June 2004 Archives

June 30

WWJDOYP?

Keep Your Jesus Off My Penis ...mmm'kay? NSFW, by the way--this is not your father's folk-acoustic music.
posted by Sidhedevil at 4:52 PM PST - 19 comments

Send in the clones

A particularly dark period in the life of Spider-Man. Or, an insider's look at the infamous Clone Saga. Or, When Comic Book Marketing Executives Attack.
posted by darukaru at 3:50 PM PST - 21 comments

Hillary Clinton for V.P.?

Hillary Clinton as Kerry's V.P.? Let the speculations begin...
posted by Rastafari at 3:14 PM PST - 57 comments

The Evil Spider mEn!

Spiderman as a villian! Just to keep the trend for the day going.. (Via I-mockery by way of Fark)
posted by Elim at 3:12 PM PST - 1 comment

Ashcroft's Justice Dept. witholds list of foreign lobbyists

The Bush administration is offering a novel reason for denying a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the Justice Department's database on foreign lobbyists: Copying the information would bring down the computer system.
posted by wsg at 3:12 PM PST - 19 comments

Spiderman Quiz

Let's make it 3 Spider Man links in a day. How much do you really know about Spiderman? I thought I was well-prepared for this but it was actually kinda hard. [Warning: MSN]
posted by scarabic at 2:47 PM PST - 16 comments

Enemy combatants

The Supreme Court rulings on enemy combatants: What they mean for the president, the war effort, and civil rights.
posted by homunculus at 2:19 PM PST - 3 comments

Miss Deja Vu

Here She Is, Miss Deja Vu (and Miss Illinois) Michelle LaGroue, 2004. Also Miss Illinois in 2002 (she was First Runner Up and assumed the crown when Erika Harold won Miss America). I know nothing of the world of pageants, but this seems way bigger than that whole 'president of beers' thing. Is Rachna Khatau mad about comming in First Runner Up? "No way. I've had a smile on my face the past two days." BTW, the most notable former Miss Illinois lately is Jeri Lynn Zimmerman, 1989, but now better known as Jeri Ryan. Yup, that Jeri Ryan.
posted by Jos Bleau at 2:17 PM PST - 6 comments

Spider-man 3 storyboards?

Some potential storyboards for Spider-Man 3. Directory index of images or view one at random.
posted by xmutex at 1:31 PM PST - 6 comments

About Those Ducks

Um, about those ducks...
posted by brownpau at 1:19 PM PST - 25 comments

For Relaxing Times, Make It A Cactus Pear Rhyme

From all over the media has recently attacked us
'bout the hangover cure made from extract of cactus
Taken hours before drinking, may ward off the curse...
...but only Charles Osgood has reported in verse.
posted by britain at 1:07 PM PST - 4 comments

DESERTER

DESERTER An examination of the Bush military files within the context of US Statutory Law, Department of Defense regulations, and Air Force policies and procedures of that era lead to a single conclusion: George W. Bush was considered a deserter by the United States Air Force.
posted by Postroad at 1:06 PM PST - 65 comments

The art of being Kuna: Molas

The art of being Kuna - the Kuna, an aboriginal people living off the coast of Panama, are perhaps most famous for their colorful fabric panels called molas. The Kuna women wear these embroidered appliques on blouses. The most prized specimens are those that show some sign of wear, such as fading, distress, or stitch marks, indicating authentic and traditional molas rather than ones produced for tourists. If you'd like to try your hand at making a mola, the 5th grade class at Highland Park can show you how.
posted by madamjujujive at 12:36 PM PST - 4 comments

Spider-Man's Rogues Gallery of Villains

Spider-Man's Rogues Gallery of Villains Beware of Doc Ock, the Green Goblin, and Just A Guy Named Joe!
posted by ColdChef at 12:36 PM PST - 13 comments

ShinyPlastic25thAnniversaryFilter

The Walkman turns 25: the Sony Walkman hit the streets on July 1, 1979. History, photos and more at the Walkman Museum.
posted by turbodog at 11:36 AM PST - 11 comments

Young Boy and the Sea

Big Fish! 14 year old Bobby Capri Jr. catches a 52 pound striped bass in a kayak off the Atlantic City shore. But he's not the first kid to reel in a big fish. The adult world record for striped bass was also caught in New Jersey. So, who here has the best fish story?
posted by MsVader at 11:15 AM PST - 20 comments

...to the highest court in the land...

Medical Marijuana is finally going to be addressed by the Supreme Court. What this will come down to is federal law vs. state law. Who has the right to make the final decision?
posted by Dantien at 9:34 AM PST - 31 comments

parody, obviously

The note you didn't see: We've all seen the "Let Freedom Reign!" note between Condoleezza Rice and President Bush. But have you seen the one she slipped to Cheney?
posted by acornface at 8:48 AM PST - 41 comments

Moral Clarity

The Moral Values Party With thousands of Republicans set to invade the city this summer, high-priced escorts and strippers are preparing for one grand old party. Agencies are flying in extra call girls from around the globe to meet the expected demand during the Aug. 30-Sept. 2 gathering at Madison Square Garden. "We have girls from London, Seattle, California, all coming in for that week," said a madam at a Manhattan escort service. "It's the week everyone wants to work." "It's going to be big," agreed one operator at a midtown escort service.

Now that's what I call moral clarity!!
posted by nofundy at 6:50 AM PST - 63 comments

pencilmation

pencilmation [note: flash]
posted by crunchland at 4:44 AM PST - 6 comments

The IEEE Virtual Museum

The IEEE Virtual Museum. Virtual exhibits about microelectronics, sound recording, Edison, war and technology etc.
posted by plep at 12:03 AM PST - 2 comments

June 29

And curly strikes out!

Curly must go! Bill Clinton's blog. It's fake, right?
posted by Turtles all the way down at 10:25 PM PST - 17 comments

... and so everyday at dawn the Twin Pushers return to their ancestral island

Twin Pushers and Other Free Flight Oddities. "For years, twin pushers were the dominant form of competition model. The format was discovered well before the first world war and remained common until the  mid thirties." Dannysoar excavates a lost model airplane format, and goes on to look at Mystery Biplanes, The Airplanes of Things to Come, Miss Auto Gyro Across the Channel Day, and other winging things, in great and pleasingly eccentric abundance. Klick the Klicker!
posted by mwhybark at 8:38 PM PST - 7 comments

Mike D, Adrock, MCA and ... Frogger

Help the Beastie Boys get across the road safely to the political protest rally. Look out! The tyranny of the Bush Regime won't make it easy!
posted by yhbc at 8:11 PM PST - 57 comments

Ring... ring... ring... oh nevermind

"Lift the handset and dial a number to be transported to another place." [via MonkeyFilter]
posted by moonbird at 7:10 PM PST - 23 comments

Walt Whitman Archive

The Walt Whitman Archive, and the Poet at Work.
posted by hama7 at 5:04 PM PST - 7 comments

"Confident Bremer hurries away from Baghdad"

"Confident Bremer hurries away from Baghdad" "Brave Sir Robin ran away. Bravely ran away, away!" Hey! Where's that $20 billion in Iraqi oil revenue money? I know it was laying around here somewhere (maybe in those pants I threw in the laundry?)
posted by troutfishing at 1:27 PM PST - 77 comments

Twisted Reality 0.1 Beta

Policing Virtual Reality. Wired reports on Sociolotron(NSFW). A MMORPG that allows gamers to rob, rape, and kill other players. Being a gamer, I understand that actions in an MMORPG aren't "real" but how far can you take it?

"Lord Foucault is an admitted rapist. He does it on impulse -- for the thrill of it and for the feeling of control he has over his female victims." Is this any different than running around and killing dwarves?
posted by jopreacher at 12:26 PM PST - 50 comments

:: art to enchant ::

Art to Enchant: Some of the works of Shakespeare as interpreted by various illustrators throughout the centuries.
posted by iconomy at 12:14 PM PST - 10 comments

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/06/29/iraq.reserves.ap/index.html

Army to recall former military members It is good to be too old! "The Army is preparing to notify about 5,600 retired and discharged soldiers who are not members of the National Guard or Reserve that they will be involuntarily recalled to active duty for possible service in Iraq or Afghanistan, Army officials said Tuesday."
posted by Postroad at 11:05 AM PST - 135 comments

Atlanta Time Machine

"The Atlanta Time Machine website is dedicated to examining the history of Atlanta, Georgia  by comparing vintage photographs of Atlanta with much more contemporary images shot, more or less, from the same perspective of the original photographer." [via kottke.org]
posted by kirkaracha at 10:54 AM PST - 12 comments

A funny thing happened on the way to District Court

A funny thing happened on the way to District Court. More mandatory minimum madness. See related story to the case here. More guidelines are being passed everyday. This Massachusetts judge has had enough. Are we destroying judges' ability to mete out justice or should the people decide justice through legislation? NYTimes coverage here.
posted by McBain at 10:26 AM PST - 12 comments

hi!

