan art. Give your friends and family "Ann B. Davis - Bedpan of Lust," "David Koresh - King of Bling," "Free James Traficant," "Ernest Borgnine - Our National Pal," "Bill O'Reilly Bedpan of Doom," and my personal favorite (of course), "Robert Pollard - King of Drunks."
posted by kickerofelves at 6:28 PM PST - 3 comments

Every year we seem to get a few horror or sci-fi movies featuring aliens. What happened this year? I may be missing some, but the only 2003 major release movies that had some aliens in them were Dreamcatcher, Good Boy! and Scary Movie 3. One horror movie and two comedies. Just a coincidence or are aliens no longer cool?
posted by quirked at 5:36 PM PST - 17 comments

Morrissey is Debbie Harry at +8% pitch & tempo (MP3). More high-pitched artists here. More about Morrissey here)
posted by iffley at 4:13 PM PST - 21 comments

Iran quake death toll hits 50,000. 150,000 survivors are homeless, hungry, and freezing. They really need your immediate help.

$110 can provide a tent for a family of five

$60 can provide drinking water to 30 people

$45 can provide space heaters to three families

$25 can provide blankets to a family of five

Mercy Corps has raised $188,397 so far, but this is far from enough.
posted by hoder at 2:40 PM PST - 39 comments

Earth Scientist's Periodic Table.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 2:32 PM PST - 3 comments

After reading that beef has been recalled from my local grocery store, I spent some time reading Mad Cow USA a book written back in 1997 but not widely published because of fears of repercussions under the Texas food disparagement act. AlterNet has an article written by one of the book's authors summarizing some of the key points of the book. Some claim that only ground beef is infected, while others claim that's bull. mad-cow.org has a lot of good information on the topic, and it seems the powers that be are going to blame Canada.
posted by woil at 2:28 PM PST - 14 comments

Remember Prions? Sure, but Do They Remember (for) You? Noone should be too (pdf) surprised if these controversial proteins turn out to be involved in a lot more than Mad Cow disease, and maybe have some important biological roles. But storing memories for nerve cells? Wow.
posted by freebird at 1:40 PM PST - 15 comments

The Endangered Species Act marked its 30th anniversary this December. Some say we need it while others say we need to change it. Whatever its faults, many species have benefited from it.
posted by homunculus at 12:30 PM PST - 5 comments

What not to do at a showing of Return of the King...
posted by bluedaniel at 11:37 AM PST - 31 comments

The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive from the University of St. Andrews' School of Mathematics and Statistics.
posted by wobh at 10:36 AM PST - 3 comments

State arts programs have been one of the biggest casualties of the widespread budget crises of 2003. In total, state spending for FY2004 has decreased 23%, led by Missouri (entire budget - 100% - slashed), California (91%), and Florida (78%.) Meanwhile, Congress, to its credit, has awarded a modest increase to the NEA. Will private funding take over, as the Libertarians hope? Or is state funding an essential propellant of local economies?
posted by PrinceValium at 8:36 AM PST - 45 comments

The Diva Cup. For the ladies who are tired of tampons and pads, an alternative now exists that's both a little bizarre and a little intriguing. At the very least, it could ease this woman's supply gathering a little bit.
posted by Ufez Jones at 7:28 AM PST - 55 comments

Jim Louderback's Eight Biggest Tech Flops Ever: IBM's PCjr, Go/Penpoint, General Magic's Magic Cap, Microsoft Bob, Iomega Clik! Drive, DataPlay, Internet Appliances, and WebTV.
posted by tranquileye at 7:22 AM PST - 27 comments

I love Maddox. When it comes to lambasting the opposite sex, slamming into Christopher Reeves, endorsing the beating of children and criticising the email he receives, he's one of the best. Pretty much anybody who's been on the internet will have visited his site, but just in case you haven't, then here's your chance. Warning... Swearing; Extreme Views; Bad cartoons; Large fonted cyan text on a black background.
posted by seanyboy at 7:18 AM PST - 26 comments

The Sorcerer's Scissors; Air Raid Practice, Knoll School Hove; and An Eye to the Future [wmv's all, I'm afraid]. These and other examples nonpareil available at the University of Brighton's Moving History: "A guide to UK film and television archives in the public sector".
posted by nthdegx at 3:47 AM PST - 2 comments

The fish that threatened national security. Lara Hayhurst, a student at Pace University, needed to take one small thing through the checkpoint at LaGuardia Airport: her pet beta fish MJ. This was, however, an apparent threat to the security of the airport and Lara's flight home to Pittsburgh for winter break. Flush the fish or become a felon? Read about Lara's decision and how the TSA forced her hand. Remember, when 2" long tropical fish can freely gain access to our airliners, the terrorists have... yada yada.
posted by Dreama at 9:48 PM PST - 51 comments

Who wants to own the United Kingdom? Slightly used, with annex. Rains a bit. Trains often late. Nice gardens. Food dubious, but lots of places to drink. Only 8.8 trillion dollars. I'm sure other countries could be bought for cheaper, and the citizens would probably be more willing to sell. If you really want your own private island, these would be the best people to speak to.
posted by Jimbob at 6:25 PM PST - 17 comments

Aerosite.
posted by hama7 at 6:08 PM PST - 15 comments

Who wants to own an aircraft carrier? Possibly the best geek gift ever, if you're Bill Gates or someone. Note especially the *category*...
posted by baylink at 6:06 PM PST - 19 comments

Stepford children as the new Stepford Wives? Margaret Talbot in The Atlantic makes the case for a more appropriate Stepford movie circa 2004.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 5:54 PM PST - 10 comments

AP: "FBI Issues Alert Against Almanac Carriers" I know this is kind of a case of the media distorting the facts, but still...isn't it kind of nincompoopish of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (the FBI fer crissakes!) to name almanacs and maps as part of a possible preponderance of evidence? And in other news--because nobody ever said you can't crosspost in your own initial post--in the future, tragically hip film grad students will write thesis papers about this Stepford Wives trailer.
posted by jengod at 5:19 PM PST - 27 comments

What if Bush is a Nixonian liberal?
posted by monju_bosatsu at 2:18 PM PST - 47 comments

Paris Hilton and John Ashcroft are #1 and #2, respectively, on the list of fake names used by people ordering pizza. In other news, people with Dean bumper stickers on their car tip more than those with Bush bumper stickers. And 42 percent of Americans will have pizza on New Year's Eve, while only 2 percent will have caviar. (All this courtesy of a Domino's Pizza survey.)
posted by Vidiot at 1:47 PM PST - 7 comments

Just Another Twig On The Evolutionary Bush: Beards and moustaches are out; even goatees are the butt of jokes; eyebrows are being plucked into Rotring-size oblivion; female pubic hair has forever renounced natural - even tropical - splendour, to be replaced by ridiculous geometric designs... Have we perhaps taken this naked ape thing too damn far? [For the record, I am gratefully in favour of all these trends, except for the pubic hair. As a Lusitanian, I deplore that the good name of Brazil has come to be associated with such a travesty.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 1:34 PM PST - 33 comments

The Bunny Museum
posted by konolia at 1:21 PM PST - 12 comments

ann coulter action figure i only wish i had seen this prior to christmas. it talks, too! sound samples included
posted by bliss322 at 11:20 AM PST - 42 comments

The Saudi Paradox. "Saudi Arabia is in the throes of a crisis, but its elite is bitterly divided on how to escape it. Crown Prince Abdullah leads a camp of liberal reformers seeking rapprochement with the West, while Prince Nayef, the interior minister, sides with an anti-American Wahhabi religious establishment that has much in common with al Qaeda. Abdullah cuts a higher profile abroad -- but at home Nayef casts a longer and darker shadow."
posted by homunculus at 11:04 AM PST - 9 comments

Scottish puzzle writer, poet, and soon to be author Roddy Lumsden pens vitamin q, a weblog devoted to, as he puts it, "trivia lists, curiosities, and fragments which please me as a connoisseur of the sequential and the inconsequential - it's more a cave of wonder than a grotto of geekery". Vitamin q is the place to go if you need to know 75 terms for being drunk, want lists of fruits and vegetables that have been used as derogatory slang, need the names of the My Little Ponies, or have always wondered which singers have been heralded as "The New Bob Dylan". The archives are bursting with more of the same.
posted by iconomy at 8:52 AM PST - 9 comments

A new twist on paying for Internet porn Although no mention of porn in the CNN story. Anyone ever been threatened like this?
posted by Samuel Farrow at 6:52 AM PST - 16 comments

Chess games. Study William Steinitz, Aaron Nimzovitch, Jose Capablanca, and check out some people who try to rediscover the games they played. Learn openings, endgames and everything else.
posted by Pseudoephedrine at 10:58 PM PST - 8 comments

b-26 marauder nose art often reflected a flight crew's courageous faith that luck would be a lady. or maybe not quite. chock full of great ww2 vintage photos, the b-26 marauder virtual museum is a sure go for no dough.
posted by quonsar at 5:51 PM PST - 9 comments

The Poop on Poop [an A to Z courtesy of Vice]
posted by boost ventilator at 3:58 PM PST - 15 comments

Indonesia's Military and Violence in East Timor.
posted by the fire you left me at 1:50 PM PST - 5 comments

It takes all kinds to make a web. With these guys, I would have to say we got all kinds. Remember SaveKaryn, the website where the lady collected dollar bills from all and sundry to get out of debt? Well, the idea caught on (unsurprisingly), and PimpingThePoor.com has set out to be the 'Consumer Reports of begging sites".
posted by baylink at 12:10 PM PST - 8 comments

It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World. Alton Brown analyzes the current Mad Cow scare. If you watch FoodTV, you may have seen his show "Good Eats" or at least read a previous thread. His rant reminds us that there are consequences to our lust of more for less.
posted by cowboy at 11:17 AM PST - 26 comments

John von Neumann, 1903-1957 . Today may have been the 100 year anniversary of the birth of John von Neumann (some think he may have been born on December 3rd). Along with Alan Turing and others, Von Neumann is one of the contenders for the title "Inventor of the modern computer." Whatever the precise date, it seems worth celebrating with some von Neumannania: 1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111, 1000, 1001.
posted by carter at 10:14 AM PST - 10 comments

Stolen: one garden gnome.
posted by grumblebee at 9:44 AM PST - 26 comments

Russian animations - from the simple, short, sassy, sad, and silly to the sophisticated, seamy, scary, sinister and surreal. - more -
posted by madamjujujive at 9:28 AM PST - 9 comments

Er ... thanks, just what I, er, wanted. Hate the sweater you were given for Christmas? It could have been worse ... far, far ,worse.
posted by essexjan at 5:02 AM PST - 48 comments

The MPAA speaks about Emanuel Goldstein. For a very long time, the MPAA has been suing the website and magazine 2600 for posting the DeCSS source code on its website. This is a FAQ from the MPAA's homepage. The incredible irony in seeing the words "Emanuel Goldstein" mentioned brings to mind (obviously to many of you) 1984.
posted by Keyser Soze at 3:27 AM PST - 7 comments

The Alias Men.
posted by nthdegx at 12:38 AM PST - 7 comments

Jimi Hendrix's National Anthem, on acoustic cello. Plus Bach at CBGB (to mixed reviews), and a national club tour, and an album.
posted by Tlogmer at 10:23 PM PST - 11 comments

A restoration project has been underway since 1998 to restore the 15th-century Tibetan Buddhist monastery wall paintings of Lo Monthang, a city in the kingdom of Mustang in northwest Nepal. The results have been very impressive. Mustang is also home to some amazing cave temples.
posted by homunculus at 4:24 PM PST - 12 comments

"A lot of you were jerks." It's one of those scenes that could've been lifted from a John Hughes teen coming-of-age movie. An unpopular kid gets the joke vote for class valedictorian, and he uses the opportunity provided by the valedictory speech to chastise them. Has this ever happened at your high school? If you had a chance to go back (or perhaps forward) in time and address your high school graduating class, what would you say?
posted by AccordionGuy at 3:41 PM PST - 36 comments

Monobrow.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 9:43 AM PST - 41 comments

The CIA's Online Spy Museum
posted by fenriq at 9:08 AM PST - 4 comments

A real Gucci bag out of your reach? Don´t worry, just compensate by naming your kid Gucci! Or Lexus, Evian, Enternity.... more brand baby names here.
posted by jennak at 8:17 AM PST - 30 comments

The Whispering Wheel Ever see a brilliant invention and you wish you had thought of it? Simply genius. Might change the world for the better.
posted by kablam at 7:25 AM PST - 34 comments

The Lady X Project is complete. 26 spy-themed short films from around the world, all involving a mysterious character called "Lady X", who travels to each location to send local agents on various missions. All were done by amateur digital filmmakers with little or no budget. Which one is your favorite?
posted by Poagao at 4:52 AM PST - 12 comments

New York World's Fair 1964/65. The future as they saw it then.
posted by plep at 1:15 AM PST - 19 comments

The Bill Hicks Bootleg Archive. [via del.icio.us]
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:09 PM PST - 17 comments

Rare Exports, Inc. They deliver the extremely rare original Finnish product to nearly 150 countries every Christmas, exclusively. It's a big download (the small version is 35.5 MB) but that's nothing compared to the patience these hunters must have to catch their prey. [NSFW, via MonkeyFilter.]
posted by homunculus at 3:52 PM PST - 9 comments

Welcome to this, the 23rd Annual Xmas Quiz, a holiday tradition in the Bay Area for 23 years. No. 12 is probably too obscure, and No. 14 will inspire rampant pedantry. 16 questions on a wide range of subjects, and answers are here
posted by amberglow at 3:37 PM PST - 10 comments

American Brandstand. Bling bling is alive and well and living in Billboard lyrics. Of course, this has been going on since at least 1903: 'Come, Come, Come and make eyes with me / Under the Anheuser Bush / Come, Come, drink some Budwise with me / Under the Anheuser Bush
posted by gottabefunky at 10:16 AM PST - 7 comments

The Ballad of Mulan in Chinese calligraphy by, er, Mi Fei; also translated into English. Via the Mulan FAQ.
posted by nthdegx at 10:14 AM PST - 6 comments

Laptop Steering Wheel Mount - Mount your laptop on your car's steering wheel? - Accident waiting to happen... Sure you are supposed to use it while parked but we all see idiots in traffic doing everything from applying make-up to reading the newspaper. Doesn't anybody just drive their car anymore?
posted by radio_mookie at 8:37 AM PST - 21 comments

20,000 feared dead in Iran quake. Google News Cluster.
posted by arnab at 5:48 AM PST - 62 comments

Martin Beck's Last Ten Years: How interesting to be able to look at a painter's work year by year: patterns and even stories seem to develop, disappear and change before (and after) our eyes. Are there any other good chronologically-arranged artist's websites out there? Or do painters habitually avoid them to prevent the detection of similarities and obsessions?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:36 AM PST - 5 comments

Circlemakers. 'Home of England's crop circle makers.' Circle stories, images etc.
posted by plep at 12:46 AM PST - 14 comments

Diagnosing Tiny Tim An interesting parlor game among pediatricians is to determine the ailment that afflicted the character Tiny Tim from a Christmas Carol. The most likely suspects include renal tubular acidosis or a vitamin D deficiency due to excessive London industrial smog, both of which result in rickets. (This would explain why Tiny Tim needed a crutch). Given that Tiny Tim's condition was likely curable if Scrooge paid Cratchit more money, this has inspired one right-wing contrarian to argue that Scrooge should have worked a little Malthusian magic by letting Tiny Tim die.
posted by jonp72 at 7:26 PM PST - 9 comments

The mating habits of barchan sand dunes.
posted by homunculus at 3:41 PM PST - 1 comment

cool information design from ben fry at MIT (via newstoday.com)... anyone else have any links to share of particularly good information designers/design? merry x-mas all.
posted by specialk420 at 9:38 AM PST - 10 comments

Have a merry, sex and gadget filled hyper-commercialized Japanese Christmas. "Well it all started when a Spanish Jesuit missionary named St. Francis Xavier brought Christmas to Japan in 1549...." The Jesuit bid to Christianize Japan was a flop though, and now - while Jews in the West, for example, tend to go out for Chinese food on Christmas Eve, the Japanese had little connection to the Christian version - so they invented their own! Syncretistic Japan pulls in random elements of Western "Christmas" and recombines in pleasing new ways! ( shocking only to Christians ). Santa Claus on the Cross and more!