Harvard Weblogs: How to Avoid Flamewars, by Dave Winer.
posted by Hackworth at 10:08 AM PST - 47 comments

By Their Bootstraps

Consider the scorecard. During Clinton's two terms, the median income for American families increased by a solid 15% after inflation, according to Census Bureau figures. But it rose even faster for African Americans (33%) and Hispanics (24%) than it did for whites (14%). The growth was so widely shared that from 1993 through 1999, families in the bottom fifth of the income distribution saw their incomes increase faster than those in the top 5%. By comparison, under President Reagan in the 1980s, those in the top 5% increased their income more than five times faster than the bottom 20%. Likewise, the poverty rate under Clinton fell 25%, the biggest eight-year decline since the 1960s. It fell even faster for particularly vulnerable groups like blacks, Hispanics and children. Again the contrast with Reagan is striking. During Reagan's two terms, the number of Americans in poverty fell by just 77,000. During Clinton's two terms, the number of Americans in poverty plummeted by 8.1 million. The number of children in poverty fell by 50,000 under Reagan. Under Clinton the number was 4.1 million. That's a ratio of 80 to 1. Clinton's Biggest Gains Not on Conservative Critics' Radar
posted by y2karl at 8:54 AM PST - 42 comments

sea of cable

Sonic Youth on KCRW. A nice video of in-studio taping.
posted by the fire you left me at 7:24 AM PST - 13 comments

Amazing Images

Amazing Images - the BBC has a series of 10 pictures of fetuses at various stages of developments. There's no information about how they were obtained, but they are pretty striking. I imagine they must have been taken with one of the new ultrasound techniques (which are apparently called 4D imaging now).
posted by Irontom at 4:40 AM PST - 30 comments

48Hours

48Hours the New Zealand version of The 48 Hour Film Project was recently completed in Auckland and Wellington, and attracted over 130 teams. 116 teams managed to complete their films in the timeframe. Now the Auckland winners finalists and many other entrants are online for all to see. With more, including the Wellington entries to come soon!
posted by sycophant at 3:19 AM PST - 5 comments

Comic artists card gallery

Lines on Paper has a great nine-page gallery of business cards embellished by comic artist notables. Here's my fave by Dennis Worden. For more yummy comic browsing, consult the Comiclopedia (from Lambiek, which also has an illustrated history of Dutch comics).
posted by taz at 2:38 AM PST - 5 comments

Basement Beauties

Basement Beauties. Photographs by Mack Sennett.
posted by plep at 12:01 AM PST - 12 comments

June 28

Nuclear 1914

June 28th is the 90th Anniversary of the terrorist assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand which touched off the First World War. The world today is not much different then 90 years ago. Nuclear 1914: The Next Big Worry, by Henry Sokolski.
posted by stbalbach at 11:50 PM PST - 7 comments

Crazy Dune Ramblings

While others are busy writing fan fiction about Dune, it’s nice to see that someone has discovered the TRUTH.
posted by Pockets at 10:23 PM PST - 24 comments

Damn it Jim, I'm an Accountant Not a Cook

America's Black Budget - the Manipulation of Mortgage and Financial Markets Investors benefit from understanding the federal budget, credit policies and covert intervention that drive markets -- often overriding fundamental economics. How has the US governmental apparatus become so powerful in the marketplace and what does it mean to the health of our economy? How unstable is the mortgage bubble and where are the opportunities for investors if the bubble bursts?
posted by willnot at 9:29 PM PST - 21 comments

A better way to vote?

Looks like a minority liberal government for Canada. The entire process will have been completed in a single day. The voters used pencils to mark X's on paper ballots, which were stuffed into ballot boxes then counted by hand. Despite the differences in population, is there a lesson here for our southern neighbours?
posted by Turtles all the way down at 8:57 PM PST - 91 comments

njam

njam ... all you have to do is rotate the circle in the middle so it matches with the color of the spheres that come in from the corners. seems simple enough ... [note: shockwave, loud audio]
posted by crunchland at 8:06 PM PST - 8 comments

A grim and fascinating irony.

Legal abortion tips the voter balance from Democrat to Republican. That's Larry Eastland's theory. Abortion has caused missing Democrats--and missing liberals. For advocates so fundamentally committed to changing the face of conservative America, liberals have been remarkably blind to the fact that every day the abortions they advocate dramatically decrease their power to do so.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 7:58 PM PST - 41 comments

Digital Infrared photography

Shooting outside of our vision. Infrared photography is cool - the world looks surreal. But man, it's a PIA. Just keeping the film at the right temperatures is difficult. So, all of this can be done digitally. I still haven't gotten around to buying the necessary pieces, but in replying to this Ask MetaFilter question, I remembered eric cheng's page. For your perusal.
posted by filmgeek at 7:34 PM PST - 6 comments

Hegemonkey

"Without American hegemony the world would likely return to the dark ages" according to historian Niall Ferguson, author of the book Colossus: The Price of America's Empire, which one of his former housemates is critical of.
posted by homunculus at 5:10 PM PST - 41 comments

Moving Sight

Moving Sight: Tatsuya Ishiguro's Photo Gallery.
posted by hama7 at 3:35 PM PST - 5 comments

rude postcodes

Rude place names. If you're in England then this is for you. Please bare with us rest of the world, this is what we really like in our humour (at least it in Kilburn). If you're not in England then feel free to use my postcode, NW2. Ooooo, titter ye not (and who will be the first wag to post "not"?)
posted by ciderwoman at 3:28 PM PST - 30 comments

Tornado pr0n

Cool images of tornadoes and other freaky weather at the NOAA Photo Library.
posted by scarabic at 2:39 PM PST - 16 comments

Earthquake Rattles Midwest

4.5 magnitude earthquake hits Chicagoland.
posted by whoshotwho at 10:25 AM PST - 40 comments

Reclaim the media

Court throws out FCC media ownership rules The appeals court in Philadelphia said the methods the FCC used to craft their new media ownership rules were bunk. Major media outlets aren't devoting much to this setback, but activist groups have reacted by calling for hearings across the country. No one seems to know what's next.
posted by drywall at 9:46 AM PST - 9 comments

Bender in 2005

This year's 00101 inductees into the Robot Hall of Fame.
posted by LinusMines at 8:30 AM PST - 12 comments

Frank N. Furter

Mmmmm... girthy. "I think many people, upon seeing this ad, will avoid buying Ball Park Franks. That's pretty much the acme of terrible marketing. Alternative: I am wrong, and Ball Park has happened on a brilliant - and profitable - means of letting straight men express their sublimated homoerotic fantasies."
posted by soyjoy at 7:55 AM PST - 77 comments

They can take my lungs and kidneys but my heart belongs to Daphne

Give my body to medical science (If medical science will have me).

This might make owning a donor card somewhat academic (for UK humans at least), but until then I am making sure it's something I not longer perpetually forget to do. How to become an organ donor; or sign up online.

(Provide a link for your own homeland please!)
posted by ed\26h at 1:20 AM PST - 25 comments

Sovreign Iraq, two days early

It's all yours, boys. The US just announced the handover of sovereignty to the interim Iraqi government, two days early. Paul Bremer has said that he'll be leaving the country soon. Is this truly the beginning of an independent Iraq, or is it simply making way for John Negroponte to be in charge?
posted by Dipsomaniac at 12:39 AM PST - 128 comments

Irdial Sues WEA

Irdial Records sues WEA over copyright infringement. A recent Wilco album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot sampled part of the "The Conet Project: Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations" 4CD set without the permission of the label. The Cd is simply recordings of mysterious shortwave radio emissions. WEA have settled out of court. (misrepresented on Boing Boing)
posted by mary8nne at 12:16 AM PST - 29 comments

Spy vs. Spy TV ad

Spy vs. Spy sell out! Mountain Dew has roped in the infamous black & white spies to shill their beverage. Quicktime needed to view the commercials. [via waxy.org]
posted by riffola at 12:00 AM PST - 10 comments

June 27

'The big secret of lock picking is that it's easy. Anyone can learn how to pick locks.'

How to Pick a Lock
posted by anastasiav at 11:24 PM PST - 22 comments

[cynic] I've seen smaller [/cynic]

World's smallest park Mill's End, at 452 square inches, is officially the world's smallest park, and claims to be the home of the "only leprechaun colony west of Ireland." Mill's End is among "Top 10 Quirky Landmarks".
posted by drezdn at 11:21 PM PST - 12 comments

OK? -eyes on ball. but, look away...............way...