A proper Christmas in Japan - for singles - involves a hot date and visit to a "Love Hotel" where "you might be directed by scantily-clad female elves to rooms complete with Christmas trees and life-size reindeer watching the proceedings with interest." and "Grope Free Commutes", for Japanese women tired of having their asses grabbed on the subway by drunk salarymen returning from "Forget the Year" parties. This fine blog chronicles it all: " the Dolphin-and-fish-surrounded Christmas tree", Ukelele Christmas parties - "I wandered into a score of middle aged Japanese ladies wearing Hawaiian shirts and plastic lays, tuning up their ukuleles" and more. And don't forget to buy some cool new gadgets. "...a tiny robot helicopter weighing less than 9 grams... "
posted by troutfishing at 8:27 AM PST - 19 comments

Michael Bloomberg and Woodrow Wilson must be proud. The Holiday dinner meets double-secret probation. Be afraid - very afraid.
posted by trondant at 7:26 AM PST - 16 comments

Fun with Google. Anyone been watching it this week? Click the logo for the whole series.
posted by yoga at 5:55 AM PST - 11 comments

Your sky is a virtual planetarium program from Fourmilab. "You can produce maps in the forms described below for any time and date, viewpoint, and observing location. "
posted by moonbird at 9:15 PM PST - 3 comments

If Mapquest just isn't cutting the mustard, or you feel compelled over the holidays to take your geekery to new and mysterious depths, the National Map Viewer from the U.S. Geological Survey is your new best friend. The dynamic interface lets you layer roads, topos, and satellite imagery on top of one another at your whim. And if you're really hardcore, make your own app by downloading and mining the Census Bureau's TIGER database.
Note: Map viewer and interface may not be friendly to all browsers; this is a common limitation of government websites.
posted by PrinceValium at 8:56 PM PST - 7 comments

An unhealthy obsession? The Internet is full of websites dedicated to a rabid fan's obsession with a celebrity. These websites often reveal their owners' fantasies of sexual encounters with said celebrity. But it's not often the object of such sexual desire ends up being a well known public figure from the Clinton administration.
posted by gregb1007 at 8:39 PM PST - 12 comments

L'Oeuvre Notre-Dame cathedral, Strasbourg (in English). History, virtual tours, and Gothic architecture.
posted by plep at 3:42 PM PST - 1 comment

Faith-Based National Parks? The National Park Service has recently approved the display of three bronze plaques bearing biblical verses at the Grand Canyon, as well as the sale of a creationist book on the canyon's origins (here's a review of the book by a professor of geology,) while at the same time blocking park rangers from publishing a scientific rebuttal to creationism. The NPS also wants to remove images of gay rights, pro-choice and anti-Vietnam War demonstrations from a videotape shown at the Lincoln Memorial, though they may be relenting.
posted by homunculus at 3:36 PM PST - 45 comments

"It's good policy and good business." NYC's Employees Retirement System (5 funds managing $78.6 billion in holdings) is targeting Fortune 500 companies to adopt policies that specifically bar discrimination based on sexual orientation. One of them, CSX Corp., didn't even wait for their shareholder meeting, but immediately amended their policy in response. These funds recently had great success after a decade-long battle with Cracker Barrel Restaurants--infamous for firing gay and lesbian employees because they don't “demonstrate normal heterosexual values." Here's wishing an especially happy holiday to employees of those companies that have stopped discriminating and hopes for many more to join in. More info on this "shareholder activism" at The Equality Project.
posted by amberglow at 1:41 PM PST - 4 comments

Some economists debate why we can and if we should give gifts for Christmas. Because a gift is likely to be valued less by the recipient than for the giver, Christmas has been considered by some to be a "deadweight loss" equivalent to tearing up banknotes. To get around this, other economists propose that the value of the gift for the recipient comes from the process of finding a rare gift. On the other hand, perhaps this is one case where we should rethink the basic rationality assumption that economic decisions can be explained by models that maximize individual wealth.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 11:49 AM PST - 24 comments

A quick flash movie, to help relieve the stress and tension of last minute holiday shopping. In with the good air, out with the bad air, rinse and repeat. After all is said and done, you can get back to enjoying the holidays in the company of your friends and/or family.
posted by jcterminal at 10:33 AM PST - 9 comments

The Father of the Shopping Mall "His most remarkable innovation--unveiled in Edina, Minn., in 1956--was the first enclosed shopping mall, a climate-controlled community of retailing under a single vast canopy. But it was intended to be more than just a place to shop. It was to provide a center to otherwise centerless developments, offering community, entertainment and even enlightenment. Gruen lamented that Americans, at the time, were living 'detached lives in detached houses.' With his shopping-center designs, Mr. Hardwick writes, 'Gruen hoped to offer a corrective to this grim and soulless American environment.' "
posted by jamsterdam at 9:09 AM PST - 30 comments

"I guess any self-respecting rancher would have shot, shoveled and shut up, but he didn't do that". An annoyed Premier of Alberta Ralph Klein was quoted saying this on Sept 17th, 2003 at a weekend meeting of U.S. governors and western Canadian premiers in response to the discovery of one case of mad-cow found in his province.
Fast forward to today: USDA refused to release mad cow records , United Press has been requesting these documents since July 10th, 2003 and has been continually stonewalled as recently as Dec 17th ,2003. Especially troubling is the question of where the Canadian mad-cow possibly originated.
posted by CrazyJub at 8:30 AM PST - 25 comments

"When Tchaikovsky heard the celesta during a trip to Paris, he wrote a letter to his publisher saying, "get me one of those before another composer steals it." The Sugar Plum Fairy from The Nutcracker couldn't dance without it. We have the history of the celesta -- and hear it in a special performance by Lambert Orkis of the National Symphony Orchestra." From NPR's Morning Edition a look at this relatively obscure instrument that young wizards music are made of. If you can't play or afford the real thing, try the chime.
posted by azul at 7:27 AM PST - 6 comments

NetFuture "NetFuture is an electronic newsletter....It looks beyond the generally recognized "risks" of computer use such as privacy violations, unequal access, censorship, and dangerous computer glitches. It seeks especially to address those deep levels at which we half-consciously shape technology and are shaped by it. What is half-conscious can, after all, be made fully conscious, and we can take responsibility for it..... Can we take responsibility for technology, or must we sleepwalk in submission to its inevitabilities?"
posted by troutfishing at 12:35 AM PST - 10 comments

Mars ho! In about 24 hours, the Beagle 2 lander will descend to the surface of Mars, courtesy of the European Space Agency. After a few mighty bounces, encased in a giant rubber ball, the lander will open up and allow its instrument payload to start sampling the surface. This is the first in a trifecta of landers destined for Mars during the next month. NASA's landers, Spirit and Opportunity, land on January 3rd and January 24th.
posted by warhol at 7:25 PM PST - 25 comments

Santa is trapped in a usb mouse.
posted by srboisvert at 7:21 PM PST - 8 comments

Steve Davis, this was your life. The most interesting spam I've gotten in a while. This fellow apparently served on a jury with the woman of his dreams. Having not gotten her number, or apparently her name, he decided that spamming was the way to find her. In this world, at this time, one would think he would know better. I smell a new meme arising! (Text of the email inside.)
posted by aeschenkarnos at 4:45 PM PST - 25 comments

The USDA has announced the first 'presumptive positive' result of a test of a cow for Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, in Washington state. CNN hasn't caught up yet, but USDA themselves have a page on the issue, as do the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the EU, and the World Health Organization. My advice? Buy Chik-fil-A; sell Burger King. :-)
posted by baylink at 3:17 PM PST - 70 comments

Several newly declassified documents have been added to the National Security Archive's Saddam Hussein Sourcebook, including a State Department cable to special envoy Donald Rumsfeld (PDF) for his second meeting with Saddam Hussein (months after the infamous handshake meeting,) in which Rumsfeld conveyed the Reagan administration's undiminished support for Hussein despite their public condemnation of his use of chemical weapons. (It also mentions but seems unconcerned with Hussein's support for Abu Nidhal.) Another document describes Bechtel's intention to do business with Iraq (PDF) through non-US sources in case of US sanctions. [More analysis at Juan Cole.]
posted by homunculus at 3:12 PM PST - 3 comments

Investigating the Renaissance. 'This interactive program demonstrates the ways in which computer technology can be harnessed to add to our knowledge about Renaissance paintings and how they were made.' Analysis of paintings using x-ray, infrared and ultraviolet technology.
posted by plep at 1:54 PM PST - 3 comments

BallDroppings – Super addictive music toy
posted by none at 12:38 PM PST - 5 comments

10 ads courtesy of AdAge.com (N.S.F.America)
posted by boost ventilator at 10:16 AM PST - 21 comments

Christmas Wrapping is one of the most enduring (and arguably one of the hippest) Christmas songs of the past twenty years. Though a quintessential keyboard-and-sax driven New Wave tune, the endearing singleton's account of the year in dating on Christmas Eve tops the Christmas charts every year, and has survived reinterpretations by the Spice Girls and Save Ferris. This year, the eclectically-talented Chris Butler reflects on its inception.
posted by pxe2000 at 7:42 AM PST - 35 comments

Wounded British soldier gets lawsuit for Christmas?! Thankfully not.
Alan Tudball was supposed to marry his fiance Claire McCombe in April of this year, but unfortunately Iraq -- and friendly fire from two U.S. A-10 tankbusters (video) -- spoiled the wedding plans. Tudball would have died if not for brave Christopher Finney, who rescued the grievously wounded Tudball, even as the U.S. planes circled around for another strafing run. The M.O.D. refused to pay the wedding's cancellation fee, and the Leasowe Castle Hotel -- not knowing of Tudball's circumstances -- initiated a lawsuit, but after media attention and several concerned phone calls (mine included), I am pleased to announce that the management of the Leasowe Castle Hotel has announced that they are not only dropping the lawsuit, but that they will host the wedding of Mr. Alan Tudball and Miss Claire McCombe free of charge. It's worth noting that when our leaders seem to only be capable of serving up plastic turkeys, the action of ordinary people working together can still bring about honest-to-goodness Christmas miracles.
posted by insomnia_lj at 7:05 AM PST - 2 comments

Before everyone breaks for the holidays, how about some reindeer games?
posted by Oriole Adams at 1:49 AM PST - 7 comments

Iceblog! "Antarctica: the best place in the world to be naked" (and take a bunch of awesomely beautiful pictures, too).
posted by WolfDaddy at 12:24 AM PST - 16 comments

Take This Honour And Shove It Up Your Arse: Some, like JG Ballard and Benjamin Zephaniah, want the UK Honours System abolished; others want it reformed; diehards want it left as it is. The recent leaking of a distinguished list of refuseniks, coming just after Sir Mick Jagger got his ya-yas out in Buckingham Palace, reminds us of Groucho Marx's famous comment that he'd never join a club that would take members like him. It's certainly an archaic and complicated system but, it seems to me, no more open to abuse than other countries' systems. And, arguably, no less ridiculous or hypocritical either. But is it (symbolically, culturally, whatever) useful enough nowadays, simple political expediency apart, to be worth hanging on to?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 11:29 PM PST - 17 comments

China engraves capitalism onto its constitution. This is good development indeed. Although business investment and production has been flourishing in China, doing business there remained very risky because of the fact that private property rights have never been officially legalized. That has changed. The question now is: does economic freedom beget political freedom?
posted by VeGiTo at 8:22 PM PST - 18 comments

Save our Toilets ! To the rescue of a dying Empire,comes The British Toilet Association.
posted by sgt.serenity at 7:45 PM PST - 5 comments

A Touch of Crass: paintings by John Currin.
posted by hama7 at 3:50 PM PST - 21 comments

France, stung by Libyan WMD deal, admits US policies showing results Ok. Agreed. You don't like Bush. And the French government does not like Bush. But here is what the French now say about Libya: [...] The media, which have long criticised the US war and invasion of Iraq, grudgingly allowed that that conquest had borne fruit in terms of putting pressure on other countries Washington considers "rogue states" or part of an "axis of evil"[...]
posted by Postroad at 3:37 PM PST - 70 comments

ZIP Code Visualizer A Java-based map of the continental US that progressively narrows down the area covered by a ZIP Code as you type in the numbers one by one. [Doesn't work so good in Mac IE 5. via xBlog]
posted by kirkaracha at 2:50 PM PST - 25 comments

Psychedelic Santa Claus. "Modern Christmas traditions are based on ancient mushroom-using shamans." [Via J-Walk blog.]
posted by homunculus at 2:47 PM PST - 15 comments

Hunkin's Experiments. 'Cool cartoons that will have you experimenting with food, light, sound, clothes, and a whole lot more! Hundreds of cartoon experiments from cartoonist, broadcaster and engineer Tim Hunkin.'
These 'rudiments of wisdom' first appeared in the Observer newspaper in the 1970s and 1980s.
posted by plep at 1:46 PM PST - 8 comments

6.5 Quake Hits Central California. Felt for over a minute in San Jose, about 50 miles south of San Francisco. Interesting time to discover the oft-defunded USGS's instant earthquake news page. Talk about dynamically generating your pages your pages from the ground up...
posted by effugas at 11:31 AM PST - 68 comments

Water birth is an alternative to standard hospital labor where the woman gives birth in a pool of water. Many hospitals/birth centers now offer the option of a water birth, or the mother-to-be can choose from a wide variety of birthing pools for labor at home, usually assisted by a midwife/nurse with experience in waterbirth. There are many benefits of a gentle introduction to the world by being born in water, and the testimonials make it sound like a great option. Note: some links may be NSFW. [more inside]
posted by widdershins at 11:15 AM PST - 17 comments

"Although the Holtans had never visited Italy, they wanted a house that looked authentically Tuscan." Lake Las Vegas, NV may be even tackier, and more aesthetically insidious, than its famous namesake 17 miles to the west -- it's a planned village of million-dollar fake villas, indoor waterfalls, and elevator buttons for dogs. (NYT/RR)
posted by serafinapekkala at 10:12 AM PST - 38 comments

I've become addicted to Satan's Laundromat -- a photoblog based out of Brooklyn that shows NYC daily in all its weird and wonderful glory.
posted by anastasiav at 8:22 AM PST - 16 comments

If you're going to make a deal with Sauron, consult your lawyer first.
posted by tdismukes at 7:37 AM PST - 9 comments

The Futuro House - designed in 1968 by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen, this funky place is an example of space age utopian architecture. Made largely of plastic, the oil crisis nipped the design in the bud. Should you decide to build along these lines, here's some ideas for '70s decor.
posted by madamjujujive at 6:09 AM PST - 16 comments

The Missouri Botanical Garden Library has scanned and posted 46 volumes of its rare book collection. 16,133 pages and 2,050 beautiful illustrations are currently available.
As an example, see this engraving of a foxglove by Pierre Vallet from 1608.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 4:49 AM PST - 7 comments

A concealed weapon that's not allowed in Texas. Mother of three, Joanna Webb, could be put into jail for a year for holding a Passion Party where she sold a vibrator to undercover narcotics agents. Don't they realize it's just for "therapeutic massage?"
posted by drezdn at 9:45 PM PST - 63 comments

Spears Reigns Again on Internet . Lycos, America Online and Yahoo! all have their top ten of '03 lists out. Google Zeitgeist wasn't mentioned in the Hollywood Reporter Article, but it's always worth a look.
posted by Blake at 6:22 PM PST - 10 comments

In February, Robert Burrows' self-published book The Great American Parade was called the "worst novel ever published in the English language" by Gene Weingarten in the Washington Post. The insult has inspired a second print edition and an official Web site that includes the full text and political commentary by the author.
posted by rcade at 4:23 PM PST - 8 comments

Television that will really rot your mind.
posted by boost ventilator at 4:18 PM PST - 7 comments

Who's Afraid of a Little Propaganda? The Pentagon decides to bypass the filter and give Americans direct news access.
posted by the fire you left me at 4:04 PM PST - 28 comments

A Sightseer's Guide to Engineering. Engineering sights around the USA.
posted by plep at 1:42 PM PST - 8 comments

"They swept across Iraq and conquered it in 21 days. They stand guard on streets pot-holed with skepticism and rancor. They caught Saddam Hussein. They are the face of America, its might and good will, in a region unused to democracy. The U.S. G.I. is Time's Person of the Year." [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 11:07 AM PST - 63 comments

Saddam's spiderhole photo was taken in August, or what? The fruit on the date palm behind the soldier is yellow. Date fruit grows from March-August (see 'Iraq' in table 23) and is harvested in early fall. Dates are yellow (ie. just ripened) in August, not December. I'm not invoking conspiracy - I'm just asking: what gives?
posted by mediaddict at 12:38 AM PST - 86 comments

Why Are Love And Lust Always Talked About As Opposites? Even a much-respected philosopher like Simon Blackburn makes this essentially epistemological mistake. The horrific modern expression "in lust" is a further example. How can you lust after someone without loving them a little (or a lot) too? Or vice-(and the word vice is well applied)-versa? [More inside.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:11 PM PST - 75 comments

Most people have heard of Rotten.com, the website of sick and twisted news and pictures, but a great and full featured documentary of "all that mankind swore to forget" can be found at the Rotten Library. Information on just about everything is here, from LSD Blotters to the Mountain Meadows Massacre to the anti-masturbatory history of Kelloggs Corn Flakes, just to name a few. Of course, you can also find dirty secrets about the Freemasons, Fluoridation, Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction, The Kinderhook Plates, Lucky Luciano, Kevin Mitnick, and of course..... Michael Jackson.
posted by Keyser Soze at 8:11 PM PST - 16 comments

Welcome to Pushington Downs This amusing fairy tale is brought to us from some of the fine folks from MST3k. Edward the less is an amusing bit of comedy based in a universe almost completely unlike that of JRR Tolkien. It never made it past series 1. Perhaps a bunch of renewed interest would push it along.
posted by MrLint at 7:27 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Hypnosis in Media.
posted by hama7 at 7:25 PM PST - 4 comments

Foreign Affiars magazine is running an account of post-war Germany. It's written by Allen Dulles, who served in the OSS in World War II and later as head of the CIA. A long but interesting read in light of the events in Iraq.
posted by MrAnonymous at 3:40 PM PST - 16 comments

Santa lays off elves "Something will definitely be missing this Christmas." said Milja Vilmila, who was told her job as an elf helping Santa no longer existed.
posted by drezdn at 11:44 AM PST - 6 comments

Graffiti Archaeology Pretty cool flash app that lets you view photos of the same walls in San Francisco over time, as the many layers of graffiti accumulate. To anyone that has ever ridden the Caltrain, a lot of these walls should look familiar.
posted by mathowie at 10:09 AM PST - 6 comments

Echoes of Incense: A Pilgrimage in Japan. 'The route of the eighty-eight temples of Shikoku is the classic Japanese Buddhist pilgrimage. Its 1300 kilometers test the body and spirit and open the mind to an experience of its true nature. For over a thousand years, only Japanese followed the path to the remote places of the Japanese island of Shikoku. In the winter and spring of 1993, I walked this path. Afterwards, I wrote Echoes of Incense to record what I experienced in words and pictures. '
Related :- Experiencing the Shikoku Pilgrimage, from the Asian Wall Street Journal, 1977.
posted by plep at 7:15 AM PST - 8 comments

The Greatest Week in Rock History (Salon link) - 34 years ago today, Billboard Charts had a outstanding album lineup - perhaps not the best albums ever, but for a single point in time, arguably unmatched for quality, originality, and longevity. Take a look back at the roster: the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Tom Jones, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Stones, Santana, the Temptations, Blood Sweat & Tears, Crosby Stills & Nash, and Easy Rider.
posted by madamjujujive at 6:31 AM PST - 53 comments

There's a Ghost in King Henry's Court and it was caught on film. "Security staff heard alarms ringing near an exhibition hall, indicating fire doors had been opened. But on investigation they found the doors closed. Perplexed, they examined CCTV footage and that is when it got spooky. The cameras showed the heavy doors popping open but no one there. Then, suddenly, the long-coated figure appeared and slammed the doors shut." [More links]
posted by Dome-O-Rama at 2:40 AM PST - 47 comments

The first images from the Spitzer Space Telescope, formerly known as the Space Infrared Telescope Facility and renamed after astrophysicist Lyman Spitzer, Jr., were released on Thursday. Launched on August 25, it obtains images by detecting the infrared energy radiated by objects in space, and it will drift behind the Earth as the planet orbits the sun.
posted by homunculus at 12:33 AM PST - 3 comments

Yes, that Lincoln Center. So we've briefly noted the clever hack by way of which game engines, in this case, Halo's, can be used to make movies. The best-known of these is the bleakly humorous Red vs. Blue - which, if it isn't exactly this generation's "M*A*S*H" or "Catch-22," rather manages to capture something of the futility of postmodern warfare. Still: is this an opus you'd have pegged to premiere at New York City's vaunted high-culture mecca?
posted by adamgreenfield at 9:56 PM PST - 10 comments

"This is what it sounds like inside the brains of crazy people." - one person's review of "Carol of the Bells", part of the results of a "Worst Carol Contest." Ineligible: novelty songs, especially involving injuries to grandmothers. The most hated: Little Drummer Boy. (I was disappointed not to see Leroy Anderson's feculent Sleigh Ride get top honors.)
posted by kurumi at 3:28 PM PST - 41 comments

The novels of Saddam Hussein The dictator published Be Gone Demons!, his fourth novel in as many years, around the time of the American invasion. Excerpts.
posted by Daze at 2:43 PM PST - 6 comments

Operation Red Dawn: A Soldier's Perspective Those of us who would be playing roles in the mission went into the troop operations center and got ready for the briefing by the commander. He came in and announced that the mission for the night would be a location down Highway 24 outside of Tikrit and “one Saddam Hussein.”
posted by JJBotter at 1:19 PM PST - 32 comments

Logo R.I.P. - A commemoration of dead logotypes.
posted by Down10 at 1:11 PM PST - 6 comments

The Bush Administration has advocated, and Congress recently approved , the repeal of a 1994 ban on U.S. research and development on new, low-yield nuclear weapons, setting the stage for pursuit of a new generation of such weapons. "The Administration had sought to remove this restriction because of the chilling effect it has had on nuclear weapons research and development," wrote Linton F. Brooks, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration in a December 5 memo(PDF). A detailed Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on "Nuclear Weapon Initiatives: Low-Yield R&D, Advanced Concepts, Earth Penetrators, Test Readiness" was updated last week. (PDF)
posted by dejah420 at 11:38 AM PST - 31 comments

The (new) 7 (8, really) words you can't say on television. Carlin must be proud.
posted by MrMoonPie at 11:10 AM PST - 54 comments

Rally the Real Grassroots? Many Americans look to the Dean Campaign and MoveOn.org as a new kind of grassroots politics, but is there model really that unique? The Chrsitian Coalition has been organizing along similiar lines without the internet for years, and now the Bush Campaign is throwing their hat in the grassroots ring after sending out this e-mail: [text inside]
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 11:05 AM PST - 23 comments

The latin lover
Father Reginald Foster, the Pope's own Latinist has a weekly show on Vatican radio, they are always informative and often hilarious (Real player required).
posted by johnny novak at 10:12 AM PST - 6 comments

Paris Beats Bush
More viewers watched The Simple Life than George Bush's interview with Diane Sawyer. What does that say about America?
posted by fenriq at 9:53 AM PST - 41 comments

Nutcrackers! E.T.A. Hoffman started it, Tchaikovsky made it popular, and now these decorative nut-crunching critters are a mainstream Christmas tradition. Thing is, their festive popularity has expanded their market, so you can find an appropriate nutcracker for any occasion, whether you're going to sea, ordering pizza, reading Shakespeare, printing something, getting a divorce, having a barbeque, electing a president, or invading a terrorism-sponsoring country. Hey, might as well pick one up for the next time you forget to look both ways on your way to the Leavenworth Nutcracker Museum. They also help relieve frustration, be it caused by popular culture, illiteracy, or just good ol' holiday stress.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 9:28 AM PST - 1 comment

A Celebration of Hope this Christmas season. How one sick child would rather help others in her time of need.
posted by Macboy at 9:16 AM PST - 1 comment

The DC Appeals court has overturned the previous decision that allowed the RIAA to subpoena user's names from internet providers. Could this mark the end of the recording industry's lawsuit assault?
posted by BigPicnic at 8:53 AM PST - 18 comments

Toothpaste World
posted by anastasiav at 8:37 AM PST - 5 comments

Ralph Nader wants your opinion on whether he should run in '04. Via TPM.
posted by goethean at 8:03 AM PST - 51 comments

Coyotus Interruptus? New Scientists readers were asked to come up with new and necessary scientific words and their (amusing) definitions. These are the results.
posted by biffa at 7:58 AM PST - 8 comments

Catapult Santa. (flash, via the ultimate insult)
posted by Ufez Jones at 7:30 AM PST - 1 comment

Once More With Hobbits - the Lord of the Rings meets Once More With Feeling, the Buffy the Vampire musical episode. There are only lyrics at the moment, but mp3s are promised soon. Until then, you'll have to sing along yourselves!
posted by Orange Goblin at 7:20 AM PST - 10 comments

Workers Rejoice!! The Maoist Internationalist Movement's music Reviews are in for 2003! As much as Lopez would like to pretend it is otherwise, social status and wealth are inextricably linked in capitalist society. Poor misguided J-Lo.
posted by Dr_Octavius at 6:56 AM PST - 22 comments

Savant art: the amazing work of Richard Wawro.
posted by moonbird at 6:43 AM PST - 4 comments

DVD File is reporting that Michael J. Nelson of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame will be providing audio commentary for an upcoming re-release of Reefer Madness. Will this mark the first time a DVD commentator openly mocks the film?
posted by Otis at 6:14 AM PST - 18 comments

Global Dimming. Records show that over the past 50 years the average amount of sunlight reaching the ground has gone down by almost 3% a decade. "It's an extraordinary thing that for some reason this hasn't penetrated even into the thinking of the people looking at global climate change. It's actually quite a big deal and I think you'll see a lot more people referring to it."
posted by stbalbach at 4:47 AM PST - 15 comments

Punk-Tuation: Is It The New Anarchy Or Boring Old Fascism All Over Again? How anal serious about apostrophes are you? Just how far would you go for a perfect semi-colon? Do you regularly reach for heart pills before you read MetaFilter? Take comfort in this: Lynne Trusse's wildly popular Eats Shoots And Leaves is this year's surprise bestseller in Britain. And I've limited myself to the MeFi-adored Guardian, just to make my (as it were) point. So... how important is punctuation to you? My own suspicion is that punctuation is the new spelling. It is important. (And, lest this seem carefree and frivolous, let me confess right away that MetaFilter may well be the worst offender, in this regard, ever to have blessedly existed.)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:37 AM PST - 36 comments

The Particles of Star Trek. Confused about dilithium, trilithium, and neodilithium? Can't tell a tachyon from a temporal wake? Here's an obsessive and growing list of just about every particle used across the generations: "So tiny, you can't tell it's a deus ex machina!" (Also includes minerals, chemical compounds, energy waves, and other miscellanea.)
posted by brownpau at 1:16 AM PST - 7 comments

Flash Friday Badgers: Redux
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 12:35 AM PST - 13 comments

Yes, Virginia, there is a sweatshop in China! [Friday flash, holiday humbug]
posted by homunculus at 12:24 AM PST - 8 comments

Is is possible to see both sides? Should we all try to see both sides of an issue before making a decision? Perhaps the National Center for Policy Analysis would be a good place to start. There are sections for Global Warming, Social Security, Environment and Federal Spending, just to name a few. In many cases the opposing viewpoints are written by the lawmakers themselves. There is even a section titled Debate Central, in case you like that kind of thing.
posted by milovoo at 7:39 PM PST - 18 comments

To say that The Conqueror, the Howard Hughes-backed film about Ghengis Kahn with John Wayne as the lead, is an awful film is somewhat of an understatement. Bad acting in the hot Nevada desert surrounded by radiation from the Yucca Flats lead to around 90 people getting cancer and 30 dying from it. They even shipped radioactive sand back to Hollywood for extra scenes. Lost in La Mancha doesn't seem so bad in retrospect.
posted by destro at 7:02 PM PST - 5 comments

Kabbalah is the new Scientology "The Rav" - Born Feivel Gruberger in Brooklyn, was an insurance salesman before leaving his first wife and children to reinvent himself as a modern spiritual guru. He runs the Los Angeles-based Kabbalah Centre. When Berg blesses ordinary spring water, it apparently becomes "infused with kabbalistic meditation . . . for healing, well-being and rejuvenation" - qualities that are neatly marketed in his exclusive make-up range, which includes a "restoring night cream" at £80 and a £91 eye-cream.
posted by suprfli at 6:44 PM PST - 13 comments

Monowheels and other vehicles with insufficient wheels.
posted by badstone at 1:53 PM PST - 7 comments

Who you calling Poindexter!? Certainly not geeks with guns.
posted by studentbaker at 1:38 PM PST - 13 comments

The Greatest Car Ever Built O mighty Slant-6 engine, most magnificent creation of the coal-steel industrial heart of America at the zenith of her manufacturing genius! (NY Times, req required).
posted by jamsterdam at 12:57 PM PST - 22 comments

Red Tape from Red Square. Russian and Soviet cartoons. An interesting collection, despite a couple of broken images.
posted by plep at 11:36 AM PST - 3 comments

In the War Between The States, no finer words were ever spoken than those by Abraham Lincoln on 19 November 1863 at the consecration of a cemetery in rural Pennsylvania for the over 50,000 who died in the three worst days of battle in a wretched civil war. The speech is often included in US history books and collections of influential American speeches as one of the strongest examples of presidential oratory ever given. Is it any wonder, then, that it should inspire modern art?
posted by Ogre Lawless at 10:55 AM PST - 6 comments

A courageous decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals [opinion] finds that the President does not have the power to detain U.S. citizens captured on U.S. soil as enemy combatants (at least not until Congress tells him he can). Normally, courts don't like to mess with the President when it comes to national security and foreign affairs, so this is a noteworthy decision, particularly given the fact that there was even a decent legal precedent supporting the Government's position.
posted by boltman at 10:30 AM PST - 27 comments

Present Perfect. Do you have everything? Do your friends and family complain that you're hard to buy for? Feel awkward about wishlists? WhatGoesAround.org is for you. Instead of a wishlist, you create a "givelist"--a list of your favorite charities, so your friends and family can give the gift of, well, giving.
posted by frykitty at 10:26 AM PST - 8 comments

POLL: should gays be able to marry? The American Family Association wants to know what you think - should gays be able to marry? They plan to tell Congress about the results. Let them hear from you.
posted by subpixel at 9:41 AM PST - 56 comments

"The car has...a headrest with a valley down the center for women who wear their hair in ponytails." At Volvo, an all-female project team is designing a concept car for women -- which makes for some interesting features (like a car without a hood) as well as some curious tales from a (temporarily) female-dominated workplace. More inside...
posted by serafinapekkala at 8:11 AM PST - 53 comments

Skeptical environmentalist cleared. The Danish panel charged with investigating Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, found the author not guilty of scientific dishonesty. Lomborg has his thoughts on the matter as well as English translations of the committee's decision available on his web site.
posted by bbrown at 6:09 AM PST - 34 comments

Hardcore band Bleeding Through emerged relatively unscathed (video) after hitting black ice on a Utah interstate and nearly taking out two state troopers. On Trustkill Records, the band has had to cancel their tour. Can't wait for the music video, guys!
posted by mischief at 5:34 AM PST - 17 comments

Bush in 30 seconds. The voting for MoveOn.org's anti-Bush ad contest has begun. Even Republicans should enjoy this as some of the ads are hilariously bad. You need to register first (regular MoveOn spam included, use SpamGourmet if you don't want it) and can only view 20 ads per day or so. Since they are Creative Commons licensed, why not put them all into a giant archive and let people download them via BitTorrent? (There's over 1000 ads.) Anyway, enjoy the show.
posted by Eloquence at 1:19 AM PST - 20 comments

Qveere Eye for thye Medieval Man. With thanks to Andrew Sullivan who also includes this.
posted by adrober at 11:28 PM PST - 11 comments

Tommy Chong in prison. 3 months into his 9 month prison sentence for selling bongs, the LA City Beat talks to Tommy Chong and the LA Weekly talks with his family about the details of his case. [Via Drug WarRant.]
posted by homunculus at 9:16 PM PST - 20 comments

Ninepin, tenpin, fivepin, duckpin, candlepin. [more inside]
posted by pedantic at 8:37 PM PST - 10 comments

The Bush administration's conservation policy: 'protecting the nation's environment', or you know, 'not'? [more inside]
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:31 PM PST - 35 comments

Music club caught in racist flap : After being promoted for many weeks, the plug is pulled on the Death In June/Der Blutharsch/Changes concert in Chicago for reasons of racism. Aside from Changes (which does support separatism), when does imagery go too far? Bruce Bottle of Chicago's The Empty Bottle explains the reasons why they cancelled the show, and opens up a can of worms in the process.
posted by starscream at 8:09 PM PST - 28 comments

The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM to cognoscenti) one of the lesser known but most influential movements of the past quarter century. After the innovators of Metal ran out of steam in the late 70's and were stampeded in the maelstrom of punk, heavy metal (and testosterone-soaked delindquents everywhere) found itself in a quandary). A number of UK acts took some cues from the punks, shortened the songs, reigned in the self-indulgence and speeded up the tempo, and upped the relevance and intelligence of the lyrical content, while still retaining the vocal prowess, instrumental pyrotechnics and young warrior energy that makes it Metal in the first place. Some groups became world famous. Others only big in Europe. Some great ones missed stardom by just a notch. Many of these acts have been cited as inspirations by Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Napalm Death and the thrash/death metal hordes, and even many post-punks. An interesting summary for fans, and a good introduction for non-mans who may have to recalibrate their opinion of the genre after checking some of these bands out.
posted by jonmc at 6:50 PM PST - 17 comments

9/11 report preview "As you read the report, you're going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn't done and what should have been done," he said. "This was not something that had to happen." We must wait till January for the full report.
posted by jbou at 4:39 PM PST - 17 comments

"What a Crappy Present" [via waxpancake]
posted by riffola at 3:00 PM PST - 28 comments

The American Geophysical Union has just adopted a new policy position on global warming in which it states its concern over rising greenhouse gas emissions.
posted by y2karl at 2:51 PM PST - 37 comments

France wants you secular. Malaysia wants you circumcized.
posted by jfuller at 12:56 PM PST - 12 comments

PETA plans to hand "Your Mommy Kills Animals" flyers to kids at Nutcracker performances. The fliers urge kids to "ask your mommy how many dead animals she killed to make her fur clothes" and include a color drawing of a woman plunging a large bloody knife into the belly of a rabbit.
posted by Irontom at 12:33 PM PST - 139 comments

"It turns out that not all the world's information is already on the Internet." Google's attempt at bringing the larger text-iverse into its purview has been previously discussed here. But now it's apparently a reality, at least in a limited beta. Results from aleph to zebra.
posted by BT at 12:07 PM PST - 10 comments

Senators were told Iraqi weapons could hit U.S. U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said Monday the Bush administration last year told him and other senators that Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction, but they had the means to deliver them to East Coast cities. If this is true, is he in trouble for saying it?
posted by bas67 at 11:45 AM PST - 31 comments

Up to 35 million Americans are on a low-carb diet. Food manufacturers have responded with more than 600 new low-carb products this year. Restaurants are altering their menus. Online communities are springing up to share information about the low-carb lifestyle. With this big target market, how hard will corporations push to expand the low-carb movement? Do the health warnings about the diet foretell an increase in medical problems, or will we see a generation of healthy, slender, pork-rind chomping families?
posted by neuroshred at 11:29 AM PST - 30 comments

THE IDIOT SON OF AN ASSHOLE !!! .. catchy, marvelous. spot on.
posted by Peter H at 11:22 AM PST - 51 comments

Wag the dog. No fat cats can save Gov. Ryan now. An update on the MIFI hero former IL Gov. Jim Ryan and perhaps why he issued a death penal moratorium in 2000. [more inside]
posted by Bag Man at 11:22 AM PST - 19 comments

French President Suggests Banning Religious Symbols From the Washington Post: "French President Jacques Chirac asked parliament on Wednesday for a law banning Islamic head scarves and other religious insignia in public schools ... 'Secularism is one of the great successes of the Republic,' Chirac said in an address to the nation. 'It is a crucial element of social peace and national cohesion. We cannot let it weaken.' Chirac said he would push for a law to be enacted in time for the school year that begins next autumn. Islamic head scarves, Jewish skullcaps and large crucifixes would fall under the ban.

Man, just when I thought we could start referring to "freedom fries" as "french fries" again.
posted by monkey-mind at 10:33 AM PST - 74 comments

The coolest thing I've heard of all year: Magicbikes (NYT registration required) "Mr. Gitman, an artist who is teaching a class at the Parsons School of Design in collaboration with Eyebeam, a media arts organization, intended the stunt to be a demonstration of his Magicbikes - ordinary bicycles rigged with networking gear that transforms them into wireless Internet access points, using the wireless fidelity, or Wi-Fi, technology now built into many laptops. "
posted by lilboo at 9:22 AM PST - 4 comments

Our delicate ecosystem - apparently comprises snakes, badgers, mushrooms and ..er.. badgers. If, like me, you are in an excitable mood, then you will be murmuring 'badger badger badger' for the next 5 hours in a Beavis 'Tee-pee for my bunghole style'. Happy early Friday flash!
posted by boneybaloney at 9:13 AM PST - 20 comments

FUH2! Flipping the bird at Hummers. Collaborative web photography just doesn't get much better than that. (With the possible exception of the Mirror Project, which, by the way, just hit 20,000. Congratulations!)
posted by brownpau at 6:28 AM PST - 94 comments

Sorry. We at Showtime Online express our apologies; however, these pages are intended for access only from within the United States.
posted by titboy at 4:59 AM PST - 16 comments

Reasons To Be Cheerful: Go on, give us one. If a curmudgeonly, pessimistic, reactionary old prison doctor like Theodore Dalyrymple can do it, so can we. It's a great little article, btw, but its title is even better. The late, great, crippled Ian Dury sang about them and comedian Dave Gorman built an Edinburgh Festival show around it. So be a sport and let us have one good reason of your own - preferably to do with something ahead of us or just now coming into its own or still stubbornly with us, despite the pricks and kicks. No nostalgia allowed! [It's the holidays, after all. Cynicism is for the rest of the year. I greedily bag AskMetaFilter, thank you very much.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 4:19 AM PST - 25 comments

"We came down here for wind and sand, and we have got them."