"The most intriguing story in Washington these days is a subterranean conflict that reporters cannot cover because some of them are involved. A potent guerrilla insurgency has formed in and around the Bush presidency - a revolt of old pros in government who strike from the shadows with devastating effect. They tell the truth. They explode big lies. They provide documentary evidence..." - William Greider, on what could prove to be one of the defining power struggles of our time. Through a lens darkly, yes. But deniable ? - not plausibly. As gossip, growing louder now, the shadow-war advances. Unstoppably? No.
posted by troutfishing at 10:53 PM PST - 39 comments

Digital Snapshot

Digital Snapshot .. "What does a moment look like? Can snapshots freeze a moment in time? In Digital Snapshot, motion fragments were captured and rearranged in a new visual context via unconventional digital manipulations. A long take camera movement cycle generates a unique 'digital painting.' In this case Digital Snapshot enables the viewer to experience a virtual walk through a beautiful park during summertime."
posted by crunchland at 7:29 PM PST - 11 comments

Mt. Erebus from space

Mt. Erebus from space. NASA's Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment software, which controls the Earth Observing-1 spacecraft, took some amazing images of the lava lake of Antarctica's Mount Erebus volcano without any human interaction. [Via Fark.]
posted by homunculus at 4:50 PM PST - 14 comments

Grain farming pushed back 10000 years

Farming origins gain 10,000 years. Humans made their first tentative steps towards farming 23,000 years ago, much earlier than previously thought. Stone Age people in Israel collected the seeds of wild grasses some 10,000 years earlier than previously recognised, say experts.
posted by stbalbach at 2:46 PM PST - 8 comments

Paying the Price: The Mounting Costs of the Iraq War

Paying the Price: The Mounting Costs of the Iraq War
In fully footnoted PDF or handy Just The Numbers format.
Related Story: Iraq war 'will cost each US family $3,415'
posted by y2karl at 12:39 PM PST - 76 comments

Ichthyosaur Page

Ichthyosaur Page.
posted by hama7 at 12:31 PM PST - 5 comments

The Bright Stuff

The Bright Stuff according to The Observer : "Here's our new selection of 80 prodigiously talented young people - scientists, DJs, novelists, architects, politicians - who we believe will shape our lives in the early 21st century" Many familiar names, including Nick Denton, Daniel Brown and Carl Churchill [A to L, M to Z].
posted by feelinglistless at 10:38 AM PST - 16 comments

BBC Motion Gallery

The BBC Motion Gallery provides access to film and video clips from the BBC and CBS. Registration required to view the clips, and only small, watermarked versions can be downloaded for free, but an interesting resource all the same.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 6:17 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

A late 19th century chastity belt for a Welsh goat?

What is that thing?
posted by taz at 1:00 AM PST - 18 comments

June 26

sink ya drink

sink ya drink [note: flash]
posted by crunchland at 6:13 PM PST - 13 comments

Batman was here.

Undercity reveals Gotham's secrets as uncovered by a guerrilla historian. [via Anil Dash]
posted by riffola at 5:54 PM PST - 9 comments

braaaaiiiinnnns

Weird Food from Around the World
posted by anastasiav at 3:50 PM PST - 35 comments

Nader's nadir

The Green Party rejects Ralph Nader. On the second ballot at the Green Party nominating convention held today in Milwaukee, WI, David Cobb defeated Peter Camajo (Nader's running mate) for the Green Party nomination, thereby denying Nader automatic placement onto the ballot in 23 states.
posted by thewittyname at 3:03 PM PST - 15 comments

Challenging Bush.

Challenging Bush. The White House has thrown a bit of a tantrum over Irish reporter Carole Coleman's confrontational approach to interviewing the president (watch the interview here or here). No-one's allowed to interrupt him any more, apparently.
posted by ascullion at 3:02 PM PST - 76 comments

Fahrenheit 9/11

Fahrenheit 9/11 tops box office If it's posted on Drudgereport, it must be official; This, despite an all out effort from the Vast Right Wing Conspirators to keep if from being shown...
posted by Rastafari at 2:26 PM PST - 124 comments

Hiibel

We All Lose if Cops Have All the Power (reg. req.) according to Larry Hiibel (previously discussed here) after the Supreme Court decided against him. Some legal experts are not concerned by this decision, others think that the implications for civil liberties are dangerous. Perhaps more important is whether this is part of a pattern of weakening the Fourth Amendment.
posted by homunculus at 1:34 PM PST - 9 comments

This game fucking sucks

Game PR Catchphrases: What They Really Mean

Quote: “Downloadable content available through our website!"
Indicates: There's going to be new levels, new maps, new everything after the game is out, making the purchase fully worth your $50.
True Meaning: We'll fix the game breaking bug about 3 weeks after the game's out, hope you guys aren't on 56K because it'll be a 186 MB patch. Also, hopefully this game will have some devoted mod/map makers, because the publisher isn't going to release shit. But there are some cool wallpapers to download!
by Corin Tuckers Stalker and Ryan "OMGWTFBBQ" Adams, from Something awful
posted by bob sarabia at 1:13 PM PST - 13 comments

Oculart

Oculart.
posted by hama7 at 11:01 AM PST - 4 comments

Bach!

The J.S. Bach Home Page.
posted by Gyan at 8:12 AM PST - 9 comments

Girls are pretty.

Girls are pretty. A series of new holidays.
posted by bingo at 7:41 AM PST - 9 comments

mummy, that tickles

Parasite Pals
posted by nylon at 6:42 AM PST - 10 comments

Color communication & symbolism

Colors in motion - an animated and interactive experience of color communication and symbolism. (flash. via One's web)
posted by madamjujujive at 3:58 AM PST - 10 comments

Self-Godwinization?

Digital Brown Shirts Begging the question, WTF? Hot on the heels of this micro-fuhrer furor over the "Gore-Kerry-Hitler" net ad: Gore says something about "Digital Brown Shirts" and some rightwing bloggers adopt it as the new black. (They did decide to remove the swastika from their graphic.) I'm still blinking while I try to fathom this.
posted by StOne at 2:04 AM PST - 44 comments

Bill Gates Blog. AHHHHHH!!!!!

Bill Gates May Blog. Always ahead of the curve, the astute visionary's groundbreaking foray into the virginal internet territory, known by computer hackers as "web logging," won't be all business, either. He's expected to share personal details such as tidbits from recent vacations. I for one am trembling on the edge of my seat. 1.0 lacks that special something.
posted by scarabic at 12:48 AM PST - 17 comments

June 25

blink blink

Before the dotcom boom, before Google (but slightly after Comic Sans)... there was blink. Let me be clear: I am not advocating or condoning the use of blink. Blink is by far and without a doubt the most hated proprietary element ever created. It is bad for the environment. Or, then again, could it be a tag that has the potential to be used to good effect with a bit of creative thought? I'll leave it up to you...
posted by reklaw at 9:15 PM PST - 43 comments

It's not only the size of the boat, but also the motion of the ocean.

Remember small scissors? Big scissors! Remember small chocolate? Big chocolate! Small clipboards? Pfaff... Big clipboards! ... such is life at Great Big Stuff (thanks John)
posted by holloway at 6:41 PM PST - 13 comments

Zookeeper!

Zookeeper! Match 3 or more animals, don't let the clock run out. (Shockwave req'd)
posted by arto at 6:29 PM PST - 10 comments

Bhí Pádraig agus Michéal sa teach tabhairne

Should Gaelic be an official EU language? As a happy member of the SCA I promise to revise all my past snarkiness and negative thinking about the EU if this happens. I will read (ploddingly and with a dictionary) all those speeches by Chirac and Schroder--as soon as they're translated into Gaelic. If Maltese can be an EU language of diplomacy, why not Gaelic? While the world around us rages, we'll return to the Middle Ages. (From crookedtimber)
posted by jfuller at 4:22 PM PST - 27 comments

INDUCE to vomit

Senator Orrin Hatch introduced the INDUCE bill earlier this week with broad, vague limits on who could be sued for copyright infringement. No longer limited to just companies producing programs or those hosting programs, this bill intends to criminalize anyone that aids in copyright infringement. The EFF have produced a mock complaint against Apple for the iPod, since it can play illegally obtained mp3s just as easily as legally purchased ones. Ernest Miller has broken down Hatch's entire "for the children" speech that introduced the bill, in excruciating detail. Those who own mp3 players, TiVos, and other sorts of disruptive technologies should watch this one closely, it could get really ugly.
posted by mathowie at 12:21 PM PST - 36 comments

Pocket bikes

Little toys for big boys. With video too!
posted by xmattxfx at 11:39 AM PST - 23 comments

Archeology motherlode in Utah

Artifacts were lying on the ground untouched for more than 1,000 years.
For sixty years Waldo Wilcox, a rancher in Utah, kept people off his land about 130 miles South of Salt Lake City. The reason was a string of prehistoric indian settlements that stretch 12 miles. (more inside)
posted by wsg at 11:05 AM PST - 13 comments

The Reichskanzler Routine

Al Gore. John Kerry. Adolf Hitler. In a new ad from the Bush campaign, these opposition mavens are linked right before the viewer's eyes.
posted by the fire you left me at 10:27 AM PST - 139 comments

Old Superstitions

Old Superstitions.
posted by hama7 at 10:12 AM PST - 8 comments

cool flame

cool flame - the game "Join the cool reporter and the amazing singer as they embark on the game of their lives." [note: flash, subtle advertisement]
posted by crunchland at 8:59 AM PST - 6 comments

Ancient Egyptian Tombs for Sale

Planning your journey into the afterlife? Then you might want to try The Theban Mapping Project, Eternal Egypt or Tour Egypt if you need some help getting on the Ancient Egyptian property ladder.
posted by johnny novak at 7:53 AM PST - 2 comments

f o u n d letters

Art, Link, Letter: Abba Richman's beautiful The Alphabet and Dean Allen's rustic Found Alphabet are collections of letter shapes found in various outdoor objects.
posted by iconomy at 7:40 AM PST - 10 comments

Uncool: Chill, Bill. Technorati: Awake!

Think tanks attack Open Source "The Alexis de Tocqueville Institute’s attack on Linux is just the latest in a series of attacks on Open Source by think tanks.....

I was able to detect a common theme to all their criticism. They all seem to be funded by Microsoft. "
posted by troutfishing at 7:36 AM PST - 51 comments

Am I Evil?

Coincidence or contortion? Ivan Panin deciphered a numeric code in the Bible. Known as Gematria, the 'code' implies the Bible could not have been written without Holy assistance. Panin offered an open challenge for someone to create text using a similar pattern, yet no one was able to create one(nor tried).

However many people doubt the authenticity of the code though. The code is found in the same verses using different translations. It is also claimed that Panin manufactured his own translations to create this mathematical phenomenon.

Whether or not you believe, you can determine how good or evil any text or website is.
posted by JakeEXTREME at 7:05 AM PST - 30 comments

Street Memes

Street Memes. a sticker, stencil, or poster that can spread a single image around the world. Unlike traditional graffiti art where each piece is unique, street memes can be copied repeatedly, taking on a life of their own, and spreading through the collective effort of people scattered around the world. [via Eyebeam reBlog]
posted by soundofsuburbia at 6:28 AM PST - 12 comments

The Beecher Family

The Beecher Family. 'Families that have been influential in American life and culture are often recognizable by their signature names. The Beecher family is an example of one such family whose deep religious convictions and social conscience spanned the nineteenth century and made them prominent historical figures whose impact on religion, education, abolition, reform movements, literature and public life were exceptional. Biographer Milton Rugoff claims that in "two generations the Beechers emerged, along with many other Americans, from a God-centered, theology-ridden world concerned with the fate of man's eternal soul into a man-centered society occupied mainly with life on earth." ... '
posted by plep at 4:02 AM PST - 8 comments

South Korean government bans Kim Sun-Il execution video.

South Korean government bans Kim Sun-Il execution video. Activates government emergency internet monitoring system. Orders web sites and ISPs to comply. "Web sites that fail to follow through the instructions will be subject to shut-down or police investigation". Several South Korean web sites have already been shut down, while other sites, such as Yahoo! Korea, are assisting the government by blocking and censoring their user's email. Meanwhile, a general strike, massive antiwar protests, and a refusal by airline unions may prevent the deployment and supply of 3,000 South Korean soldiers to Iraq, as well as the rule of the current South Korean government. Numerous U.S. websites are being blocked, and one of the sites, Ogrish.com, is under attack from hackers for carrying the execution video. (warning: tragic and traumatic. Windows Media.)
posted by insomnia_lj at 1:39 AM PST - 44 comments

A View from the Eye of the Storm

A View from the Eye of the Storm. An Arab intellectual in Europe ponders on the Muslim world and comes to some interesting conclusions. Israel is a sideshow. Iran is the most dangerous country in the world.. in the long run the only way for us (the West) to win the war of terror is to force the problem nations to reform both politically and culturally.via Steven Den Beste weblog
posted by stbalbach at 12:35 AM PST - 44 comments

What's

The Boscombe Bowmen. Archaeologists say they have found the remains of some of the builders of Stonehenge. Tests on their teeth indicate that they were Welsh, prompting the archdruid of Wales to ask for the return of Stonehenge. (Here's a previous thread on the Amesbury Archer.)
posted by homunculus at 12:09 AM PST - 14 comments

June 24

handover of what?

Order 17--sovereignty sure, but... The Bush administration has decided to take the unusual step of bestowing on its own troops and personnel immunity from prosecution by Iraqi courts for killing Iraqis or destroying local property after the occupation ends and political power is transferred to an interim Iraqi government, U.S. officials said. (including contractors, btw.) Apparently US immunity was used by Khomeini in Iran as a rallying cry in the 60s. Are Sadr and Sistani listening?
posted by amberglow at 8:47 PM PST - 32 comments

Here Come the Interns

Watch out, Washington, here come the interns. With cicada season winding down, DC now girds itself for the next wave of invaders: interns from all over the country, descending on the capital to gain valuable government work experience. Some of them have been notorious, but most of them are fresh, young, wide-eyed, idealistic go-getters, willing to tolerate mockery to find a home, a job, and maybe some romance over the summer. Anyone got links to DC intern blogs?
posted by brownpau at 8:26 PM PST - 5 comments

Because people can't growl well enough

Hey, you got your animals in my death metal!
posted by qDot at 8:23 PM PST - 2 comments

I meant to just bitch to Cheney about it.

"Frankly, part of our problem is a lot of the press are afraid to travel very much, so they sit in Baghdad and they publish rumors," Paul Wolfowitz declared Tuesday - a slur that didn't sit well with a lot of journalists risking their lives in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq. After callouts from Howard Kurtz, Maureen Dowd and Editor & Publisher's new rabble-rousing chief, Greg Mitchell, Wolfowitz has submitted an apology. (PDF version.) Ever helpful, Wonkette supplies a translation. (mostly via Romenesko)
posted by soyjoy at 6:57 PM PST - 9 comments

Mmm, conjoined anthropomorphic skunk erotica...

The Finest Siamese Twin Cartoon Furry Porn on the internet. Evar!
posted by NortonDC at 6:53 PM PST - 37 comments

The complete history of englands missed penalty kicks.

Today is world celebrate Scottishness day. View the complete history of Englands missed penalty kicks and the Scottish national liberation armys website whilst having a wee dram with tunes played on Scotlands national instrument , the midi player lilting in the background.
posted by sgt.serenity at 6:28 PM PST - 14 comments

Never mind the weblogs, here's the dog's bollocks!

Ulysses a page a day and the Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci a page a day. Fire up your favorite newsreader or sign up for Bloglines and get down to some hardcore retro-feedin'!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:44 PM PST - 29 comments

365 Days re-launched

365 Days re-launched - UbuWeb is pleased to announce the re-launch and permanent home of The 365 Days Project. This legendary project, in which an MP3 a day - of mostly outsider, novelty, and oddball recordings - was made available for the public to download over the course of 2003. Briefly taken offline, it is now presented here in its entirety, complete with images and vast commentary on each selection. The 365 Days Project is part of UbuWeb's redesigned, newly-named and much-expanded Outsiders section. via the Rumori list
posted by 2sheets at 4:23 PM PST - 16 comments

Castro asked US president for $10

"If you like, give me a ten dollars bill green american, in the letter, because never, I have not seen a ten dollars bill green American and I would like to have one of them"
Your friend, Fidel Castro
[via Mahalanobis]
posted by MzB at 3:54 PM PST - 14 comments

There's no turning back now....

Mayday Mystery. At the University of Arizona, a series of ads has been placed in the school's newspaper, the Arizona Wildcat. These ads have shown up every year around May 1st for the last 20 years or so, and seem to be cryptic puzzles relating to some sort of secret counterculture organization. Bryan Hance, the former webmaster of the Wildcat, noticed the ads, and has been trying to track down what's been going on ever since. He is chronicling his findings at www.maydaymystery.org. (via ARGN)
posted by quibx at 12:38 PM PST - 23 comments

Here comes the Judge

The justice system at work. A sitting Judge in Oklahoma has been removed from the bench for using a male enhancement pump, pleasuring himself and oiling his nether regions during court proceedings - including an August 2003 murder trial. At least he was awake during the proceedings, unlike other judges.
posted by thatothrgirl at 11:59 AM PST - 29 comments

Googling old friends

Googling old friends. Searching for old pals online can be emotional (not everyone joins Alumni or Friends Reunited) and it can lead to a re-assessment of your own life and were its going. Here, Pamela Ribon writes up her discoveries and it's one for few pieces I've seen which perfectly evokes the feelings which can develop. [As my source John says, make sure you read the comments as well.]
posted by feelinglistless at 11:43 AM PST - 29 comments

Things that go squish in the night

Safe Play At All Times. "If you fall into a hole this large on a building site you will not be able to climb out. You may have hurt yourself when you fell and need to go to hospital. But because you are down a hole, it is unlikely that anyone will see or hear you. You may not be found until it is too late." Click on Dangers and Read all about it.
posted by jester69 at 11:34 AM PST - 9 comments

Pontius Pilate contracted his brows, and his hand rose to his forehead...