Today is aviation's 100th birthday. At 10:35am Eastern, the Experimental Aircraft Association will attempt to re-enact the first flight of the Wright Brothers' "marginal" aircraft. (It's apparently very difficult to fly -- for one thing, the pilot must keep the airspeed between 27 and 32 mph, using an engine without a throttle.) Wish I could be there in NC at the Wright Brothers National Memorial. It's utterly astounding that only 66 years -- less than a lifetime -- elapsed between Orville Wright's twelve-second, 120-foot flight and the Apollo 11 moon landing.
posted by Vidiot at 10:51 PM PST - 16 comments

Meta 'best of' list for 2003; add your own! [via LMG :]
posted by kliuless at 7:55 PM PST - 6 comments

Article 98. From 1995 through 2000, the U.S. government supported the establishment of an International Criminal Court. In 2001, the Bush Administration ended US participation in ICC meetings and, on 6 May 2002, officially nullified the previous signature of the Rome Statute. [more inside]
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:32 PM PST - 32 comments

What Tolkien Officially Said About Elf Sex (SFW). I guess he would not have approved of elf porn or elf slash art (NSFW). [Via Fleshbot (NSFW)]
posted by homunculus at 4:51 PM PST - 16 comments

Tamale Ladies! Who knew there was more than one? I just knew about our Tamale Lady who keeps us fed out in the beer garden at Zeitgeist and who had a rockin' birthday party not long ago. There's even a film about her. Is your local dive graced with visits from such a blessed hot sauce toting angel?
posted by badstone at 3:54 PM PST - 10 comments

New York Subway Musicians go to Korea (from ArtsJournal.com)... And they can stay there, as far as I’m concerned. When you’re an out-of-towner, or just use the subway once a year, buskers are so quaint and picturesque. But if you’re a commuter who rides the subway every day of your life, they are stupendous annoyance, preventing you from concentrating on your reading, and generally adding to irritating cacaphony of an already inhuman environment. The subway is not some cute audition club for aspiring mimes. As Serious Danger points out, "approximately one in seven people waiting on your train platform is a face-slasher or a gut-stabber who will cut you with scant provocation, and less warning."
posted by Faze at 11:12 AM PST - 84 comments

A Net of Control "Picture, if you will, an information infrastructure that encourages censorship, surveillance and suppression of the creative impulse. Where anonymity is outlawed and every penny spent is accounted for. Where the powers that be can smother subversive (or economically competitive) ideas" Brought to you by (among others)......Microsoft !
posted by troutfishing at 9:30 AM PST - 53 comments

Are you now, or have you ever been, a Slug? Slugging -- a kind of spontaneous car-pooling -- is an interesting (but not new!) commuting trend in Metro DC and Northern Virginia.
posted by anastasiav at 8:23 AM PST - 22 comments

The Asia Weblog Awards ...they've garnered their fair share of controversey concerning just what constitutes an Asia Weblog, but scoring aside, it's an interesting list of personal sites from around the region.
posted by Poagao at 7:39 AM PST - 5 comments

Pills for Problems: The British have taken steps to restrict the use of some antidepressants. Breggin and others have been warning us for some time now about the many problems with medicating behavior. The Big Picture: Aren't "medications" (legal or not) used for behavioral problems just an excuse for us not controlling ourselves?
posted by ewkpates at 6:56 AM PST - 109 comments

Globulos! [SWF] Welcome to the world of highly addictive, simple time wasting!
posted by Resonance at 2:54 AM PST - 24 comments

Cosh.net is the website of COSH, one of the 'old school kings' of the Dutch graffiti scene. The navigation in Flash isn't the most intuitive, however the 'Skip Intro' gave me a laugh. Make sure to check out the videoclips!
posted by sebas at 2:16 AM PST - 2 comments

Louise Brooks: With a new biopic in the works, the spotlight will soon return to this silent-movie legend. The beautiful and enchanting Brooks set the mold for the stereotypical bobbed-hair flapper of the 1920s, though her Hollywood work is largely forgettable. Her most famous film, Pandora’s Box [script, mirror] (directed by G.W. Pabst) was filmed in Germany. She didn't make a successful transition to talkies, and after a long reclusive period, she had a second career writing essays. -- For further reading, Ken Tynan's 1979 essay "The Girl in the Black Helmet" [mirror] in the New Yorker gives an excellent overview of her life.
posted by stopgap at 1:08 AM PST - 11 comments

Robert "Moose" Cobb's new job --Under fire for its handling of postwar contracts in Iraq, the Bush administration plans to appoint NASA's inspector general to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad to oversee investigations of any alleged abuses. Cobb was Associate Presidential Counsel for Bush and before that spent nine years as a career attorney with the Office of Government Ethics. His appointment was seen as a bid by the administration to counter criticism -- mostly from Democrats in Congress -- that oversight of multibillion-dollar contracts has been lax. So can a guy who worked in the Bush White House actually be trusted to objectively investigate abuses? And if the Pentagon is auditing all of this, why use this guy? (and can the Pentagon objectively investigate this stuff either?)
posted by amberglow at 8:22 PM PST - 15 comments

Downloading MP3s via P2P now legal in Canada thanks to an MP3 player tax. Just don't upload anything. In related news, the Supreme Court of Canada began hearing arguments over whether Internet Service Providers (ISPs), both here and abroad, should start paying tariffs for Canadian music downloaded by the public. [macrumors]
posted by dobbs at 7:57 PM PST - 32 comments

Exploring Dystopia
Do you want to explore that place of terror and wonder called Dystopia? Do you want to probe the dark depths of Metropolis, Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-four, Blade Runner, Neuromancer and their likes?

A large site that verges on being one man's Magnificent Obsession with Dystopia. Don't let the awkward site navigation deter you from exploration.
posted by ashbury at 7:24 PM PST - 14 comments

"It was really a tragedy waiting to happen...It might have been more appropriate to scoop and run to the emergency department. Orthopedic surgeons would have perhaps have had a better chance of putting Humpty Dumpty back together again." - Sarah M. Giles, co-author of Head injuries in nursery rhymes: evidence of a dangerous subtext in children's literature (appears in the latest Canadian Medical Association Journal).
posted by boost ventilator at 7:15 PM PST - 9 comments

'Blog Jam' on BBC World's ClickOnline this week - Tayfun King investigates the world of Blogging, meets Salam Pax, the famous Baghdad Blogger, and asks how the trend may affect politics and earn people money in the future. (Is Salam Pax ever going to get rid of this ugly template?)
posted by hoder at 4:40 PM PST - 3 comments

Winamp 2 + Winamp 3 = Winamp 5 (download lite or standard) . After it's admittedly dissapointing and rushed effort with Version 3 of their popular media player, the Nullsoft team seeks to make amends with their newest release, combining the stability of 2.x with the extras of Winamp 3, adding several new features while they're at it. Though already long-considered the standard for Windows machines, Winamp 5 puts more pressure on other competing, low memory-footprint audio players that have cropped up like Foobar and QCD. More cheerleading/zealotry inside...
posted by lotsofno at 4:28 PM PST - 44 comments

Halliburton Gets $222 Million Worth of New Business in Iraq Not a bad haul, considering their tough week.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 4:11 PM PST - 21 comments

The Osama Clock is a reminder that we still have unfinished business with Bin Laden. Some are hopeful that Saddam's capture will undermine bin Laden's support and help to catch him. [More Inside]
posted by homunculus at 4:01 PM PST - 26 comments

Tokyo design for the softly blind. Interior to industrial.
posted by the fire you left me at 2:52 PM PST - 12 comments

This is what happens when you have too much time on your hands.
posted by pizzasub at 2:45 PM PST - 21 comments

Copperfield's Card Trick
Pick a card without clicking it or selecting it and the image of David Copperfield will remove that card from the six cards.

How does this work? I've tried it four or five times and it gets it right everytime.
posted by fenriq at 2:36 PM PST - 32 comments

Violet Books catalogs Antiquarian Supernatural Literature, including literary ghost stories, Victorian science fiction, Yellow Nineties Decadence, H. Rider Haggard & haggardesque "Lost Race" novels, Marie Corelli & other occult romancers, Rafael Sabatini & Jeffery Farnol & all vintage swashbuckling historical romances, Yukon adventures, jungle tales, Sax Rohmer & all weird thrillers, classic detectives, vintage children's & young adult fantasies & series books, vintage westerns, and all things old, fictional, adventurous, and weird. Make sure to check for the titles that have dustjacket scans.
posted by Pinwheel at 11:50 AM PST - 3 comments

Celebrities take large payments from charities. The LA Times (reg reqd) is reporting that celebrities have received enormous payments for making appearances at celebrity benefits, including David Schwimmer, Cher, Gerald Ford, and others. To me, it's a shocking new low, but maybe I shouldn't be surprised.
posted by MikeB at 10:16 AM PST - 31 comments

Fuckwit, superwaif, infoholic, and blamestorming! The December 2003 quarterly update of the Oxford English Dictionary now available. (Scroll to the bottom of the list for the naughty new words). So what's your fav newly "authorized" word?
posted by mfoight at 10:15 AM PST - 20 comments

Mistletunes - your one-stop resource for those half-remembered Rock 'n' Roll Christmas songs of today and yesteryear. I'm partial to the novelty tunes of the '50's and '60's myself (as well a bit of punk), but you can also check out the lists of Hanukkah Hits, Surfin' Christmas, and keep up with the latest Christmas releases.
posted by anastasiav at 8:19 AM PST - 5 comments

PowerPoint makes you dumb. This is something I've suspected for a long time. It's been reported in the NY Times, so it must be true. I will now blame every stupid thing I've said or done in the last three years on Microsoft.
posted by Loudmax at 7:51 AM PST - 47 comments

Farnsworth house saved! Friday's auction resulted in a successful campaign to save the Farnsworth house. While Miguel will not be able to live there, we can all at least visit.
posted by Dick Paris at 7:49 AM PST - 11 comments

vintage hawaiian shirts
posted by crunchland at 7:17 AM PST - 6 comments

Modern Mongolia: Reclaiming Genghis Khan. How views of the Mongol leader have altered with political changes throughout history: Manchurian domination, Communism and democracy. After the transition from Communism to democracy in Mongolia, interest in Genghis Khan seems to have enjoyed something of a comeback. More on the artistic legacy of the Mongols across Asia in this online exhibit; or take a look at the Great Mongol Shahnama, or Book of Kings.
Related :- a potted history of Mongolian Buddhism.
posted by plep at 1:36 AM PST - 7 comments

Nigerian Email Scam Gone Wrong • Evangelist Ojukwu Damisa contacted a fictitious American pastor--Father Ted Crilley of the "Church of the Holy Cow"-- in search of donations. Though Father Crilley's prank response has become a familiar Something Awful-style troll, it's always funnier when there are pictures involved.
posted by dhoyt at 10:51 PM PST - 7 comments

A Flash-heavy "Illustrated Complete Summary of Gravity's Rainbow". Includes an Episode Guide and a gallery of related art. See also the Wikipedia entry if you want some background, including a link to an online concordance.
posted by trondant at 10:28 PM PST - 15 comments

Feral Children? Some of this has to be fiction... but even so, it still makes for interesting reading. Some links to media from the BBC and other sources.
posted by jasenlee at 10:21 PM PST - 3 comments

GOAT. Well, that's my Christmas list sorted.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 4:33 PM PST - 22 comments

Contractor Halliburton served troops dirty food in dirty kitchens Well, Bush served up clean turkey and these guys were busy overcharging the Pentagon on energy so they could reap big bucks...Cheney remains in his gopher hole.
posted by Postroad at 4:32 PM PST - 22 comments

"A self-proclaimed under-age virtual self-pimping cyber prostitute and madame" says that s/he turned to prostitution in the online game, "The Sims Online" because s/he "never was a skill person. i needed money. why skill when you can suck [virtual] d**k to keep [virtual] food on the [virtual] plate." And as the Sims Online brothel grew s/he would only hire sex workers who were "real mother f**k'n b****s to represent that sh**..." (Obviously NSFW and more inside...)
posted by limitedpie at 1:41 PM PST - 18 comments

Theaters of the 13th Dimension. Save a place for me in the Teatro della Demenzia! Exiting a movie at the Senator Theatre last night, we were intrigued by four big peepshow-type cabinets -- velvet curtains covered small doors, which opened upon tiny windows and a glimpse into the teeny world of Theaters of the 13th Dimension. Don't miss the gallery!
posted by kittyb at 12:30 PM PST - 6 comments

What's American about American poetry?
posted by mediareport at 12:21 PM PST - 69 comments

Woman claims she's Strom Thurmond's mixed-race daughter Everyone's favorite segregationist dixiecrat had an out-of-wedlock, mixed-race daughter that he "provided financial support" to from 1941 on. The mind boggles how, at any moment in the last 60 years, this news could have deep-sixed Strom's political career -- but somehow didn't.
posted by dogmatic at 10:05 AM PST - 18 comments

Now that they've found Saddam, it's time to hunt the haggis!
posted by moonbird at 9:18 AM PST - 5 comments

Do you find the seasonal festivities a little cloying? One too many fruitcakes? Let the amazing horror masked karate killer girl from mars give your holiday a little edge. Prefer to have an S&M Christmas? Why not vent your seasonal spleen by kicking a little Santa butt and then festooning your tree with a few suitable pornaments? (flash & film alert, mildly nsfw stuff)
posted by madamjujujive at 8:06 AM PST - 8 comments

The Walrus: Does Canada Finally Have Its Quality Magazine? It's always been a mystery why Canada, with its appreciable intellectual weight, cultural sympathies and significant middlebrow readership, doesn't have a general magazine to rival with, say, Harper's, The Atlantic or The New Yorker. Well, The Walrus looks good - at least online. Is this it? Or am I unfairly overlooking other Canadian publications?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:28 AM PST - 24 comments

Saddam Reported Captured - So what next? A trial at the International Criminal Court (which the US does not recognise), a trip to Cuba or a trial in Iraq? And is this finally the decapitation of the resistance in Iraq?
posted by brettski at 3:03 AM PST - 380 comments

The Master and Margarita. A hypertext exploration of the subversive Stalin-era fantasy, with maps and illustrations. A background to Bulgakov's life is here.
posted by plep at 12:54 AM PST - 6 comments

This is frankly not one of the best films ever made. "Realizing that sequels are often fraught with peril, the producers of Barney Cam secured starring roles from the President, the First Lady, many senior White House officials and a yet-to-be-named surprise cameo appearance."
posted by digaman at 11:22 PM PST - 21 comments

Santa and the X-Games. Help two poor elves sling Santa Claus all the way to Mordor.
posted by bargle at 10:18 PM PST - 12 comments

Classic Movie Musicals.
posted by hama7 at 5:48 PM PST - 9 comments

Cyclocross Nationals 2003: Tomorrow, the top US cyclocrossers will compete for the National championship in Portland Oregon. What is cyclocross , you ask. While we're no Belgium when it comes to this discipline of cycling, there will still be some good racing.
posted by Icky at 5:20 PM PST - 3 comments

"This is frankly one of the greatest films ever made." Harry Knowles reviews "Return of the King."
posted by adrober at 3:59 PM PST - 53 comments

The Sashimi Tabernacle Choir
posted by filmgoerjuan at 2:33 PM PST - 10 comments

So the issue of India's rise in the IT world ("penetrating America's economic core," worries Business Week) has been discussed (here and here), but what about their influence in pop culture? It's hard to escape Panjabi MC in the UK. Jay-Z and Missy Elliott sampled S.Asian music, and now Britney Spears has a bhangra-flavored remix (even if her love of "Indian spiritual religions" doesn't mean she's heard of Hinduism). And there's more -- a Baywatch actress is the first foreigner to star in a Bollywood flick. From Pop Idol to American Idol, now there's Bollywood Star. "Bend it Like Beckham" director Gurinder Chadha is doing a Bollywood version of "Pride and Prejudice." Is this just the exotic flavor of the month, or a cultural shift in line with the economic changes ahead? (and, just for fun -- a dig at the whole S.Asian music collaboration thing, from a site that appears to be The Onion for British Asians)
posted by fotzepolitic at 8:56 AM PST - 12 comments

The language of native American baskets - simply gorgeous display of native basketry with commentary from five weavers who keep classic traditions alive. It includes contemporary and antique basketry ranging from burden baskets, jars, and ollas to fancy baskets and hats. This is exhibit is currently on view at the National Museum of the American Indian.
posted by madamjujujive at 7:55 AM PST - 9 comments

Milk and cereal, milk and cereal, milk and cereal, milk and cereal, milk and cereal, milk and cereal, milk and cereal, cereal and milk. (6MB .swf)
posted by emelenjr at 6:49 AM PST - 16 comments

A new version of Bowling for Elf.. It just wouldn't be Christmas without it.
posted by DailyBread at 1:41 AM PST - 3 comments

pure dead brilliant. Not as good as Edinburgh , probably more horrendous than goatse , my fellow metafilterians , i give you - Glasgow.
posted by sgt.serenity at 11:26 PM PST - 32 comments

Snowglobe with a god complex. For maximum goodness, let it play without interaction before you get all deity-ish.
posted by tcaleb at 7:50 PM PST - 11 comments

Toon Tracker: Home of the Lost Cartoons
posted by anastasiav at 5:20 PM PST - 8 comments

Dean in for Bush-Whacking? A new poll shows President Bush would clobber Democratic front-runner Howard Dean by nearly 2-1 in politically potent New Hampshire - even though Dean has a giant lead over Democratic rivals in the state. Bush gets 57 percent to Dean's 30 percent among registered voters in the American Research Group poll.
posted by dagny at 3:09 PM PST - 76 comments

Sober Santa. Too much politics today, not enough Christmas fun. Here's a drunk Santa game from b3ta. Pretty tough once you get going.
posted by Stan Chin at 2:55 PM PST - 12 comments

Back seat driver? Next time you get to drive a Williams F1 BMW around Indianapolis, you will want to know how to do it right. Thanks to the onboard telemetry spy system you can see how Ralf Schumacher tachs to 19000 rpm as he shifts up to 4th and reaches 333 kph on the straightaway, as recorded on the telemetry display (SWF). Compare with other tracks.

Can't get to the track? Drive your phone.
posted by Geo at 1:38 PM PST - 6 comments

Bagophily. Extensive collection of airline sick bags.
posted by brownpau at 1:26 PM PST - 9 comments

Johannes Matthaeus Koelz: A Life Divided. An artist who escaped to England from Nazi Germany. From the exhibition :-
'Koelz, a painter, was living in a small cottage in the Bavarian forest estate of Hohenbrunn. One morning he travelled to nearby Munich on a routine visit to police headquarters to renew his exit visa for a planned trip to Italy.'
'At some point during the following night Koelz instructed a young man from the local woodmill to take his major work - a triptych which had occupied him since the early 1930s and cut it into pieces. He left Hohenbrunn at dawn, arranging for his family to follow ... It was the first stop on a journey that would take them to England. '
'Meanwhile the state police had raided their home and interrogated family members left behind. They were searching for the painter and his triptych, a massive anti-war painting which not only questioned the horrors of war but also the rising power of the Nationalist Socialist Party and by implication, its leader, Adolf Hitler.'
'Thou Shalt Not Kill', Koelz's tryptych.
Timeline and artworks.
posted by plep at 12:33 PM PST - 6 comments

Microsoft Typeface Recall and an apology offered: a Swastika happened to slip by the censors. But is it really all that offensive? (more inside)
posted by five fresh fish at 12:12 PM PST - 53 comments

CC Hates - In a printed weekend circular that went out to thousands of Dallas TX residents, Party City outlet stores promote 25% savings on menorahs, including a TINY almost impossible to spot typo.

circular printed by ADVO .. watch this space ... That's ADVO, The Targeter of Choice
posted by Peter H at 10:45 AM PST - 43 comments

We're filthy rich - now help us!! This is mostly an artice about Kyoto, but one little paragraph left my jaw wide open to see that OPEC thinks they should be compensated if the world finds a better way... I guess it's not a unique concept though - does anyone have some other examples of a (potentially) failing industry that wants compensation?? My apologies if I've missed this in another thread somewhere...
posted by matty at 10:27 AM PST - 17 comments

Looking to recreate the dark, smoky arcades of your misspent youth? Got the MAME cabinet in your rec room but still missing something? Arcade ambience supplies the soundtrack to your MAME cabinet with two super-long MP3'd mixes of vintage arcade noises. Authentic, right down to the sound of the coin changers and background hum. Sticky floor, shouted pizza to go orders, and smell of ozone and unwashed nerds not included.
posted by 40 Watt at 7:31 AM PST - 11 comments

Scribbling for jihad. Malvo case: defendant's trial exhibits.
posted by hama7 at 7:18 AM PST - 15 comments

29 May 1453, Constantinople fell to Mehmet II, sultan of the Ottoman Turks. With it fell the last stronghold of Christendom in the East. Founded by Constantine the Great, the Byzantine empire had lasted 1129 years.