"Jesus?" he murmured, "Jesus -- of Nazareth?..." Pontius Pilate, prefect of Judea, is the only historical figure named in the Nicene Creed -- Coptic saint or eternally damned, his role in the greatest story ever told has been debated by many of history's greatest minds: St Augustine, Dante Alighieri, Tintoretto, John Ruskin, Mikhail Bulgakov, Monty Python. Unfortunately, there is very little historical evidence about him. His role in the death of a certain charismatic Galilean healer and apocalyptic preacher is still being debated today by theologians and historians alike. He is also, of course, the main character of The Procurator of Judea, the classic short story (complete text in main link) by Anatole France. (France's magnificent story has lately been tragically neglected by publishers, even if the author was one of his era's most acclaimed writers in the world -- he won the Nobel Prize in 1921 over Shaw, Yeats, Joyce, Thomas Hardy, D.H. Lawrence, and Proust, and when he died in 1924, hundreds of thousands of people followed his funeral procession through Paris). These last 2,000 years of fascination with Pilatus can be explained, some argue... (more inside, for those unwilling to wash their hands of this post)
posted by matteo at 11:26 AM PST - 37 comments

The current cinema

If all goes well, and I think it will, we will soon be entering a golden age of American cinema, the likes of which we haven't seen since the heyday of Scorsese and Coppola. Behold: Nicole Kidman and Jason Schwartzman to star in Bewitched; Vince Vaughn in talks to play Racer X in live-action Speed Racer movie; Paris Hilton in talks to star in Dungeons and Dragons 2.
posted by Prospero at 11:03 AM PST - 49 comments

Somewhere over the rainbow...

The American Film Institute (a.k.a. "The Listmakers Who Just Won't Quit") have announced their long-awaited ground-breaking top 100 movie songs of all time.
posted by ChrisTN at 10:55 AM PST - 19 comments

School Bus Pr0n

Need some hot school bus action? It's got photos from an actual school bus driver's perspective and 440 school bus photos by my calculations. Next month features a new gallery with school buses by International. I'm all tingly with anticipation!
posted by bbrown at 10:37 AM PST - 8 comments

Like goatse, only safe for work

Check out the giant cancer fighting colon... of science! "It's part of a national tour to educate people about various types of common and preventable cancers. The 'Check Your Insides Out -- Top to Bottom' tour is full of interactive educational exhibits on colon, lung, oral, breast, prostate and skin cancers."
posted by ilsa at 10:21 AM PST - 4 comments

Superman born in Germany?

Superman born in Germany? It appears that "the boy's mutant DNA segment was found to block production of a protein called myostatin that limits muscle growth."

"Now we can say that myostatin acts the same way in humans as in animals," said the boy's physician, Dr. Markus Schuelke, a professor in the child neurology department at Charite/University Medical Center Berlin. "We can apply that knowledge to humans, including trial therapies for muscular dystrophy."

Or other things...
posted by andreaazure at 10:02 AM PST - 17 comments

spaceman sculpture

Spaceman sculpture. Click 'Spaceman' under Current Work in the right side list. Previous David Mach post from 2002.
posted by yoga at 9:43 AM PST - 8 comments

SlartybartFAST!

Win a part in the new Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy movie, by submitting to The Guide, a photograph of the place on Earth you think most deserves to survive the planet's inevitable destruction. Deadline: Friday 25 June 2004.
posted by Blue Stone at 7:23 AM PST - 14 comments

Hilf ihm dabei!

Die Wagenschenke. Music, drinks, great people. Then 4.30 AM rolls around. Time to stumble home. [flash]
posted by soundofsuburbia at 6:09 AM PST - 8 comments

Let's kill all the thumb drives

Don't blame the technology. A refreshingly reasonable piece from a mainstream newspaper breaking down people's fear of technology as a springboard for outright condemnation of that technology when it's used for bad things.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 6:07 AM PST - 3 comments

Rien ne vas plus

Most gamblers will laugh at the idea that there exists a scientific method to (legally) beat a casino roulette.

Well, it turns out that they are wrong. (Here is a PDF file with more details, in Spanish)

Mileage may vary
posted by magullo at 6:03 AM PST - 29 comments

mine: paper dragon w/ origami dollar bill wings

Show us your computer mascot! >> flash, engaging music
posted by iconomy at 5:36 AM PST - 18 comments

Space Art

Space Art through the ages.
posted by plep at 3:45 AM PST - 2 comments

June 23

Anonymous

Everyone's favorite unidentified 22-year CIA veteran who used to hunt Osama bin Laden, Anonymous, is back with a new book, "Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror," and suggests that al-Qaida may try to reward Bush before the election. Last year, Anonymous created a stir with another book and was interviewed on Nightline. If only he had a scramble suit, he could do a book tour.
posted by homunculus at 11:17 PM PST - 17 comments

Child poet, old soul wisdom

Remembering the amazingly mature poetry of Mattie Stepanek: national goodwill ambassador with muscular dystrophy, and 13 year old prodigal wordsmith.
posted by moonbird at 10:01 PM PST - 7 comments

Arf!

Dog toy or marital aid? Take the test. You insert, you decide.
(NSFW unless you work at a kennel. Or a sex-toy shop. Via a friend.)
posted by trondant at 9:36 PM PST - 21 comments

Watch out for Milk 'n Cookies too...

Federal marshmallow-mixup bust.... "a teacher's aide who forgot to put away her marshmallows and hot chocolate at Yellowstone National Park last year was taken from her cruise ship cabin in handcuffs...."
posted by troutfishing at 8:17 PM PST - 28 comments

Red and Blue, or Red and Normal?

Perverse Polarity: Bipartisanship is another name for date rape? An examination of all of the talk about how polarized we are as a people, and what the facts actually are. Yet even when journalists' own evidence plainly shows that one party has become more moderate and the other more ideologically extreme, they can't bring themselves to say so.
posted by amberglow at 5:37 PM PST - 17 comments

The human body runs on Windows.

Microsoft granted patent for technology that will allow human skin to conduct power and transmit data. Let the jokes begin.(funny drawing here)
posted by anathema at 3:14 PM PST - 25 comments

America Is

America Is is the weblog of a "freelance photojournalist traveling across the US on a mission to hit all 48 contiguous states." Some nice photos.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:06 PM PST - 7 comments

tk

"Hey fagdaddy why u killl teammates?" A cobbeled session in word parsing.
posted by the fire you left me at 2:41 PM PST - 6 comments

Ewe England Cheese Farmers

"We wanted to retire to something we knew nothing about, something we would find intellectually, physically and spiritually daunting." ~~ "I like goats. They're funny." ~~ "Our animals are vegetarians and don't do drugs." ~~"I can sort of get inside the head of the bacteria," she said. "I read about cheese in bed." ~~ "Oh, Lily," she said matter-of-factly. "Things didn't work out. We ate her." via NortonDC.
posted by onlyconnect at 1:22 PM PST - 9 comments

comic artists, sharpen your pencils

Strip Fight! has nothing to do with clothes and everything to do with comics. Inspired by Songfight.org (mefi post), Strip Fight was created as a place for comic strip artists to flex their skills.
posted by btwillig at 1:20 PM PST - 8 comments

The Advertising Artwork of Dr. Seuss

The Advertising Artwork of Dr. Seuss.
posted by hama7 at 12:53 PM PST - 8 comments

I For One Welcome Our New Robots Overlords

Captured! by Robots is a band made up of one man and the robots he buit to accompany him. Only the robots - DRMBOT, GTRBOT, AUTOMOTOM, and the HEADLESS HORNSMEN - revolted and enslaved him. Now he has no choice but to serve their evil ends - touring the Western United States and enslaving everyone they come into contact with through song. Some videos of them in action. (.mov)
posted by ChasFile at 12:48 PM PST - 9 comments

saving a week of your life from Bill Clinton

The Condensed Bill Clinton: Slate reads My Life so you don't have to.
posted by reklaw at 12:32 PM PST - 38 comments

wanna live forever?

fable of the dragon-tyrant 'an actual fable with an actual moral.'
posted by leotrotsky at 11:40 AM PST - 7 comments

Language Map USA

Modern Language Association Language Map of the USA.
posted by stbalbach at 11:07 AM PST - 12 comments

INDUCE vomiting

Orrin Hatch thinks of the children. As a convenient lever for shutting down P2P networks.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 11:04 AM PST - 13 comments

Amazing action figure art

Amazing action figure art When I first saw the photos of this stuff, I thought they were taken from life. I've never been into war-toys based on humans, but this is really really breathtaking...
posted by chinese_fashion at 10:23 AM PST - 13 comments

Prohibition, as we suspected, is a failure.

More kids smoking marijuana than tobacco. A report by the CDC reports that more kids now report having smoked pot in the last thirty days than those that reported having smoked a cigarette, and in fact, tobacco usage is showing a steep decline while marijuana usage is showing a steady uptick. This item is just one of many interesting statistics contained within the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance report, taken between February-December, 2003. The war on some drugs wages on... (via my friend C-Dawg)
posted by WolfDaddy at 10:02 AM PST - 68 comments

Death by Chocolate

Welcome to tropical Ivory Coast, the small African nation that is home of almost half of the world's cocoa exports! Visit the sandy beaches! Get kidnapped and disappeared by government officials!
posted by chunking express at 8:55 AM PST - 10 comments

Calculators for hairy-eared engineers

Calculators for hairy-eared engineers Mike Konshak's scanned and photographed collection of 500 slide rules from around the world (click on 'Mike's Slide Rules' in left-hand frame). An article on Mike from the local paper.
posted by carter at 7:15 AM PST - 9 comments

WE LOVE THE MOOOOON...

"We fell victim to it; we were duped." A gala meeting at a Senate office building invited 100 "honorees" were invited to receive "International Crowns of Peace", only to watch the Reverend Sun Yung Moon of the Unification Church claim the awards for himself. Amidst finger-pointing and denials, a video depicting Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.) coronating Rev. Moon, was removed from a Unification Church website. But a number of bit torrent mirrors of that March 23rd "promotional film" have been popping up....while the February 4th video of a nearly identical Capitol gathering has squeaked by without news exposure or outrage.
posted by Smart Dalek at 5:48 AM PST - 38 comments

Inside America's secret Afghan gulag

Bumper-size Guardian investigation into routine abuse of US prisoners in Afghanistan.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 3:31 AM PST - 19 comments

Watch the guy with the beard

Shoot out in a gym (warning: 14MB mov file)
posted by Orange Goblin at 3:12 AM PST - 23 comments

Quite a three pipe metafilter post.

Sherlock Holmes: the quotations; the pipes; the author (the public house named after him - the worst in Scotland, judging by the comments); the top ten lists; the vulcan; the city; the monographs; the magazine; the marvelous stories, of course; and more.
posted by nthdegx at 3:11 AM PST - 9 comments

Baiting.org

What can you do to combat pedophiles who lurk online? Fire up your AIM and cocktease them to death [SFW - just chat logs, nothing graphic].
posted by scarabic at 12:35 AM PST - 20 comments

A fine day to die

BATHORY mastermind Thomas "Quorthon" Forsberg has passed away. A fine day to die? Mayhaps but maybe also too soon at a young 39. One might think that those interested in the black stuff would already know of this passing, but like Elton John said, "...then again, no" because I just found out tonight. So there it is, if any of you are listening to "Blood, Fire, Death" while at a grim and blasphemous desk job like me but have missed the news. Reviews are here of the "band" that took off in a grim way from Slayer and Venom and spawned a grip of younger Scandanavian agents like these and them. (mild warning: when reading about black metal you will no doubt read about some people with anti-social ideas.)
posted by asparagus_berlin at 12:03 AM PST - 3 comments

June 22

Internet Under Surveillance

Internet Under Surveillance 2004. A global progress report on Internet censorship by Reporters Without Borders. They awarded their 2004 Internet Freedom Prize to Chinese cyber-dissident Huang Qi.
posted by homunculus at 11:07 PM PST - 4 comments

Whip 'n Chain Club vs. Britney

"It was a bizarre club with cages, whips and other apparatus hanging from the ceiling" Jeri Lynn Ryan, "Star Trek: Voyager" actress and former wife of Illinois Republican candidate for US Senate Jack Ryan says Ryan pressured her to have public sex in S&M oriented clubs. Compare and contrast with this example of the advantages of power, Britney Spears' mother runs over Paparazzi : "....As Britney was leaving a pet store where she had just bought two new puppies, mother Lynne...struck photographer Calum Reavley [ note : with an auto ]......Britney was so hysterical that paramedics actually tended to her first, and left Reavley on the ground writhing in pain."
posted by troutfishing at 5:44 PM PST - 81 comments

Support the troops!

Gmail 4 Troops! The idea of matching U.S. troops in need of a low-cost way to communicate with their friends, family, and other loved ones back home with those who have spare Gmail invitations is the brainchild of Wil Wheaton and Drew Olanoff. Gmail4Troops is their project, as a result of their inspiration. The sponsors here, including Whizardries and ISIPP, are here to help further and support Drew and Wil's project, and are honoured to be able to assist Wil and Drew, and to serve our troops serving overseas, and their loved ones back home, in this manner .
posted by konolia at 5:02 PM PST - 40 comments

Pork Chocolate Bar??

Chocolate dipped pork fat is now on the menu in one of the Ukraine's trendiest restaurants. Because regular pork fat isn't chocolately enough.
posted by jonson at 3:46 PM PST - 35 comments

From the William Tecumseh Sherman Department

War is Hell: Generation Kill

Torn by War Porn*? Just can't get enough?

For those of you who stopped reading Rolling Stone some time in the 80's, and therefore most likely missed Evan Wright's war dispatches from Humvee Number One last summer, we bring you: Generation Kill:Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War

Reviewed here,and here ("reprint" of NYT review).

*Oddly enough, Evan Wright's journalistic career began as a porn critic for Hustler. True story.
posted by piedrasyluz at 2:47 PM PST - 5 comments

Poverty in London

Charles Booth Online Archive. Charles Booth's survey of life and labour in London at the end of the Victorian era, with the famous poverty maps.
posted by plep at 1:55 PM PST - 2 comments

A Telecommute Option

Can't think at home? Working from home, but feeling isolated?

Is this the latest new fangled fad in office space concepts?
posted by blahblah at 1:30 PM PST - 17 comments

Yahoo! Mail trashing Gmail invites

Yahoo! Mail is trashing Gmail invites. Regular Gmail appears in the inbox, but invites are sorted to the spam folder.
posted by tranquileye at 12:54 PM PST - 52 comments

Swing State

In the swing states, it's not just the economy anymore, stupid. "The more you talk to West Virginians, the more you stop wondering how Democrats lost the state four years ago and start wondering how they ever won it."
posted by PrinceValium at 12:52 PM PST - 23 comments

I'll start with corky

Make your own classic pleasure boat.
posted by magullo at 12:30 PM PST - 13 comments

NotintheNewsFilter

Not-in-the-NewsFilter "Is Mr. Ashcroft neglecting real threats to the public because of his ideological biases?" Paul Krugman on the case of William Krar, a terrorist the justice department isn't talking about.
posted by jpoulos at 10:36 AM PST - 32 comments

"You people are stupid."

"You people are stupid."

That's what Dave Chappelle had to say to a crowd of 4000 plus after he had walked off the stage in Sacramento in protest. What got the comic so riled up? According to Chappelle, it was audience members who wouldn't "shut up and listen - like you're supposed to." Chappelle then went on to vent his frustration on the success of his TV Show and the extra attention it has brought him.

Chappelle's harshest words thou were addressed to those audience members who worship entertainers and athletes.

"Stop listening to celebrities," he said. "They do what they do for money - that's all. I don't even know why you're listening to me. I've done commercials for both Coke and Pepsi. Truth is, I can't even taste the difference, but Pepsi paid me last, so there it is."
posted by Dreamghost at 10:06 AM PST - 101 comments

Peter Turnley

Peter Turnley One of the great photojournalists living today. Peter, (and his twin brother David) have witnessed and documented some of the most important events in recent history.
posted by ig at 10:03 AM PST - 4 comments

death of the alternafest

After 14 years of highly successful nationwide tours that began the trend of the multi-stage, summer super rock fest, Lollapalooza 2004 has been cancelled due to low ticket sales. I went to a 1991 show, and attended half a dozen other similar fests in the past ten years, but as I've gotten older I've become a bigger fan of the intimate club vs. the gigantic rock festival. Still, Lollapalooza being cancelled comes as a shock, especially considering the stellar line-up on both stages.
posted by mathowie at 9:15 AM PST - 66 comments

Draft Bruce

Draft Bruce
"A New York concert promoter has mounted an online campaign to 'draft' Bruce Springsteen to headline a rock 'n roll show to upstage the Republican National Convention on the night it nominates President Bush...." Said promoter Andrew Rasiej, "I've spoken to the manager of REM, to Bon Jovi's people and the rest of the names I've mentioned and they all said, 'if you build it, we will be there.'"

I'm not a big fan, but this has the potential to be momentous.
posted by mapalm at 8:35 AM PST - 31 comments

sputa con totti

EM2004 flash fun
flash, shockwave, java
posted by tcp at 7:38 AM PST - 4 comments

Honk Honk Rattle Rattle Crash Beep Beep

Let's say that you have a cell phone, and you need to sound as if you're somewhere else, or you need to get the long-winded person you're talking with off the phone.
posted by Witty at 6:53 AM PST - 7 comments

Slip sliding away: insane brain games

This should get your goat: Insanely hard sliding block puzzles. (Can't take the heat? Maybe you'd like to try an insanely hard sliding door maze instead?)
posted by taz at 4:45 AM PST - 8 comments

Why

Michael Moore, or Michael snore? (I am so funny its almost pointless) Are people judging a film before it is seen? Is our nation so solidified on partisan ideals that our own political idealogies only want to oppose the "other side"?
posted by Keyser Soze at 3:14 AM PST - 125 comments

Wot me worry?