During which time it created the Cyrillic alphabet, was sacked by the 4th crusade, precipitated the great schism, and created some of the most beautiful religious art of the ancient world. Sailing to Byzantium?
posted by leotrotsky at 6:32 AM PST - 22 comments

Aids in Africa - you know the facts right? Well perhaps not, what you know are the predictions of a Computer Model. Rian Malan in today's Spectator highlights how alarmingly inaccurate such models are proving. Paul Henman illustrates how common it is to build political assumptions into a model and then hide them under layers of complexity and apparent objectivity. Think global warming. How do we challenge the models that increasingly determine our opinions and priorities?
posted by grahamwell at 6:23 AM PST - 15 comments

Make sure to use lots of lube when pushing a sheep.
posted by demannu at 4:56 AM PST - 32 comments

Since today marks Canada's great Prime Minister swap, here are numerous letters to Jean Chrétien written by Chris Lloyd.
posted by boost ventilator at 4:53 AM PST - 6 comments

Graham to go out with a bang--will Diebold go out with a wimper? Senator Bob Graham, D-Florida, today introduced the Voter Verification Act, legislation that would require computer voting systems to produce a paper record.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 11:58 PM PST - 43 comments

Mars Attacks!
"In 1962, Topps released the bubble-gum cards known as "Mars Attacks". They were the creation of Len Brown and Woody Gelman. They were painted by the famous pulp-comic artist, Norm Saunders. Presented here, for the first time on the Web, are scanned reproductions of their genius..."
posted by quonsar at 10:33 PM PST - 23 comments

World Trade Organisation's Agreement on Government Procurement. "International law? I better call my lawyer. I don't know what you're talking about, about international law," the president said.
posted by the fire you left me at 9:38 PM PST - 16 comments

Intelligent Grouping Design is ... a new idea in public transportation. With many vans out and about town, a passenger can be quickly picked up wherever he happens to be and just as quickly conveyed to his desired destination. Via the cell-phone, people call into the central computer with their current location as well as their destination. The computer finds the nearest van whose route is also the most closest to the passenger's destination. The computer then modifies the route slightly to accommodate the new passenger's pickup and dropoff locations. The drivers don't have to exert themselves mentally on figuring out each route change as the vans equipped with satellite guidance technology.
posted by gregb1007 at 8:47 PM PST - 28 comments

Iranian bloggers challenge the President in the Summit: It all started from a post on the Geneva Summit's blog, DailySummit, asking Iranians to report on the Net censorship. Then, they asked them to post their questions for the Iranian President, who was going to have a press conference. Then reporters asked the questions from the president: Is the there a blacklist for Iranian websites? Do you read Persian weblogs? How hard is it to connect to the Net in Iran? Later they asked tougher questions from the Minister of Telecommunications: Why don't they public the blacklist? Why Sina Motallebi, the blogger, was arrested? Isn't the summit about how technology benefits democracy and human rights? Blogs can definitely be a big part of the answer.
posted by hoder at 8:21 PM PST - 6 comments

The Picture of Everything. Where else are you going to find Johnny Cash next to James and the Giant Peach?
posted by krazykity16 at 7:19 PM PST - 19 comments

Pepsi vs. Coke. Nabisco vs. Keebler vs. Planters. Levi's vs. Lee Dungarees (click on Buddy Lee Action). Any other classic rivalries out there we can settle "Friday Flash" style?
posted by TheFarSeid at 6:12 PM PST - 6 comments

Pentrix are for kids
posted by srboisvert at 5:02 PM PST - 4 comments

Save Disney - in a followup to a previous and informative and link-filled MeFi post, a friend sent me a link to savedisney.com today which has three interesting documents: Roy Disney's resignation letter, Stanley Gold's resignation letter, and a letter from Roy Disney to all cast members. There's also links to email and show support, as well as links to all sorts of related informational sites. Is this ingenius guerilla PR from upset employees, or is there something deeper here?
posted by twiggy at 2:59 PM PST - 21 comments

Online Etch A Sketch
posted by Orange Goblin at 2:55 PM PST - 7 comments

Its not your fathers P.O.T.S. Plain Old Telephone Service is undergoing a fundamental shift as companies such as Verizon, AT&T and British Telecom embrace Internet technology to route long-distance and local phone calls to compete with services from the likes of upstarts Vonage and Packet8 and Skype etc. Is this the beginning of the Telepocalypse a race to the bottom of less and less profit and more and more layoffs? Follow the history and future of the woeful crumbling of the hiearchical phone phone company at David Isen's web page Are the guts of the phone companies the class 5 switch go the way of mainframe computer
posted by thedailygrowl at 2:12 PM PST - 9 comments

The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed between 20 and 40 million people worldwide and was the worst epidemic the US has ever known. This year's flu is a reminder that another pandemic is possible within the next 10 years, and we are poorly prepared.
posted by homunculus at 2:03 PM PST - 38 comments

Super cool squirrels! "We believe that a ground squirrel, when it goes into hibernation, produces chemical messengers that are released from the brain that direct the slowing down of the metabolism... If we were able to synthesize the same chemical compounds and make them available in an injection, it could be administered to induce a hibernation-like state in humans."

And they're cute, too.
posted by moonbird at 1:30 PM PST - 4 comments

Geographical fun: being humourous outlines of various countries, with an introduction and descriptive lines.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 12:50 PM PST - 5 comments

The Barren Lands Digital Collection. J.B. Tyrrell's expeditions for the Geological Survey of Canada, 1892-94. 'This site documents two exploratory surveys of the Barren Lands region west of Hudson Bay, in northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan and the area now known as Nunavut. Drawing on materials from the J.B. Tyrrell, James Tyrrell and related collections at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, it includes over 5,000 images from original field notebooks, correspondence, photographs, maps and published reports. '
posted by plep at 12:22 PM PST - 4 comments

Girls night out can save your life. A landmark UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women. It's a stunning find that has turned five decades of stress research---most of it on men---upside down. Until this study was published, scientists generally believed that when people experience stress, they trigger a hormonal cascade that revs the body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible... (Old news, but I don't think it's been posted before.)
posted by badstone at 10:52 AM PST - 30 comments

Emotional rescues. An article by Susam Tomes questions how much distance is required by a performer in order to communicate emotion effectively. Does the on-stage show of emotion by some musicians distract from their performance? Compare and contrast: cellists Yo-Yo Ma and Jacqueline du Pré with the immobile, stone-visaged Jascha Heifetz. [via Arts & Letters Daily]
posted by cbrody at 10:45 AM PST - 12 comments

Great balls of ice falling from the sky! Not a B-movie but a reality. Scientists are baffled by the 25-400lb ice balls falling from clear blue skies.
posted by humbe at 10:38 AM PST - 25 comments

For that special someone. Kinda/sorta nsfw and/or offensive.Via Bifurcated Rivets.Again.(flash?)
posted by johnny7 at 9:44 AM PST - 17 comments

"Well it's me again I would like to know what the hell you are trying to prove by using a microwave transmitter on me night and day..." The X-Files never existed, but the FBI does have Zero Files.
posted by tranquileye at 8:17 AM PST - 8 comments

Buying up Iraq and Moving Targets
sample paragraph from the first article:
Trying to rebuild a country, when you are policing its civilians and fighting an escalating guerilla war, is a daunting task at best but the United States has boxed itself into an impossible position. Having justified its war on Iraq as measure that would bring liberation and Western-style democracy to Iraq, it needs Iraq to conduct elections as a fig-leaf to justify its occupation and allow it to step away from the impossible task of governing what may now have become an ungovernable country. And, the Bush Administration wants the Iraqi elections to be held before the American presidential ones. But, the Iraqi political scene contains several irresolvable contradictions.
sample paragraph from the second article (within)
posted by y2karl at 8:16 AM PST - 6 comments

How much alcohol have YOU consumed in your life? Take the "drink-o-meter" test. (Flash) I rated a "Homer Simpson", which means I could fill a few bathtubs, but haven't quite spent the Ferrari money. Something tells me that many of MeFi's finest will bury my score...via the Sporting Press.
posted by vito90 at 7:41 AM PST - 7 comments

Antiwar protests have broken out in Iraq and Iraqi blogger Zayed has photographs from the rally. Album 1, Album 2, Album 3. Blogger Omar is covering the protest too.
posted by swerdloff at 7:03 AM PST - 63 comments

Austrailian pilot stuck in Antarctica That story is interesting enough, but the background on the pilot (just your typical nurse-midwife homebuilt avionics adventurer) available here is fascinating. I love reading these stories about common folk following their dreams and accomplishing huge things. Dare I say inspiring? Lifted from SlashDot
posted by dirtylittlemonkey at 6:45 AM PST - 13 comments

Happy Birthday, Hector!
posted by thrakintosh at 5:51 AM PST - 5 comments

Michael Crichton on Environmentalism: "Because in the end, science offers us the only way out of politics. And if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost. We will enter the Internet version of the dark ages, an era of shifting fears and wild prejudices, transmitted to people who don't know any better."
via A&L Daily
posted by leotrotsky at 5:41 AM PST - 61 comments

Norbert's Online NES emulator and the Online Arcade game emulators.
posted by Espoo2 at 12:02 AM PST - 7 comments

26 year old student finds largest known prime number. The number is 6,320,430 digits long and would need 1,400 to 1,500 pages to write out. It is more than 2 million digits larger than the previous largest known prime number. Why? What use is it? How can knowing the next highest prime number be of any benefit?

One word: Cryptography.
Prime numbers are essential in producing keys for cryptography.
posted by DailyBread at 11:54 PM PST - 14 comments

Punch and Judy Everything you want to know about the famous puppet show, ranging from scripts to history. For more Punch, see also The Punch Page (many resources, but not updated since 2000); the Punch and Judy College of Professors (professional Punch & Judy performers); and "Prof." Glyn Edwards' Punch and Judy Page (homepage of a Punch & Judy puppeteer).
posted by thomas j wise at 7:20 PM PST - 5 comments

Screwing the young. American government benefits will give a typical man reaching age 65 today a net windfall of more than $70,000 beyond what he paid in. A luckless 25-year-old, by contrast, can count on paying $322,000 more in payroll taxes than he will ever get back in benefits.
posted by NortonDC at 6:22 PM PST - 36 comments

The Humane Society of the United States rips Dick Cheney on "canned hunting": "This wasn't a hunting ground. It was an open-air abattoir, and the vice president should be ashamed to have patronized this operation and then slaughtered so many animals," states Wayne Pacelle, a senior vice president of The Humane Society of the United States. "If the Vice President and his friends wanted to sharpen their shooting skills, they could have shot skeet or clay, not resorted to the slaughter of more than 400 creatures planted right in front of them as animated targets." According to another news source, "five-hundred pheasants were released in front of Cheney and his men; and the ten-man hunting party killed 417 of the birds. Vice President Cheney alone shot over 70 pheasants. The birds were then plucked and vacuum-packed in time for Cheney's afternoon flight back to Washington, DC."
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 5:59 PM PST - 76 comments

Guide to Philosophy on the Internet .
posted by hama7 at 5:42 PM PST - 14 comments

Is there such a thing as too many Christmas lights? I love seeing lavish displays of lights at Christmas time. Some folks like a few old-fashioned Christmas lights and some like to deck the halls in a blaze of glory (this one boasts 700,000 lights). And how much does it cost to run a fabulous display?
posted by Lynsey at 4:43 PM PST - 23 comments

Project Last Stand, a forest conservation group, has a new spokesman, and he's a hobbit. Monaghan also works with the group Future Forests, and is officially CarbonNeutral. He seems to have taken the warning of the trees to heart. I guess working with an animatronic ent has an effect on a person.
posted by homunculus at 1:48 PM PST - 19 comments

The Best of Hubble Its mission will end in 2010. Four years later it will re-enter the atmosphere and burn up. Many astronomers are calling for Hubble to be refurbished and its mission extended to 2020. Here are some of it's best pictures.
posted by reverendX at 12:02 PM PST - 14 comments

How I Sent My Father to Heaven. A Hindu funeral. 'My non-believing heart had melted and I once again saluted my father's dedication to my mother. '
New content on The Call of Yama, a page about death and dying in Hinduism (and part of Kamat's Potpourri, a huge personal site devoted to Indian culture, history, art and scenery).
posted by plep at 11:55 AM PST - 6 comments

Big Brother Really Exists, And He's Not Who You Think He Is. While most of those in the privacy realm have been focusing on keeping the government from spying on its citizens, the government has made an end-run: Letting the private sector do it for them. ChoicePoint, an Atlanta-based spinoff from credit agency Equifax, now has more than 200 terrabytes of data on us, and as previously noted, they're not always very good at it. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
posted by darren at 11:10 AM PST - 25 comments

A Cappella Holiday is a refreshing alternative to the tired, workaday holiday fare that may be piped into your office. All holiday tunes, but all a cappella, with some real gems you've never heard before. If your ears have been malled by Muzak and it's making you anything but merry, this free, streaming radio station might be the tonic. (There's a non-holiday a cappella station too, if you're just fa-la-la'ed out.)
posted by bradlands at 10:29 AM PST - 12 comments

Build your own snowman using Chris Guy's snowman-builder.
posted by smich at 10:15 AM PST - 25 comments

Welcome Back from Planet Scalia A funny thing happened on the way to declaring bribery a form a free speech...
posted by victors at 9:10 AM PST - 49 comments

An Atlas of the Universe. Sort of like Powers of Ten, but with lots of explanatory content.
via Signal + Noise
posted by Slithy_Tove at 8:23 AM PST - 8 comments

Want a blog that does the work for you? Why waste time filling your blog with the same pointless posts, when with a few clicks you can know that the blog will take care of itself. No need to change your current tool, it supports Blogger, Movable Type and even Nucleus. Zeldman has one, looks like Starvos has one, filepile is in the mix and it looks like Metafilter has been using it since August.
posted by jonah at 8:22 AM PST - 16 comments

Global Attention Profiles. Mapping media focus.
posted by srboisvert at 7:45 AM PST - 4 comments

Walk A Mile project brings policymakers and people on assistance together. One of their programs is Living on Food Stamps, where policymakers try to eat for a month on the same amount of food stamps regular people receive. Here's how it went in Oregon, and some lessons learned by legislators.
posted by amberglow at 7:45 AM PST - 16 comments

Did anyone catch Rudolph last night? (more inside)
posted by jpburns at 6:43 AM PST - 19 comments

Images of the Rom: the Rrom of Romania from an award-winning book by Yves Leresche; The Roma of Central and Eastern Europe by Raulf Bauerdick; David Dare-Parker's Roma - Gypsies of Romania (the second image in the set won "Best Feature Photograph" in the Walkley Awards); the Chergari Gypsies in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria (by Stacia Spragg - background here); and Itinerant Gypsies in Romania by Valeriu Campan. See also the photo-article, Challenging Segregation of Roma schoolchildren in eastern Hungary by Jason Orton (article continues at far right), and an eviction series by Ph.D. student Cosima Rughinis: the Rom in Pata Rat (dump site), Cluj-Napoca, Piatra Neamt, and Targu Mures, Romania. For some context on the last, view some text snapshots (under "issues of Roma Rights") of the situation from the European Roma Rights Center.
posted by taz at 5:57 AM PST - 18 comments

UK bans controversial charity ads In recent weeks, UK newspaper readers have been opening their newspapers to find full-page, colour pictures of a cockroach crawling out of the mouth of a baby. Now the adverts, for children's charity Barnardo's, have been banned. Barnado's maintain that the pre-Christmas ads were justified as "a way of cutting through the apathy."
posted by TheophileEscargot at 4:48 AM PST - 46 comments

Whodunit? Who wrote it? Who'd have thunk it? Bastulli.com is a great little website for all those who love a good mystery, whether ancient or modern. ( My favourites, btw, are Dorothy L. Sayers and Patricia Highsmith. This last website - Stop! You're Killing Me!" - is also well worth investigating.)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 4:36 AM PST - 13 comments

Yin Yu Tang is a late Qing dynasty merchants' home that was transported from its original site in southeastern China and rebuilt at the Peabody Essex Museum It offers a glimpse into the daily life of the Huang family, residents for more than two centuries. The story of the dismantling, transport and reassembly is a fine example of an international preservation project. (flash alert)
posted by madamjujujive at 12:30 AM PST - 4 comments

Why Poor People are pretty much f*cked. No one can make reading about the growing gap between the rich and the poor as fun as the Onion; but other than describing the issue in humorous terms, the story makes it more accessible than your typical article in a newsmagazine.
posted by gregb1007 at 11:30 PM PST - 33 comments

The fabulous ruins of Detroit: "After decades of blight, large swathes of Detroit are being reclaimed by nature. Roughly a third of this 139-square-mile city consists of weed-choked lots and dilapidated buildings . . . rather than fight this return to nature, urban farmers have embraced it, gradually converting 15 acres of idle land into more than 40 community gardens and microfarms — some consuming entire blocks." [note: NY Times link]
posted by ryanshepard at 10:40 PM PST - 22 comments

Chess Boxing. "The basic idea in chessboxing is to combine the #1 thinking sport and the #1 fighting sport into a hybrid that demands the most of its competitors – both mentally and physically, yet which can be performed by easiest means. In a chessboxing fight two opponents play alternating rounds of chess and boxing. The contest starts with a round of chess, followed by a boxing round, followed by another round of chess and so on." Radio Netherlands recently did a show about it. (RealAudio, 29m30s)
posted by tpoh.org at 8:37 PM PST - 15 comments

Iraq Reconstruction Contracts Limited To Coalition Countries In a Determination & Findings[pdf] document dated Dec. 5, the Administration outlines why it is "essential" to national security to limit New-Texas reconstruction contracts to companies based in pro-iraq-war countries. As expected, the terrorist-led corporations of Canada, Germany, France, Russian and China are not allowed to bid. (Despite years of previous work in Iraq for many of these companies). Hello Halliburton, goodbye Schlumberger. Mr Bush, is this uniting or dividing?
posted by H. Roark at 6:00 PM PST - 81 comments

Why was the sky red in Munch's "The Scream"? I would have said "red paint."
posted by etc. at 5:08 PM PST - 12 comments

A little Shockwave diversion, to tide over those waiting impatiently for Return of the King to open. (You might want to turn down your speakers before clicking...)
posted by Kat Allison at 4:14 PM PST - 10 comments

Happy Christmas, from Ozzy Osbourne
posted by mr_crash_davis at 3:49 PM PST - 15 comments

A new MS Internet Explorer vulnerability is discovered. Most digerati already know about the spammer and lamer trick to publish URLs that look like legitimate hostnames to fool people in to trusting a malicious site. This trick is frequently used by spammers to steal people's PayPal accounts, by tricking them in to "resetting" their password at a site owned by the spammer but disguised as PayPal.com. Today's new IE vulnerability is significantly worse. By including an 0x01 character after the @ symbol in the fake URL, IE can be tricked in to not displaying the rest of the URL at all. Don't expect a patch right way, the guy who found the hole released it to BugTraq on the same day he notified Microsoft. (via Simon Willison)
posted by dejah420 at 2:28 PM PST - 28 comments