Status anxiety 'Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first - the story of our quest for sexual love - is well known and well-charted. The second - the story of our quest for love from the world - is a more secret and shameful tale. And yet this second love story is no less intense than the first.'
posted by johnny7 at 3:14 AM PST - 9 comments

Iran blocks Movable Type

Iran has censored Movable Type's website The blacklist contains over 800 Persian websites, including many political websites and weblogs, as well as many entertainment websites.
posted by hoder at 1:47 AM PST - 7 comments

The Hills Are Alive With The Semantics of Music

Tunes create context like language : "musical notes are strung together in the same patterns as words in a piece of literature". Full paper. On a related note, hone your musical comprehension by playing with Impromptu. Better yet, co-ordinate it with this MIT OpenCourse - Developing Musical Structures.
posted by Gyan at 12:56 AM PST - 21 comments

Voices from Naropa

The Internet Archive just got beat. William Burroughs on wishing. Mystical audio by Harry Smith. Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones) on "jism and jazz". Ginsberg reads "Howl." The most historically significant archive of Beat and post-Beat recordings is now free for the downloading. Lossless or lo-fi, saved or streamed -- the tape vault of Naropa Institute is unlocked on archive.org as the Creative Commons grows.
posted by digaman at 12:05 AM PST - 25 comments

June 21

Watching Cats

I Like To Watch: A photographic record of cats transfixed; self-referential cats; cat Witnesses of Our Time; cat onlookers; cats gazing stupidly at infinity; lightly hypnotized brainpan-fried cats; feline couch potatoes; cats afflicted by the staring disease; briefly and easily amused cats; UN observer cats; guilty bystander cats. All in all, an extremely important investigation into the perennial question of how to hold a cat's attention. [Click on "Cats", funnily enough.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 11:43 PM PST - 10 comments

This site contains some material which might be considered of an adult nature

The Pin-up Files :: Hundreds of classic and modern drawings of glamorous and beautiful women. Also includes artist bios, notes on many of the images, and a great list of links to other sites. I find it interesting to see how our idea of what is erotic or beautiful have changed (and remained the same) from the '40's to today. This site contains some material which might be considered of an adult nature. Viewer discretion is advised.
posted by anastasiav at 8:56 PM PST - 13 comments

...

Blocked The New Yorker's Joan Acocella looks at literary history in discussing the dread Writer's Block.
posted by LinusMines at 8:28 PM PST - 4 comments

Joseph Pujol

(FPA: First Post Alert) A century or so ago, there lived a French baker with a most prodigious talent. He was also one of the Moulin Rouge's most successful performers (sorry about that, Nicole Kidman). In 1974, Mel Brooks gave him a sly homage in Blazing Saddles that blew over the heads of most theatregoers. And now, sadly, his fame and talent has been mostly forgotten to the ages. His name was Joseph Pujol, aka Le Petomane ("The Fartiste"), and in opposition to today's world of increasingly strict decency standards (and promotion of the unmanly pimpf lifestyle), the legend of this bellowing* blowhard deserves to live on.

*Warning: Salaciously-questionable graphic at the top of this link's page - click on one of the latter three links if you are of a delicate constitution or in a workish environment.
posted by dakotadusk at 8:11 PM PST - 17 comments

Ruptured?

Any experts out there? Have you been asked to do a show, called "The Debate Show" on "an MTV network"? Well look out: IT'S A TRAP! "The Debate Show" is actually a new Comedy Central program called Crossballs, a "smart, comedic spoof of programs such as Crossfire, Hardball with Chris Matthews, and the entire Fox News Network..." A second amendment activist emerged from a taping with extremely twisted knickers, whilst a privacy advocate barely escaped (this account via bOINGbOING). I'm torn: part of me wants to see the show, and part of me wants to see if enough attention on the web can ruin it...
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 7:20 PM PST - 61 comments

Setting a trend?

Rowland resigns. Today Connecticut Governor John Rowland(r) offered his resignation in response to the impeachment proceedings. The investigation comes after allegations of gifts, bribery and corruption in regards to awarding Government contracts. He's the first Connecticut Governor to resign under circumstances such as these. Here's a general timeline of the events that created need for the impeachment.
posted by JakeEXTREME at 3:35 PM PST - 28 comments

This looks useful

TinyPic.com - "is a very simple, fast, reliable free image host. It is perfect for linking to auctions, message boards, journals, and other websites. There is no registration or login, all you have to do is submit your picture." This looks very useful. I find the most popular pictures on the site curious though.
posted by CunningLinguist at 3:23 PM PST - 30 comments

The only way to unwind the future is to follow the path

What if you could go back in time, and take all those hours of pain and darkness and replace them with something better?
posted by shoepal at 2:29 PM PST - 47 comments

Pavitr Prabhakar. Say it out loud.

Forget translations. Spiderman gets remade, bottom-to-top, for the subcontinent.
posted by Tlogmer at 1:57 PM PST - 17 comments

King Arthur

Artorius, Ambrosius, Arthur. An examination of the history behind the legend of King Arthur.
posted by homunculus at 12:09 PM PST - 14 comments

Share the Wealth

MIT's OpenCourseWare project. Course materials for over 700 classes offered at the school, including syllabi, reading lists, related educational links for the self-learner. Get your knowledge on!!
posted by archimago at 11:23 AM PST - 15 comments

Trailer for The Tertiary Phase of H2G2

The trailer for The broadcast of The Tertiary Phase of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (by Douglas Adams). It doesn't just sound great, it doesn't just sound amazing, it sounds amazingly amazing! [via]
posted by feelinglistless at 11:20 AM PST - 33 comments

A Canadian Chinese Celebrity

A Canadian Chinese Celebrity - (LA Times - reg required) Use this to get login. "The lanky Ottawa native, a virtual unknown in Canada, is most renowned for his Chinese TV appearances as the quick-witted foreigner who does amusing skits and the first Westerner to perform the ancient Chinese art of xiangsheng, or comedic dialogue."
posted by blahblah at 11:17 AM PST - 14 comments

Press reveal for joke!

The Ceefax teletext service is essentially the same now as when the BBC developed it in 1973, and is still used across Europe. Absurd, outmoded and wonderfully British, old bean.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 10:02 AM PST - 25 comments

moccu

moccu [note: flash]
posted by crunchland at 9:46 AM PST - 6 comments

Georgia As Was

The Georgian Museum of Photography. Old photos from the Caucasus.
posted by plep at 9:23 AM PST - 3 comments

The Clock is Ticking

The Watchmaker Crisis - While mechanical and high-end quartz watches are becoming more and more popular in the U.S., over half of its watchmakers are nearing retirement age. The nation's 10 watchmaking schools just cannot attract enough apprentices, even though tuition is cheap or free.
posted by falconred at 9:12 AM PST - 29 comments

The Jimi Hendrix of Hawaii

Jake Shimabukuro plays the ukulele. Hoo boy, does he play the ukulele.
posted by gottabefunky at 8:54 AM PST - 8 comments

They never forget they're tough trucks

Building a Better Way: Music from the 1974 Chevrolet Announcement Film • "An interesting look at some of the musical trends from the early 70s. A little Isaac Hayes, a little John Denver, some Allman Brothers and a few sounds from that new-fangled instrument, the synthesizer."
posted by dhoyt at 8:48 AM PST - 7 comments

Why Smart People Believe Weird Things

On Cognitive Dissonance
"As a behavioral psychologist, I have studied people's reactions to contradiction and inconsistency. We are capable of convincing ourselves of something, and the more evidence that builds up to contradict us the more we believe it.

For more than 40 years, social psychologists have studied the phenomenon of "cognitive dissonance" - what happens when people have pieces of information on the same subject that are inconsistent. The presence of contradictions is psychologically unpleasant, and people do whatever it takes to resolve the inconsistency."

Many in the field posit that tension between contradictory thoughts and feelings are what constitutes consciousness. It doesn't seem to me this qualifies as it appears to be highly dysfunctional and not a natural and normal tension. What say you who are more qualified?
posted by nofundy at 6:45 AM PST - 31 comments

up, up, and...

SpaceShipOne is set to take off around 9:30 ET today. Funded by that other guy who founded Microsoft, this (if successful) will be the first non-government-sponsored manned spaceflight.
posted by casarkos at 6:34 AM PST - 79 comments

June 20

Hot Sauce!

Hot sauce reviews, a pepper primer, and ways to make your own.
posted by interrobang at 9:19 PM PST - 29 comments

Cake or death?

Amazing Cakes («flash link) from the food networks Wedding Cake Challenge. Whether it's Mikes Amazing Cakes, Michelle Bommarito's Cakes, or Colettes Cakes, these are all some awesome cakes.
posted by bob sarabia at 9:14 PM PST - 17 comments

Silly, fun music link!