Fan and ball [flash] is an addictive and fun little game. It may not be friday yet, but it was such a neat little idea that I couldn't resist posting it here. [via b3ta]
posted by twiggy at 2:16 PM PST - 12 comments

New York's Subway turns 100 years old in 2004. All of us NYers have at least one subway story... what's yours? A few historical links here, here and here.
posted by adamms222 at 2:06 PM PST - 22 comments

Are you miffed that Christmas just isn't about Jesus anymore? Annoyed that is all seems to be about commercialism and spending money? You Christians can now empathize with the ancient pagans who were miffed that Christmas just wasn't about Mithras anymore. But don't feel bad about jacking Christmas from them, Mithras jacked it from Apollo, who borrowed it from the Etruscan god Sol.
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 2:06 PM PST - 25 comments

4.5 earthquake in Virginia.
posted by SuzySmith at 1:39 PM PST - 28 comments

The Rwanda Project It began as a photographic workshop in 2000 for child survivors of the Rwanda genocide. Using disposable cameras, the children originally took pictures for themselves and to share with others, exploring their community, and finding beauty as the country struggles to rebuild via Jonny Baker
posted by Coop at 1:36 PM PST - 7 comments

Net censorship in Iran: myth or reality? Over hundred Iranians have the answer on the DailySummit.net, official blog of the World Summit on the Information Society. Would this be enough to embarass the big Iranian delegate in Geneva in front of the world--and the press?
posted by hoder at 12:59 PM PST - 22 comments

'Tis the season to donate! How does your favorite charity stack up?
posted by ZenMasterThis at 12:57 PM PST - 6 comments

J.M. Coetzee's Nobel Speech. It seemed to him, coming from his island, where until Friday arrived he lived a silent life, that there was too much speech in the world. Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, delivers his lecture from the perspective of Robinson Crusoe.
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 12:39 PM PST - 8 comments

The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record. 'This collection is envisioned as a tool and a resource that can be used by teachers, researchers, students, and the general public -- in brief, anyone interested in the experiences of Africans who were enslaved and transported to the Americas and the lives of their descendants in the slave societies of the New World. '
posted by plep at 11:52 AM PST - 3 comments

The Mushroom House in Whistler, Canada, is the result of 22 years of work by artist/creator Zube. "The interior design is based on the anatomy of a tree. All aspects of the décor reflect this motif, from the womblike hues of the Jacuzzi room in the 'roots' to the vivid leaf greens on the walls in the 'canopy'." [Via Boing Boing.]
posted by homunculus at 11:24 AM PST - 29 comments

What's a bigger waste of taxpayer money: Throwing a concert in a tunnel for a public works project years late and over budget or putting on a New Year's fireworks display for TV cameras only?
posted by MediaMan at 9:58 AM PST - 22 comments

'tis the season for ... Rankin-Bass TV specials! The Enchanted World of Rankin/Bass is a fan-site devoted to the distinctive animation of Arthur Rankin, Jr and Jules Bass. In addition to extensive and interesting background information on your favorite Christmas specials (like Rudolph), you can also learn about lesser-known specials such as The Ballad of Smokey the Bear. The site also includes some rare video clips, including a pencil-test from Frosty the Snowman. There is also a very complete section on the Rankin-Bass TV series, Thundercats. Please also see additional note inside....
posted by anastasiav at 9:48 AM PST - 24 comments

Bush Opposes Taiwan Bid for Independence We invade Iraq to help bring about democracy to the region--the Middle East. The Far East? Forgettaboudit.
posted by Postroad at 9:42 AM PST - 36 comments

Apple must be putting something in Tokyo's watersource.
posted by Robot Johnny at 9:20 AM PST - 47 comments

Expensive clowns. Some Wisconsin senators want to "save Milwaukee's Circus Parade by giving $1.5 million in tax dollars to the Baraboo-based Circus World Museum."
posted by Tubes at 9:07 AM PST - 22 comments

Possible solution to global warming: bury the carbon dioxide.
posted by tranquileye at 9:05 AM PST - 18 comments

Great, intelligent use of Flash for johncoltrane.com.
posted by taz at 5:43 AM PST - 18 comments

Lana Landis ... classy and amazing retro-looking vanity site. [note : flash, some cheesecake, sfw]
posted by crunchland at 3:30 AM PST - 18 comments

A Canadian reporter looks at Texas healthcare.
posted by gimonca at 8:35 PM PST - 50 comments

Pictures of rock stars when they were kids. Nice hat, Ozzy.
via Neurastenia
posted by MrBaliHai at 7:18 PM PST - 25 comments

TechTV's Top 20 Gifts for this Christmas. (via sdw)
posted by Ufez Jones at 5:34 PM PST - 19 comments

Gore is set to endorse Howard Dean tomorrow. Does that mean it's already over for the other Democratic candidates? (Will you even get the opportunity to vote for a candidate in your state's primary? Heck, should we consider limiting the campaign period?)
posted by jennak at 2:33 PM PST - 88 comments

Don't you hate it, when after a night out, you just can't find the lock?
posted by Orange Goblin at 2:12 PM PST - 36 comments

Laughter may or may not be the best medicine, but researchers have discovered it's a good drug, at least.
posted by Spezzatura at 12:20 PM PST - 9 comments

Hi Kofi. Diplomats from 191 countries meet this week in Geneva for the three-day United Nations World Summit on the Information Society. It's the occasion for The Helloworld Project to project thousands of 500-foot-high laser-light SMS messages onto the Geneva fountain. Internet users everywhere can post billboard thoughts almost instantly onto the fountain -- or onto the northern façade of New York's U.N. building, the face of a mountain in Rio de Janeiro or the front of a Bombay skyscraper.
posted by the fire you left me at 12:02 PM PST - 15 comments

At least one person is dead when Toronto theatre The Uptown (a frequent haunt of my childhood) collapses. The 2000 seat Uptown was built in 1920 and closed in September of this year, right after the Toronto International Film Festival, which regularly used the theatre for its screenings. Ignoring a Cinema Treasures' petition, and heartfelt articles from local media, Famous Players, the theatre's owners, decided to sell the building to a condo developer after losing a two year battle with The Ontario Human Rights Commission, who were insisting that the venue be made wheelchair-friendly. Oddly, as I was walking past the site last night, I considered contacting the demolition company about what was being done with the theatre's sign when it finally came down.
posted by dobbs at 11:58 AM PST - 12 comments

eBay Auction of Tidings of Comfort and Joy
posted by fenriq at 11:49 AM PST - 32 comments

Rub the lucky Buddha and..... It dispenses - Darwin's Origin of Species, Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, Voltaire's Candide, Loren Eiseley's The Immense Journey, Huxley's Doors of Perception, Lewis Carrol's Through the Looking Glass , Thomas Paine's Common Sense, The Age of Reason, Rights of Man, and Crisis #1, Buckminster Fuller's Grunch of Giants, Descartes' Discourse on method..., biographies of St. Francis and Joan of Arc, Twain's The Grateful Poodle, and more...
posted by troutfishing at 10:02 AM PST - 13 comments

Environmental Scorecard. Get the facts on local U.S. pollution. This environmental pollution tracking site is a must-see if you're worried about your hometown. The site has maps of the United States that show levels of various pollutants and a community area where you can enter your zip code and to get a list of all the environmental issues in your neighborhood.
posted by VelvetHellvis at 9:11 AM PST - 14 comments

Mitsubishi Virtual Design Museum - look at the past, present, and future of industrial design in Japan. :: via Yesterday's Tomorrows::
posted by anastasiav at 8:21 AM PST - 8 comments

Japanese Yoyo championships. [7:17 wmv - with music]
posted by srboisvert at 7:52 AM PST - 22 comments

Pancakes! Not just your everyday pancakes this time though. Alan Clark has turned his family recipe into a c13 isotope lased medical breakthrough. - via Fark (of course)
posted by KnitWit at 7:04 AM PST - 9 comments

New Medicare Bill Bars Extra Insurance for Drugs
"Millions of Medicare beneficiaries have bought private insurance to fill gaps in Medicare. But a little-noticed provision of the legislation prohibits the sale of any Medigap policy that would help pay drug costs after Jan. 1, 2006, when the new Medicare drug benefit becomes available. This is one of many surprises awaiting beneficiaries, who will find big gaps in the drug benefit and might want private insurance to plug the holes — just as they buy insurance to supplement Medicare coverage of doctors' services and hospital care." [warning: NY Times link]
posted by Irontom at 4:48 AM PST - 16 comments

Where Would You Send Someone You Love For Christmas? If you had unlimited funds, what would be your Hannukah or Christmas present for someone you thought really deserved one? For instance, our genial host and the owner of MetaFilter, Matt Haughey. A lot of us are presently engaged in clubbing in to offer him a short visit to Iceland. y6y6y6 has even set up a website to solicit funds and suggestions, following enormous interest on MetaTalk. Well-known weblogs like boing boing and anildash are chipping in too. isn't it time we showed our appreciation? (Matt, please don't read or delete this!)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:00 AM PST - 101 comments

Need advice? Ask Pud. Having apparently created a good income for himself, Pud will tell you how to do it too. And let you know what his kit's like. And brief you on the future of your career in the IT industry. And give you a tip on street food in NY. And tell you the quickest way to learn French. And he gets to the point about chickens and eggs pretty quick too.
posted by iffley at 11:25 PM PST - 13 comments

The Astronomy Nexus. Including the Encyclopedia of Suns, Virtual Messier Objects, and the 3D Universe.
posted by Johnny Assay at 8:52 PM PST - 4 comments

Dean Campaign and Revival of Community. Robert Putnam's book Bowling Alone charted the decline of communities in America, arguing that people tended to no longer to meet others outside the family for common interests or causes. The NYTimes Magazine argues that the Dean Campaign derives its popularity from reviving such communal connections. [More Inside]
posted by gregb1007 at 7:40 PM PST - 43 comments

Basho: Many old places brought down to us through poetry, but landslides and floods have altered paths and covered markers with earth, and trees arisen generations gone, and hard to locate anything now, but that moment seeing the thousand-year-old monument brought back sense of time past. One blessing of such pilgrimage, one joy of having come through, aches of the journey forgotten, shaken, into eyes. - Cid Corman's tr. of Basho's Oku no Hosomichi. 4 translations online.
posted by chymes at 7:32 PM PST - 6 comments

It's the end of an era. On Dec. 31, the Jennicam shuts down for good.
posted by PrinceValium at 6:17 PM PST - 43 comments

After viewing this incredible video (.wmv) from China I am folding laundry like a pro (via Linkfilter)
posted by stbalbach at 5:46 PM PST - 30 comments

A pattern map for a conservation economy [Flash.] "The pattern map offers a visual guide to the sustainability patterns that provide a framework for developing a conservation economy." [Via WorldChanging.]
posted by homunculus at 5:05 PM PST - 8 comments

Got Lesbians? Every once in awhile I think "gee, self. I don't have enough lesbians in my life." Now there's a service just for me: LesbianPhoneCall. To quote their site they "deliver[s] you a phone call from a genuine lesbian!" You get to choose from Choose from a variety of lesbians, from militant bulldyke to on-the-fence lesbian (VERY popular). It even details what each type of lesbian is liable to talk about. Super! (via MonkeyFilter/UncoolCentral)
posted by answergrape at 3:28 PM PST - 34 comments

NRA Seeks Status as News Outlet Deciding that laws regulating campaign spending are simply in their way, the National Rifle Association thinks out loud about buying a radio or TV station and then filing a lawsuit so that money limits no longer apply to them. As we all know, federal gun regulations are a near-certainty without this effort.
posted by billsaysthis at 3:13 PM PST - 21 comments

'Just Bring 'em In From Space' • An interview with Dave Willis and Matt Maiellaro, co-creators of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and former writers for Space Ghost. "If talking food is a tool, it's one typically seized by a businessman/evangelist desperately grasping for 'funny' — and using the first inoffensive, seemingly comic concept he can find. But Adult Swim mainstay Aqua Teen Hunger Force may be enough to singlehandedly rehabilitate the genre."
posted by dhoyt at 2:44 PM PST - 14 comments

Fire Paste (now with Diet Coke) - It looks like Project Grizzly's Troy Hurtubise, whose bear suit was recently referenced in The Simpsons, is at is again.
posted by boost ventilator at 2:10 PM PST - 11 comments

Welcome to the Hotel Infinity! A narrative description of Cantor's ideas of infinity.
posted by Orange Goblin at 1:32 PM PST - 9 comments

Free Flight (Flash, via Blue's News)
posted by WolfDaddy at 11:42 AM PST - 10 comments

Egg Shell Carving.
posted by moonbird at 10:23 AM PST - 16 comments

The real source of the word "Octothorpe"
posted by riffola at 9:03 AM PST - 13 comments

Transdniester. The unrecognized Moldovian breakaway republic is your one stop shopping solution for black market arms.
posted by srboisvert at 7:40 AM PST - 12 comments

"With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them" We can finally stop using the "we had to destroy the village to save it" quote when discussing controversial measures in Iraq. The new quote by a US Army officer is a whole lot more appropriate.
posted by miguelbar at 7:06 AM PST - 100 comments

Language tree rooted in Turkey.
posted by the fire you left me at 6:48 AM PST - 28 comments

Snow Removal
posted by jeremias at 6:11 AM PST - 9 comments

The Museum of London.
posted by plep at 4:17 AM PST - 7 comments

The History of Eating Utensils
posted by anastasiav at 11:56 PM PST - 8 comments

A Softer World.
posted by protocool at 9:21 PM PST - 17 comments

Jack Chick meets Cthulhu.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 7:40 PM PST - 20 comments

Dime Novels and Penny Dreadfuls.
posted by hama7 at 6:09 PM PST - 7 comments

The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012 was written in 1992 for the US Army War College's military journal Parameters, and describes how the US has fallen victim to a military coup. The article was intended as "a literary device intended to dramatize my concern over certain contemporary developments affecting the armed forces, and is emphatically not a prediction." But following a recent article by military affairs analyst William Arkin on how American armed forces are assuming major new domestic policing and surveillance roles, some worry that mission creep is making Dunlap's scenario more feasible.
posted by homunculus at 12:34 PM PST - 25 comments

Kazaa Lite K++, the spyware-free version of the popular file-sharing application, was ordered offline yesterday by Kazaa's owner Sharman Networks. On what grounds? Ironically, for copyright infringement. (The K++ downloads are gone from the official site, but the latest version is still mirrored here.)
posted by waxpancake at 12:31 PM PST - 43 comments

Snowcraft: If you are currently snowed in and don't feel like going outside you can always have a virtual snowball fight. [warning: Flash fun]
posted by anathema at 10:29 AM PST - 35 comments

Five Geek Social Fallacies "Social fallacies are particularly insidious because they tend to be exaggerated versions of notions that are themselves entirely reasonable and unobjectionable. It's difficult to debunk the pathological fallacy without seeming to argue against its reasonable form; therefore, once it establishes itself, a social fallacy is extremely difficult to dislodge. It's my hope that drawing attention to some of them may be a step in the right direction."
posted by keli at 8:36 AM PST - 30 comments

An airplane hall of fame. Talk about rekindling childhood passions. I got a real kick out of reading this.
posted by nthdegx at 7:25 AM PST - 12 comments

For any society, in any age, the study of politics ultimately comes down to one elemental question: how are people persuaded to acquiesce in a polity where the distribution of power is manifestly unequal and unjust, as it invariably is. -- The quote from David Cannadine that opened a recent Newsnight newsletter from Jeremy Paxman. Email may not be the sexiest 'net medium, but I wait daily for two witty, well informed summaries of UK current affairs; the second is Channel 4's Snow Mail. And weekly, there's the Guardian's Backbencher.
posted by andrew cooke at 7:05 AM PST - 2 comments

The adorable haggis. Think nothing of the myth of sheep and oatmeal.
posted by the fire you left me at 6:29 AM PST - 10 comments

Makola Market. 'West Africa's markets are legendary and none more so than the famous Makola market in Ghana's capital, Accra. Run by powerful women traders who sell in the market, Makola is a place where you can buy anything you need - manufactured and imported foods, fresh produce, tools, medicines, shoes, pots and pans etc etc. It's also a place that's good for the soul; its humour and energy will recharge your batteries. If you aren't lucky enough to be in a West African city, you can still imagine you're there. Whether you are in New York, Paris or Sao Paolo, Johannesburg, Nairobi or Cairo, click on the link and join Ofeibea Quist Arcton on a stroll through Makola Market. It will do you good. '
Via allafrica.com's photo pages.
posted by plep at 3:20 AM PST - 7 comments

Howard Dean reamed by RNC chairman after his 911 comment on the Diane Rehm show "Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie blasted Democratic presidential frontrunner Howard Dean on Friday for suggesting that President Bush may have been warned in advance about the 9/11 attacks." Perhaps Mr.Gillespie didn't take the time to read the Newsweek article suggesting the same thing or perhaps he hasn't read of these predominately major media stories that call into question the administration's no prior knowledge claim. Just wondering?
posted by thedailygrowl at 2:21 AM PST - 36 comments

Did you die on 9/11? If so, the government would like a word with you.
A woman whose husband died in the WTC disaster received a letter today from the Department of Commerce, requesting the deceased's assistance with their investigations. Presumably, many of the other victim's families received this letter too.
After all, they *were* witnesses, weren't they?!
posted by insomnia_lj at 12:10 AM PST - 10 comments

Slavery Ended in the 1960s, not the 1860s The Civil War made slavery illegal, but that didn't wipe it out completely. White farmer, John Williams, forced his black overseer to murder 11 slaves in the wake of a 1921 federal investigation. The Dial Brothers were also convicted by the Justice Department for "African slavery" in the 1940s. In another case, a black genealogist found a 104-year-old man who claims he and his family were enslaved until the 1960s. It's not necessary to rehash the entire reparations debate to realize that some of these post-Civil War slavery cases may finally have a day in court.
posted by jonp72 at 11:37 PM PST - 13 comments

richard perle has been discussed here before, finds himself caught in his own web again. should this man be allowed to remain on the defense policy board arguably one of the most influential bodies of unelected citizens in the world?
posted by specialk420 at 10:29 PM PST - 7 comments

Jerry Garcia Autopsy! "A groovy peak inside Captain Trips." CSI meets The Muppets? [via Arettie, bass player for The Sha-pels]
posted by mcsweetie at 9:22 PM PST - 9 comments

To quote their #2 and eponymous fan site, Young Marble Giants' music has been described as "haunting," "enchanting," "dark and strange". It is unusual in that it relies on precise, sparse textures to create tension. Few rock bands have expressed a sense of disquiet with such elegance. Long live Young Marble Giants!

They recorded but one album and yet a vastly influential album it was... Cardiffians: the Young Marble Giants Web archive is, of course, the #1 fan site, and not just for the video. And a very nice commercial-free lyrics page has been provided by Always on the run. (Do check out the pin up!)
posted by y2karl at 8:25 PM PST - 7 comments

HBO wants feedback about Carnivàle. The first season of HBO's Carnivàle concluded last Sunday (making way for Angels in America to occupy the next two Sunday evenings). Although a second season is likely, according to its creator, HBO is now asking viewers what they think about the show, asking them to rate each character and say whether or not they'd watch a second season. [survey link via TV Barn Ticker; background info inside.]
posted by realityblurred at 8:06 PM PST - 20 comments

Psyop Anthem You'll never notice you are dyin' just as long as you keep buyin'. Unabashed pro-consumption animated short. [warning: 34MB mpeg. via everlasting blort]
posted by eddydamascene at 7:15 PM PST - 16 comments

Organized Crime Registry.
posted by hama7 at 6:01 PM PST - 1 comment

Like Michael Jackson? Amazon customers recommend...
posted by Mwongozi at 5:52 PM PST - 30 comments

Seth Scriver's Animations (Flash Required)
posted by boost ventilator at 3:50 PM PST - 5 comments

Spacehijackers Architecture:loads of pointless flash
posted by alball at 3:21 PM PST - 7 comments

To add to the recent JapanFilter phenom, here are two unrelated items: a brief tutorial on using Japanese commodes, and a list of Japanese car names. Interested in buying a Nissan Homy? A Mitsubishi Bravo Exceed, perhaps?
posted by antifreez_ at 2:49 PM PST - 9 comments

Maneki Neko is a cat figurine, sits and has it's front paw raised as if it is calling for luck, fortune and customers to your store, and invites happiness to your home.
posted by riffola at 2:35 PM PST - 15 comments

Sidetalkin provides humorous photos that force us to ask the question: Has Nokia's NGage redefined phone ergonomics or simply provided a humorous diversion for a slow Friday afternoon?
posted by donovan at 2:28 PM PST - 13 comments

Possession of ... Advil can get you expelled?
posted by donkeyschlong at 12:47 PM PST - 50 comments

With a potential blizzard blanketing the northeast, it looks like flashmobs are out and snowball fights are in. What do you think, are we gonna see a lot more of this kind of thing now that online invitations are setting the standard? This invite seems to be flying around NYC pretty fast indeed. The question is: How big will the battle be?
posted by n9 at 12:08 PM PST - 24 comments

Truth About Rave? "Raves are a means of the devil to solicit worship. The Raver who commits himself to ingest drugs and dance the night away is unsuspectingly presenting his entire body as an instrument to express worship to demons and satan."

And here I thought God was a DJ....
posted by grabbingsand at 9:05 AM PST - 136 comments

A Google Search for "miserable failure" yields some hilarious results.
posted by ignu at 8:26 AM PST - 23 comments

Vixen Love - Read the logs of AIM users tricked into a relationship with a mindless chat bot named Emily. Remember, VixenLove is just out to make friends!
posted by anastasiav at 8:06 AM PST - 20 comments

The BBC is asking visitors of its news site to vote from a shortlist of the ten most embarrassing political moments. Visitors can watch a short film [real media] which shows all ten nominated moments (forgive the home-video moments style background muzak). There's some variety here: Tony Blair and Neil Kinnock in moments exhibiting a baffling degree of misguidedness, George W Bush and Kenneth Clarke in tight spots (figuratively and literally), while Charles Kennedy and John Prescott probably coming out of their situations looking better than they did beforehand. For me the most cringe-inducing clip is that of John Redwood, the then newly appointed Secretary of State for Wales, attempting to mime the Welsh national anthem. Genuinely difficult to watch.
posted by nthdegx at 7:18 AM PST - 31 comments

EBay removes ad for sale of human kidney. Randall told The Sun newspaper that he was trying to raise money for special therapy for his 6-year-old daughter Alice, who suffers from cerebral palsy. Richard Posner shakes fist.
posted by anathema at 7:03 AM PST - 9 comments

Around the States in Eighty Days. Monty Python's Eric Idle is three quarters of the way through a North American tour and keeping an extensive online diary as he goes. "I would never be sitting at home writing my memoirs like this. There's just something about the time available and the different places we visit that invites introspection."
posted by rory at 6:53 AM PST - 16 comments

The Japanese SAQ provides some much-needed and often fascinating answers for seldom-asked questions about Japanese culture like, "Why do those porcelain Tanuki statues outside of restaurants have such outrageously large testicles?"
posted by MrBaliHai at 5:55 AM PST - 23 comments

Cartoons act like cocaine. *snort* (via PVP)
posted by jozxyqk at 5:46 AM PST - 3 comments

Weapons of Mass Destruction Found! Only they weren't in Iraq, they were in Texas and the terrorists involved weren't Al-Queda or Islamic fundamentalists but white supremacists. I haven't seen this on Google News, CNN or ABC News. I only read about it because I happened across Sensible Erection which I think I found browsing through MetaFilter user profiles.
posted by substrate at 4:59 AM PST - 49 comments

Rraagharghgh!! Braaaiinsss muuussst eeeeaaat braaainnsss...
posted by PenDevil at 1:55 AM PST - 13 comments

Virtual Snowglobe Having a bad day? Work off some aggression by disrupting the lives of the snowglobe dwellers! (Flash and a somewhat obnoxious soundtrack)
posted by Orb at 9:17 PM PST - 11 comments

Every Playboy Cover Find the bunnies! (NSFW if they don't like you looking at Playboy Magazine Covers)
posted by ColdChef at 8:52 PM PST - 24 comments

Movable Type 2.64 contains a major vulnerability to spammers. The spam hole, which exists in all versions of the program downloaded before November 26, centers around the mt-send-entry.cgi script, which can be co-opted by spammers who then use your domain and resources to do their dirty work. Users are encouraged to download and install the new "secured" version of mt-send-entry.cgi or to remove the file from their installation altogether. (If it is not being used, it can be safely deleted without affecting other MT functionality.) The question does arise though, with literally tens of thousands of MT users affected by this vulnerability, why didn't anyone at Six Apart think that this news warranted an announcement anywhere beyond the Movable Type news blog?
posted by Dreama at 6:34 PM PST - 33 comments

Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War is a new documentary which will be shown at house parties around the US on Sunday, Dec. 7. If you want to see it, this webpage will locate parties in or near your zipcode. According to a review by the Independent, the film includes two dozen interviews with US intelligence professionals, diplomats and former Pentagon officials lambasting the Bush administration for its distortion of the case for war against Iraq and damaging the ability to gather intelligence in the future. [Via WarFilter.]
posted by homunculus at 5:46 PM PST - 54 comments

The Bottom Line: Manhattan court rules to evict club. A New York City Greenwich Village landmark, The Bottom Line Cabaret, which has let the music play from such stars as Bruce Springsteen for close to 30 years, has been evicted after falling behind by nearly 3 years with is rent and not being able to work out a long-term with it's landlord: New York University (NYU).

This comes despite the cash contributions from celebrities like Springsteen and Viacom's CEO, last-minute corporate sponsorships from AT&T and others, and the efforts of fans around the world. Even the best efforts of fans at SaveTheBottomLine.com weren't able to save the club, which says it may consider shopping around for some new digs. But, as of now, The Bottom Line is homeless.
posted by nyukid at 5:34 PM PST - 31 comments

When I was in college in the early 90s (B.W. -- before web), I used to subscribe to the daily newspaper just to get my comics fix every morning (back when Bill Waterson, Gary Larson, and Berkeley Breathed were king). Then the web came along and I had to suffer through the only (unfunny) cartoonist to embrace the web. But not anymore. With stuff like Comics-via-RSS and Comictastic I can fire up an app and start laughing every morning. I doubt I ever buy a newspaper again for the funny pages, and on top of that, these even let me avoid the lame ones I don't care about.
posted by mathowie at 5:09 PM PST - 24 comments

Dating Design Patterns. Make use of reusable solutions in your personal life.
posted by srboisvert at 3:08 PM PST - 11 comments

Spreading Santorum. Dan Savage intensifies his smear campaign against Sen. Rick Santorum. How far is too far? How low can he go? Here's some background on the whole dirty, frothy affair. The Santorum-Savage feud was also previously discussed here. (first link is NSFW)
posted by Ljubljana at 2:07 PM PST - 58 comments

The popular PBS series Frontline has done a couple investigative reports on Iraq, but for their next one they are doing something interesting: live dispatches blogging from Baghdad throughout the next few weeks as they film and conduct interviews. The finished show is set to air next month.
posted by mathowie at 1:41 PM PST - 12 comments

Teacher sues over limits on history curriculum. "A seventh-grade social studies teacher in Presque Isle [Maine] who said he was barred from teaching about non-Christian civilizations has sued his school district, claiming it violated his First Amendment right of free expression."
posted by sarajflemming at 1:37 PM PST - 34 comments

Fossil Horses in Cyberspace. Equine history.
posted by plep at 11:39 AM PST - 5 comments

Lesser of two goods? (SanFranciscoFilter) SFWeekly's John Mecklin sums up the wild ride in San Francisco's mayoral race, from Matt Gonzalez's late entry, to the baffling Guardian endorsement, to the obvious Chronicle Gavin Newsom endorsement, to the downright surreal Alioto endorsement debacle. Oh, and then there's the Chron's not so coincidental "Shame " series on homelessness, Newsom's defining issue, in the final days of the election. In all, Mecklin concludes we're pretty damn lucky to have the fortune in this day and age to choose between two candidates that both have the capacity to do a decent job. Is this relevant to non-San Franciscans? Well, if Matt wins (and the odds are even), that puts a Green at the helm of a fairly important US city and may help counter the effect of Arnie.
posted by badstone at 10:01 AM PST - 31 comments

Professor Pollkatz's statistics. Interestings graphics on Bush approval/disapproval. This one, for example, clearly proves that whenever Bush's approval was high, it was driven by an event (the two major events being September 11 and the Iraq war) and steadily declined afterwards. This page shows that FOX polls consistently overrate Bush, while Zogby polls consistently underrate him. [more inside]
posted by Eloquence at 9:58 AM PST - 20 comments

! indiepop aint noise pollution ! the indie fightback continues , with this incredible collection of obscure mp3's from the john peel show(more inside).
posted by sgt.serenity at 9:11 AM PST - 31 comments

Classic Galactica fans, don't watch it. It'll hurt you. So says the star of the new Battlestar Galactica remake, and from what I've read, I think I agree. Just another case of the suits slapping old names onto new products for quick brand cred, and continuity be damned. Just like Enterprise. Just like Netscape.
posted by brownpau at 9:07 AM PST - 56 comments

Mapping History: The Darkwing Atlas Project "The Project has been designed to provide interactive and animated representations of fundamental historical problems and/or illustrations of historical events, developments, and dynamics." All sorts of simple historical animated and static maps as well as photos and images from Greek and Phoenician expansions, to the spread of Slavery in the American South 1790-1860 and christian graffiti from the Roman catacombs.
posted by talos at 9:07 AM PST - 6 comments

The Literary Review's Bad Sex Prize goes to Bunker 13 by Aniruddha Bahal (Faber & Faber). The winning passage, which described a woman as "endomorphically endowed," also included the sentence, "Your palms are holding her neck and thumbs are at her ears regulating the speed of her head as she swallows and then sucks up your machinery." Oh baby.
posted by Slagman at 7:58 AM PST - 9 comments

You have been disciplined all your life   ::::   Nothing Changed - Nothing Will

---

Words of encouragement from Piotr Szyhalski's Electric Poster Series (Animated gif images). Artist's web site here.
posted by taz at 7:48 AM PST - 12 comments

The Bird Was Perfect But Not For Dinner The bird is so perfect it looks as if it came from a food magazine, with bunches of grapes and other trimmings completing a Norman Rockwell image that evokes bounty and security in one of the most dangerous parts of the world. But as a small sign of the many ways the White House maximized the impact of the 2 & 1/2-hour stop at the Baghdad airport, administration officials said yesterday that Bush picked up a decoration, not a serving plate.
posted by y2karl at 7:43 AM PST - 37 comments

Let's go shopping! There's a wonderful thread on Kevin Kelly's site about interesting and offbeat catalogs, like this one. What catalogs do you love? And while you're at chez KK, check out all the "cool tools" added since crunch linked it last summer. Great gift ideas.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 7:22 AM PST - 1 comment

With the Bush Backdrop Generator, you can create your own background signage and it'll be as authentic and genuine as any of Bush's other grassroots, spontaneous signs of support.
posted by bbrown at 6:57 AM PST - 35 comments

131 years ago today, the Mary Celeste, an American ship bound for Genoa, was found adrift in the Atlantic. Thus began of one of the most well known and loved of maritime mysteries, with numerous possible solutions offered.
posted by moonbird at 4:40 AM PST - 23 comments

We may have avoided a trade war, but it looks like a space race is on.
posted by kliuless at 9:32 PM PST - 49 comments

Trains vs. Airplanes. Amtrak has reported record ridership levels for the Thanksgiving season. But the success of the rails is indebted to post 9/11 air-travel anxiety. Maybe, it would be better for travelers to stop fearing hijackings and resume flying planes instead of riding intercity trains out of fear. On the other hand, it could be a good thing that rail travel is getting a second look after years of decline.
posted by gregb1007 at 9:14 PM PST - 50 comments

The Brick Apple - New York City in LEGO®
posted by riffola at 8:50 PM PST - 8 comments

The Diebold scandal might have reminded us all of Stalin's famous quote, "who votes doesn't count, it's who gets to count the votes." But, perhaps another modern version might read, "who votes doesn't count, it's who gets to draw the maps of the voting districts." As you are settling in to greet your new overlords, you might want to take a look at one of their software tools: Caliper Maptitude.
posted by limitedpie at 7:14 PM PST - 19 comments

Now children, time for spelling--B is for: Bechtel? Schools have been highlighted as an under-reported success story of the new Iraq: “We want young Iraqis to learn skills and to grow and hope, instead of being fed a steady diet of propaganda and hatred," says the pres, but...."The first time they came here, they went from classroom to classroom with guns dangling over their shoulders, asking the terrified children whom they loved more, Saddam Hussein or George Bush," says a principal. (more inside)
posted by amberglow at 5:00 PM PST - 29 comments

RIAA Targets Computer-Less Elderly Couple
The RIAA levels its pack of rabid lawyers at an older couple who don't own a computer. Not without any cause but they're pursuing the wrong "criminals".
posted by fenriq at 4:35 PM PST - 33 comments

What is the sound of one hand clapping? An interesting excerpt from The Sound of the One Hand: 281 Zen Koans With Answers that involves a dialogue between the master and the student that answers this koan. (I suppose this could technically be considered a spoiler.)
posted by antifreez_ at 1:44 PM PST - 30 comments

A study to see if MDMA can help people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder is finally set to begin. Coordinated and funded by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, the study was originally approved in 2001 (and discussed here.) Another study has identified a protein in mice which is the key to the overheating associated with ecstasy, and may lead to a treatment for people. Hopefully this research was more sound than the recent study in which the test monkeys were given the wrong drug (discussed here.)
posted by homunculus at 1:21 PM PST - 22 comments

Necessity Is the Mother of Invention. (NY Times, reg. req.) Amy Smith teaches MIT students about the politics of delivering technology to poor nations and the nitty-gritty of mechanical engineering and helped start the IDEAS competition; she herself designed (among other things) a screenless hammer mill suited to third-world conditions and using "materials available to a blacksmith in Senegal."

Smith's entire life is like one of her inventions, portable and off the grid. At 41, she has no kids, no car, no retirement plan and no desire for a Ph.D. Her official title: instructor. ''I'm doing exactly what I want to be doing. Why would I spend six years to get a Ph.D. to be in the position I'm in now, but with a title after my name? M.I.T. loves that I'm doing this work. The support is there. So I don't worry.''...
Likewise, the inventors who most inspire her will never strike it rich. ''There are geniuses in Africa, but they're not getting the press,'' she says. She gushes about Mohammed Bah Abba, a Nigerian teacher who came up with the pot-within-a-pot system. With nothing more than a big terra-cotta bowl, a little pot, some sand and water, Abba created a refrigerator -- the rig uses evaporation rather than electricity to keep vegetables cool. Innovations that target the poorest of the poor don't have to be complicated to make a big difference. The best solution is sometimes the most obvious.

A rare optimistic story for these downbeat times.
posted by languagehat at 1:02 PM PST - 18 comments

US fires Guantanamo defence team If we make the rules, we will win the game. "A team of military lawyers recruited to defend alleged terrorists held by the US at Guantanamo Bay was dismissed by the Pentagon after some of its members rebelled against the unfair way the trials have been designed, the Guardian has learned"
posted by Postroad at 12:11 PM PST - 22 comments

Framley Museum. 'The museum was founded in 1882 when objects of local interest began to gather in the field where the museum now stands, due to the natural action of the wind and rain. '
'In 1886, visionary Whoft philanthropist, Manimal MacCorkindale proposed building some walls around the objects, forming Framley's first museum. A door fitted in 1932 cemented the museum's popularity.'
Courtesy of the mighty Framley Examiner.
posted by plep at 11:00 AM PST - 9 comments

This Super Bowl halftime, make it to the Lingere Bowl. American TV hits a new low by inventing another sport along the lines of Foxy Boxing and Hot Oil Wrestling. The gridiron action features Team Dream vs. Team Euphoria (featuring washed-up former NFL players as coaches) in full contact football while wearing skimpy clothing. Even weirder, but there will be cheerleaders to cheerlead the players that are already dolled up to look like cheerleaders in some sort of subtle hot lesbian action. It's all pay-per-view, but this "Girls Gone Football" seems more like a new low than a step forward for real women's sports.
posted by mathowie at 10:48 AM PST - 38 comments

I am a BoatNerd.
posted by norm111 at 10:44 AM PST - 6 comments

Blogshares has left the building Never really got into this, and not sure how much it will be missed, but that doesn't matter anyway as it's gone the way of the dodo. Too successful for it's own good it seems. I'm surprised that it hasn't been picked up by someone else yet...
posted by snowgoon at 10:11 AM PST - 16 comments

Animal, Vegetable, Video — vibrant vids of vitality.
posted by pedantic at 9:35 AM PST - 4 comments

Ever wonder what it's like? Do you hit the brakes, swerve left, swerve right? If it's never happened to you, take a look at this and see just how fast it all happens. Talk about "in the blink of an eye".... WOW.
(.wmv file... and possibly not safe for the squeemish.)
posted by Witty at 9:30 AM PST - 80 comments

Metafilter as a screenplay.
posted by Vidiot at 9:10 AM PST - 21 comments

Hobby or Fetish? One man's collection of over 270 stewardess uniforms
posted by anastasiav at 8:58 AM PST - 26 comments

Teaching the Test
As a student at Jefferson Davis High here, Rosa Arevelo seemed the "Texas miracle" in motion. After years of classroom drills, she passed the high school exam required for graduation on her first try. A program of college prep courses earned her the designation "Texas scholar." At the University of Houston, though, Ms. Arevelo discovered the distance between what Texas public schools called success and what she needed to know. Trained to write five-paragraph "persuasive essays" for the state exam, she was stumped by her first writing assignment. She failed the college entrance exam in math twice, even with a year of remedial algebra. At 19, she gave up and went to trade school.

This doesn't look good for our new, unfunded, "Leave No Child Behind" education bill. Smells like another bait and switch to me.
posted by nofundy at 8:34 AM PST - 31 comments

Knack for language? Great! Gay? No thanks. Interesting WaPo story of how DoD desparately needs linguists trained in Arabic, but dismisses linguists when it comes out that they are gay.
posted by cpfeifer at 6:00 AM PST - 34 comments

Are You A Balanced Individual? Can You Handle Life's Topsy-Turvy Leanings? I doubt it. (Via Bifurcated Rivets. File under "No Good Can Come Out Of This".)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:19 AM PST - 6 comments

If you refer to Russia as the Soviet Union three times while discussing foreign affairs should you really be President of the United States?
posted by Mick at 8:07 PM PST - 69 comments

Arial or Helvetica?
posted by btwillig at 7:19 PM PST - 46 comments

'Gay' Is Not a Dirty Word. The ACLU is outing a Louisiana Elementary school which punished a second grader for using the word "gay" when answering a classmate's question about his family. Not only did the teacher freak, sending little Marcus to the principal's office for using a "bad word", but the school made Marcus go to a behavioral clinic the following week and repeatedly write “I will never use the word ‘gay’ in school again.” Great use of a teachable moment for all. Extra credit assignment (these require Acrobat): (Student Behavior Contract) (Behavioral Incident Report)
posted by msacheson at 5:57 PM PST - 89 comments

The Case Against Milosevic (flash)
posted by Ljubljana at 5:15 PM PST - 3 comments

A Dell with a 2GHz Pentium processor owned by a Michigan State University student has found the world's largest prime number -- containing more than 6.3 million digits. The student was loaning his extra computer cycles to the GIMPS project [sort of like SETI and other monster farms]. Here's a web page he created about palindromic prime numbers before he became Mr. Biggest Prime Number Guy.
posted by jessamyn at 5:07 PM PST - 27 comments

Rep. Bill Janklow's Motorcycle Manslaugher Trial Continues
An excerpt, Janklow, a former four-term Republican governor of South Dakota, has pleaded not guilty to charges of speeding, failing to stop, reckless driving and second-degree manslaughter. Witnesses have said he didn't even slow down for the stop sign. First he lied about swerving to avoid a white car and then blamed low blood sugar for the lie.
Janklow has a long history of utter disregard for traffic laws but got off for years because he was the governor and then a congressman. More at Google News: Janklow
posted by fenriq at 3:51 PM PST - 17 comments

Classic British graffiti. None of yer spraycans and colours, mate - a black biro's all you need. And if the pen is truly mightier than the sword, then the British obviously wield their weapons best when they're sitting comfortably. (From b3ta, which also hosts the classic "Argentine football team with handbags" picture)
posted by iffley at 3:03 PM PST - 28 comments

Mario in the News A Japanese person (cannot translate the name, sorry) has completed the classic NES game Super Mario Bros. 3 in just over 11 minutes. Fortunately he recorded it for posterity. (uses Windows streaming video.) Speed runs have been gaining in popularity lately. What game would you like to see abused in such as fashion?
posted by patgas at 3:00 PM PST - 18 comments

Do you have Arachibutyrophobia? Or some other kind of phobia? All kinds of fear from A to Z Which is your favorite?
posted by bluno at 2:30 PM PST - 7 comments

As a historian, I am dismayed by the letters I see that proclaim that America was founded as a Christian nation. "America is not a Christian nation but rather a nation of mostly Christians. That was the intent of the Founders, to allow each of us the right under natural law, to decide matters of conscience for ourselves." A new form of revisionism?
posted by the fire you left me at 1:32 PM PST - 45 comments

Robot Wisdom weblogger and prolific online writer Jorn Barger has been missing since early October, according to friend Eric Wagoner.
posted by rcade at 11:46 AM PST - 49 comments

If you can offer the world a strip like Calvin and Hobbes, don't you have a responsibility to keep working? The Cleveland Scene travels to Chagrin Falls, Ohio, trying to track down its most famous (and famously reclusive) resident, Calvin and Hobbes author Bill Watterson. Along the way, the reporter contemplates micturating Calvins, burning paintings, the cost of hewing to one's principles, and the utter vacuity of Jim Davis's soul. In the end, there's even a brief encounter with a man who may or may not have once made millions happy by drawing a six-year-old boy and his stuffed tiger.
posted by pardonyou? at 11:32 AM PST - 57 comments

A Consumption Manifesto.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 11:16 AM PST - 11 comments

The Miami Model... ["What is the Miami Model? It is several things: extremely violent police response to nonviolent demonstrators, embedded reporters behind police lines - and arresting and harassing "non-embedded" journalists...(and) mass arrests and an arsenal of "non-lethal" weapons.]...represents the next step in the criminalization and repression of dissent that is occurring in the United States right now." It is part of the newly emerging "Technologies of political control" (1.1m PDF) which are rapidly consuming American democracy from within. This is more than crowd control. This is the new Information Warfare. Oh - and thinking of protesting? - The FBI would like your name, please. (more inside)
posted by troutfishing at 11:10 AM PST - 73 comments

n Ø 1 s e - How do data and information differ? What is pattern and how do we recognise it? Where is the threshold between random and order?
posted by Orange Goblin at 10:59 AM PST - 7 comments

The Songs of Bilitis. 'First published in Paris in 1894, this purports to be translations of poems by a woman named Bilitis, a contemporary and acquaintance of Sappho. This caused a sensation, not only because finding an intact cache of poems from a completely unknown Greek poet circa 600 B.C. would be a miracle, but because of its open and sensitive exploration of lesbian eroticism. Actually Bilitis never existed. The poems were a clever forgery by Pierre Louÿs--the "translator"; to lend weight, he had even included a bibliography with bogus supporting works ... '
A new addition to the sacred-texts.com canon.
posted by plep at 10:56 AM PST - 8 comments

mr. picassohead
perhaps we should be out working in our gardens or making art instead of spending time in front of our computers... but this is pretty cool. [ via newstoday, flash required ]
posted by specialk420 at 9:17 AM PST - 11 comments

Walt would turn over in his cryonic chamber... (I know, I know, it's not true.) Speaking of family trees, Roy Disney (the last board member with ties to the founding family) resigned from the company Sunday, calling for the ouster of Chairman Michael Eisner. Stanley Gold soon soon followed. In a harsh letter, Disney said the entertainment conglomerate had "lost its focus, its creative energy, and its heritage" and that the public now held the perception that company is "rapacious, soul-less, and always looking for the 'quick buck'." No word yet from the Disneyland obsessives, but the folks at MousePlanet 's Mousepad seem optimistic about this development...
posted by Fofer at 8:37 AM PST - 18 comments

Pacelman. Pacman for Excel. [via Edge (print edition)]
posted by davehat at 8:31 AM PST - 16 comments

The Philip K. Dick Offical Site has opened: relevant not just because the movie Paycheck is coming out this month (based on a short story of his), but because we live in a Dickian world. As he put it, "We live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups. I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudorealities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives. I distrust their power. It is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing."
posted by paladin at 7:56 AM PST - 22 comments

Canada's View on Social Issues Is Opening Rifts With the U.S. (note: NYT reg. required) "Being attached to America these days is like being in a pen with a wounded bull," Rick Mercer, Canada's leading political satirist, said at a recent show in Toronto. "Between the pot smoking and the gay marriage, quite frankly it's a wonder there is not a giant deck of cards out there with all our faces on it."

Being different is good, right? Right? Vive la Difference!
posted by ashbury at 7:34 AM PST - 58 comments

Dead Milkman drummer Dean 'Clean' Sabatino has set up a blog to post 18 year old tour diary entries, which begin with the band's first full tour in the summer of 1985. via irregular orbit
posted by jasonspaceman at 7:29 AM PST - 16 comments

It's the equivalent of "You can play the CD on three designated CD players that support the DRM. Like, it will play ONLY on xyz brand cd player and only three of those that you pick. Yes, you have to stick to that brand of cd player (the iTunes player, the supported OS of iTunes, no unix support in sight) and too bad if you have a fourth one in the bedroom. It's not gonna play in your second car's player either. Nor in the kitchen. Nor on your neighbor's player. Nor can you trade it on the used market when you're tired of listening to it. "
"They finally found a way to sell you some wind. Even better, they will restrict the direction and force in wich the wind will blow, how often and where it will happen..."

As "DVD-Jon" Johansen goes to retrial, a backlash is rising in the media & community towards Apple's DRM (digital rights management), a week after this same kid created an open-source program that lets users copy the songs that they bought onto other sources.
posted by omidius at 7:24 AM PST - 28 comments

Traditional annual advent calendar post.
posted by nthdegx at 5:43 AM PST - 11 comments

One Nation Under God(s): George W.Bush unwittingly restarted an old theological debate. Is the God that the Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same God? Or to be more accurate; notwithstanding the different forms of worship and beliefs, is it the same God in different guises? Fundamentalists in all three monotheistic faiths tend to disagree. For other believers - to ruthlessly simplify - God is necessarily one. Either way it's still a fascinating question (possibly not only for religious folk) and has important consequences in an increasingly divided and antagonistic world. What's it be? One God or one's God?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:38 AM PST - 106 comments

Attack of the Disco Furball! The cute animated character has become something of a staple for alterno-pop videos - from the runaway milk carton in Blur's Coffee and TV to the big-nosed moper in Moby's Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad. But new heights of weirdness are reached on this Flash video called Jive County which shows a be-stetsoned one-legged bundle of hair bouncing to an electro beat.
posted by skylar at 1:51 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Kenneth Michael Trentadue was found dead in his cell in 1995, and ruled a suicide despite sloppy handling of evidence and other eyebrow-raisers. DOJ's Civil Rights Division punted in 1997, and it was again ruled suicide in 1999 by their Office of the Inspector General. Last week, an AP story said the DOJ's Public Integrity Section would be taking the matter up yet again. While there are plenty of fringe sources in a google search on his full name, there seems to be enough in the mainstream to support the notion that something doesn't add up.
posted by trondant at 12:04 AM PST - 5 comments

Self-help equals self-harm? Are self-help books harmful rather than helpful? This article argues that dissatisfaction with one's abilities and achievements will not not be helped by affirmations of self-worth. Nor will we succeed in coping with the bitter feelings for those who have wronged us by practing the "anger therapy" of slamming a punching bag. [More Inside]
posted by gregb1007 at 11:52 PM PST - 23 comments

Too Tough To Die. As of Sunday afternoon, the corner of Second Street and Bowery in New York City is now known as Joey Ramone Place. I lived about 200 steps from there a while ago - now I've got a good excuse to go back for a visit.
posted by majcher at 8:18 PM PST - 14 comments

Ever wonder who still speaks latin? So it seems like the vanishingly small number of native latin speakers seem to work all for one outfit. They all also seem to be British.
posted by MrLint at 7:50 PM PST - 22 comments

Ann Sheridan is enthusiastic about Ayds!!!
"Ayds Brand Diet Candy", that is, chronicled by the entertaining marketing/design newsletter from Rigney Graphics, as well as the personal story of a newspaper columnist, and RetroCrush's archive of offensive snack products. Okay, how about a popular soft drink in Taiwan called Sars?
posted by wendell at 6:47 PM PST - 5 comments

Frowning brow to brow, ourselves will hear the accuser and accused freely speak. In the west, before it was HIV/AIDS, it was GRID, for Gay-Related Immunodeficiency Disease, or Kaposi Sarcoma-Opportunistic Infection, or simply "gay cancer." But there are other names for it now, where it hits hardest, but no less euphemistic or obscuring. More inside...
posted by Mo Nickels at 5:37 PM PST - 4 comments

No bodies found after Iraq gunfight "THE US military has said it believes 54 insurgents were killed in intense exchanges in the northern Iraqi town of Samarra on Sunday but commanders admitted they had no bodies. The only corpses at the city's hospital were those of ordinary civilians, including two elderly Iranian pilgrims and a child. US Brigadier General Mark Kimmit told a Baghdad press conference 54 militants were killed, 22 wounded and one arrested." Ok. I am a bit slow. Help me out on this one. How can you count the bodies you are not able to find? Did the G.I.s take them as souvenirs?
posted by Postroad at 5:28 PM PST - 40 comments

Donald Rumsfeld has won the 2003 Foot in Mouth award. The award is given by the Plain English Campaign for the most baffling quote by a public figure, but they don't seem to realize that Rumsfeld was actually creating poetry. I wonder who will present the award.
posted by homunculus at 2:34 PM PST - 23 comments

Haunted by a truly global epidemic, perhaps it is time to consider the effects of globalization on the spread of diseases like AIDS. In addition to making it easier for disease to achieve global prevalence, global economics reduce funding for public health by placing treatment emphasis on those who can pay for their drugs, and, in the case of AIDS, may also encourage pharmaceutical companies to pursue expensive life-long 'treatments' rather than cures. Furthermore, younger, economically depressed members of the global economy are wholly dependent on the whim of richer nations for their well-being in the face of devastating epidemics. In this case, it seems that the global marketplace has failed to be the holy grail it is so often presented as.
posted by kaibutsu at 1:43 PM PST - 17 comments

What happened to the Modem Guy? A great story on two partners and personal computer pioneers, Hayes (who got the fame) and Heatherington (who got the money).
posted by falameufilho at 12:52 PM PST - 17 comments

All your sperm are belong to us : play the condom game.
posted by taz at 12:15 PM PST - 7 comments

Another Worlds AIDS Day, another statement from the Vatican saying you should never use a condom. [via rc3]
posted by mathowie at 11:54 AM PST - 82 comments

BFI presents screenonline | The British Film Institute announces the launch of screenonline: "This new site features an unrivalled collection of archive film and television footage from the bfi National Film and Television Archive.... [It] is the first time the bfi has given the public access online to its comprehensive collection of film and television material, giving teachers, students and film enthusiasts an exceptional opportunity to investigate British history, culture and society through cinema. "
posted by jacknose at 9:41 AM PST - 5 comments

"They do not use Western means to tell time. They use the sun. These drugs have to be administered in certain sequences, at certain times during the day. You say, take it at 10 o'clock, they say, what do you mean, 10 o'clock?" They, of course, refers to "Africans" and the above logic from the head of USAID was used an explanation for why it's tough to extend AIDS treatment to Africa. The only problem with this argument is that it's wrong. People with HIV in developing countries are in better compliance with drug regimes than in the US as new research is showing [RealAudio]. As we've seen throughout the epidemic, it's a lot easier to get funding for researchers in lab coats than for actual treatment . . .
posted by donovan at 8:57 AM PST - 1 comment

Peekskill, 1949. "The mob was rolling toward us for the second attack. This was, in a way, the worst of that night. For one thing, it was still daylight; later, when night fell, our own sense of organization helped us much more, but this was daylight and they poured down the road and into us, swinging broken fenceposts, billies, bottles, and wielding knives..." Howard Fast's account of a terrifying evening that was supposed to be an outdoor concert near Peekskill, NY. You can think about the political implications ("...it illustrates how easily, when terror is unleashed in a nation, it can take hold, and how thin the line is that separates constitutional government from tyranny and dictatorship...") or just enjoy the riveting tale. (Related song and picture here.)
posted by languagehat at 8:34 AM PST - 22 comments

Self-referential or self-promoting sites created by authors (as opposed to their fans or publishers) can provide fascinating insights into the person behind the writing or provide ways to interact with the writer or the works that go beyond the initial reading. Some take advantage of the web to connect with readers, while others use it as a mere marketing tool. With the recent trend in writers who blog (a separate category) abandoning their blogs to regain time for their writing, are these types of personal pages also an endangered species?
posted by rushmc at 8:28 AM PST - 11 comments

Heres an intresting entry from the Wikipedia The link points to a short article on the AIDS "patient Zero" Gaëtan Dugas. hopefully this should serve as a good starting point for research or discussion. Although in the new millennium I wonder what sort of civil liberty issues this type of of research might have.
posted by hoopyfrood at 7:33 AM PST - 4 comments

Fight AIDS @home is a valuable resource for your "wasted" computer cycles. Instead of search the universe for extraterrestrial life, shouldn't we be searching our world for cures to our own diseases?
posted by swerdloff at 7:26 AM PST - 20 comments

Public Lives: Freddie Mercury, Arthur Ashe, Rock Hudson, Brad Davis, Perry Ellis, Eazy E, Michel Foucault, Amanada 'Miss Kitty' Blake, Roy Cohn, Halston, Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe, Rudolf Nureyev, Anthony Perkins, Willi Smith, Liberace, Ricky Wilson. Private lives: Gail Farrow, T Billy, Bob BJ Johnson, Nkoosi Johnson, Terry McCormick, Catherine Margaret Cory. Public or private, we've all had losses. Is there anyone you are remembering today?
posted by madamjujujive at 6:46 AM PST - 41 comments

Here's a pragmatic look at why companies like De Beers and British Petroleum seek to combat the spread of HIV. Can this be an example of how an act of self-interest can also be an act of humanitarianism?
posted by phyrewerx at 4:35 AM PST - 3 comments

The 12 Sexually Transmitted Infections of Christmas (Flash Required)
posted by PenDevil at 4:22 AM PST - 22 comments

In Uganda, 1.7 million children have been orphaned by Aids - a tenth of the world's total. Here is one woman's story. If you do not have the time to read through the article, please consider a visit to www.sendacow.org.uk, the charity mentioned in the article.
posted by davehat at 4:04 AM PST - 4 comments

The State of Britain today. Mass surveillance of it's citizenry. ID cards. Making criminals of teenagers who snog (!) And a bill to rival the USA Patriot Act removing property & human rights at a minister's whim. With men being imprisoned in UK jails for over almost 2 years, without charge or trial (ala Guantanamo) it looks like the partnership between Bush and Blair is a little more than simple expediency.
posted by Blue Stone at 2:14 AM PST - 26 comments

Euro 2004: Now We Know Who Is Going To Play Who are we any wiser? Bets are on and early predictions from the bravest punters are welcome. Who's going to disappoint? Who's going to surprise? Who will win, dammit?!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:07 AM PST - 22 comments

Starting with this year's State of the Union address, President Bush began a plan to increase aid to Africa, and at the center of that plan is funding to prevent the spread of AIDS and HIV that has reached epidemic proportions on the continent. Critics however, have noted that aid to clinics comes with strings attached. Abstinence is preached first and foremost and condoms are mentioned only as a last resort. This reporter flat out says the policy to curtail the funding and use of condoms in Africa is killing millions.
posted by mathowie at 12:08 AM PST - 30 comments