Silly, fun music link. Stuff like this is what I consider the best of the Web, even though it took a loooong time to download over dial-up, as it's a 34.8 MB mpg. You lucky broadband folks may enjoy it more. (Seen at Bifurcated Rivets)
posted by Lynsey at 8:52 PM PST - 9 comments

One person’s gaffe is another’s peccadillo

Common Errors In English :: an internet guide
posted by anastasiav at 8:11 PM PST - 116 comments

The passage of time is flicking dimly up on the screen

An entertaining talk on long term thinking, by Brian Eno.
posted by Blue Stone at 3:35 PM PST - 9 comments

The Pastiche of a Presidency, Imitating a Life, in 957 Pages

The Pastiche of a Presidency, Imitating a Life, in 957 Pages This is a very bad review of the Clinton book, soon to be released. My question: why has the New York Times placed a book review on its front page? Would they have done this if the book were given a good review? Is the "paper of record" making a clear-cut statement about its feelings about Clinton? Has any other book review made the front page of the NY Times? I for one plan to read the book. I recall that Edmund Wilson once said: always stick to primary sources rather relying upon what some scholar or reviewer has to say about a book. Finally, Clinton is out of office (alas). How much longer will small and jealous puppies chase after The Big Dog?
posted by Postroad at 3:16 PM PST - 33 comments

DRM: the story so far

Cory Doctorow gives a talk at Microsoft Research about why DRM systems don't work and are bad for society, business and artists -- and what Microsoft should do about it.
posted by reklaw at 11:49 AM PST - 42 comments

State of the Commons

Reviving the Commons. The commons are the range of resources that the American public collectively owns, but which are often mismanaged by government or privatized ("enclosed") by corporations. An excellent report on "The State of the Commons 2003/04" (PDF) was prepared for the Friends of the Commons by the Tomales Bay Institute. The principle of the commons in Western common law was first codified in the Magna Carta, and was previously discussed on MeFi here. [Via I-Merge.]
posted by homunculus at 11:06 AM PST - 3 comments

EU vs USA

Europe versus America (PDF) is a report by a Swedish public policy institute comparing the two economies, concluding that "If the European Union were a state in the USA it would belong to the poorest group of states." The WSJ has read the report, and highlights that "Most Americans have a standard of living which the majority of Europeans will never come anywhere near [...]. in the U.S. a large 45.9% of the 'poor' own their homes, 72.8% have a car and almost 77% have air conditioning, which remains a luxury in most of Western Europe. The average living space for poor American households is 1,200 square feet. In Europe, the average space for all households, not just the poor, is 1,000 square feet.". With a looming demographic crisis in Europe to boot, will the EU be able to implement much-needed reforms to save their welfare-state system before it is too late?
posted by dagny at 10:33 AM PST - 115 comments

The 100 greatest British albums

The 100 greatest British albums ... and look what came first. Why? I personally don't believe the justification given. And surely the word Rock is missing from the title of the poll because I don't see many other genres mentioned. To be honest, I'm with Miranda Sawyer on this one -- why aren't more girls aloud?
posted by feelinglistless at 10:22 AM PST - 70 comments

Riotous Littleport

Riotous Littleport. The deportation of an English village to Australia. BBC article with links to other interesting articles on immigration and emigration on the page.
posted by plep at 7:48 AM PST - 5 comments

corn is king

I found these images, one, two, when I typed in “tent” in the “search all fields” field and selected image as resource type. The site is OAIster, which is a digital library, which has 3,273,233 records from 301 institutions. Its my new magic eight ball. (via)
posted by JohnR at 6:56 AM PST - 15 comments

A little Sunday Relaxation with puzzlemaster Scott Kim

Just My Type. Sharpen your eye for letterforms by matching each close-up snapshot with the letter it came from, or test your eye for color with Color Me RGB, a couple of the interesting braincandy games from Scott Kim. (Also see his gallery of Inversions; I love "Figure", and the clickable tessellating alphabet.)
posted by taz at 2:41 AM PST - 13 comments

June 19

Commies Need Art Too

Labor Arts. "Images that help us understand the past and present lives of working people."
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:19 PM PST - 8 comments

Bob's Animal Fights

Bob's Animal Fights • Hornet vs. Polar Bear! Army Ant vs. Panda! Ostrich vs. Gorilla! Bob Robertson, senior lecturer on the behaviour of African mammals, sets out to prove once and for all just what is the hardest animal on the planet.
posted by dhoyt at 4:10 PM PST - 14 comments

Son of a BIT

Son of a BIT
posted by hama7 at 3:55 PM PST - 23 comments

Fold your own double CD case

Burning discs for a friend? Fold your own double CD case to put 'em in. Several other templates previously discussed here. [via TRFJ]
posted by scarabic at 3:11 PM PST - 9 comments

Found

Found Poetry Everything. A magazine of found material.
(via This American Life, today's episode)
posted by weston at 2:50 PM PST - 12 comments

Fahrenheit ???

Ray Bradbury is angry. Mr. Bradbury is accusing Michael Moore of lifting the title from his classic science-fiction novel "Fahrenheit 451" without permission and wants the new documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" to be renamed.

Bradbury says he called Dog Eat Dog Films, Moore's production company, six months ago about this issue, and Moore himself finally returned his phone call last last Saturday. Bradbury, who is a registered political independent, said he would rather avoid litigation and is "hoping to settle this as two gentlemen, if he'll shake hands with me and give me back my book and title."

Does Moore need Bradbury's permission to use "Fahrenheit 9/11" or is Bradbury cleverly pulling “a Michael Moore” to get attention for the new edition of "Fahrenheit 451" coming out in eight weeks and remake of the 1966 movie, that is in pre-production for 2005?
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 2:19 PM PST - 96 comments

Fractally Surreal

Chaoscopia.
posted by Gyan at 2:09 PM PST - 8 comments

Mr. Wonka does not live here.

Principe: island of chocolate. [more about Sao Tome and Principe: 1,2,3]
posted by moonbird at 1:19 PM PST - 5 comments

The Super Power no one heard of

So this is the new European world. OK basically there is a new superpower in the world and damned if I can find anyone in my county seems to know or care..... but we're all about one mans untimely grisly death. Compare the world to the US I think this may be a good indicator of the rifts that exist between us and the rest of humanity...
posted by Elim at 12:48 PM PST - 54 comments

Money and Sex: Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together!

"Don't equate happiness with money"... "Exercise Regularly"... "Have Sex"...
Advice from a German investment bank on how to enjoy life. Taking CitiBank's cynical "Live Richly" ad campaign a step farther?
obilgatory joke "I remember when the bank only gave away free toasters..."
In other news, A bank in India is targeting "sex workers" as new customers,
Insert Sperm Bank Joke Here. heh heh heh... he said "Insert Sperm"...
posted by wendell at 12:30 PM PST - 7 comments

Junewhat?

Juneteenth is today, celebrating the emancipation of all slaves in Texas, on June 19th, 1865, 2 1/2 years after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. With its lighthearted name and tragicomic origins, Juneteenth appeals to many Americans by celebrating the end of slavery without dwelling on its legacy. Juneteenth, celebrators say, is Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday without the grieving. It's become a widely celebrated holiday among African-Americans (but not even known by many whites), and Fourteen states have made it official--is it time for it to go national? Find an event in your state or country
posted by amberglow at 12:23 PM PST - 12 comments

Energy Dreams and Energy Realities

Interesting dissection of US energy/environmental politics and policy along conservative/liberal lines: "We are, it seems, always in some kind of energy crisis, real or imagined. Some worry that our major sources of energy are about to run out. Some despair that our energy-hungry civilization is destroying the natural world. Some believe our quest for energy is driving us into unnecessary wars and unsavory alliances. And some lament that excessive regulations on energy development are crippling the American way of life. When it comes to energy politics, there is no shortage of alarmism, conservative and liberal alike." The conclusion was sorta weak tho, I thought :D [via J. Orlin Grabbe - NSFW!]
posted by kliuless at 11:44 AM PST - 1 comment

Tour de Sol

The 16th annual Tour de Sol showcases experimental vehicles built by students, individuals, and corporations that can cut greenhouse emissions, and compete for top awards. More photos and reports. Then cruise on over to the Green Car Club for a list of Green Cars available to buy today.
posted by stbalbach at 11:38 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Peaceful Pictures from a Golden Decade

Photographic Memories: 1990-2001. Subjects include Tibet, Vietnam, Switzerland from above, Portugal, some portraits, a wedding, a baby, and more.
posted by plep at 6:46 AM PST - 8 comments

June 18

Pictures of a bunch of wrecked cars

The driver, I found out later, was drunk, from Texas, and had only one arm. [Warning: there are at least 35 megabytes worth of jpegs, which take some time to load. YMMV] Via Presence Server
posted by swift at 11:10 PM PST - 45 comments

Wind-Borne Plants

From Gliders to Parachutes, from the well-loved "helicopters"to the hated Cottonwood, here's everything you need to know about the wind-borne seeds of Summer.
posted by interrobang at 6:54 PM PST - 7 comments

Partly Cloudy

From Terrorist to Community College? Weather Underground (previously commented on here) co-founder Mark Rudd gives an interview to Salon.
posted by protocool at 3:43 PM PST - 25 comments

Japan: 100%

100 Ridiculous Tragedies: they have Pie Charts.
posted by ewagoner at 1:48 PM PST - 11 comments

Caveman Porn

Jurannessic. Paleolithic porn. [NSFW if you work in a cave, via Milk and Cookies.]
posted by homunculus at 1:34 PM PST - 5 comments

take the browser plunge

"It's time to tell our users, our clients, our associates, our families, and our friends to abandon Internet Explorer". Mozilla Firefox 0.9 and Thunderbird 0.7 are out, and today is a great day to make the switch from Internet Explorer and Outlook Express once and for all. Microsoft's own Set Program Access and Defaults feature makes it easy to set everything to use Firefox/Thunderbird and hide IE/OE completely.
posted by reklaw at 1:31 PM PST - 82 comments

Dubya's Dilemma: Daddy Doesn't Support the Iraq War

Dubya's Dilemma: Daddy Doesn't Support the Iraq War The Iraqi war that has so divided Americans is also causing a rift in the family of President George W. Bush. The President’s father, George H.W. Bush – 41st President of the United States – disagrees with his son’s decisions in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, which is why the former President has not commented in public on the war. “The President and I discuss the war privately,” the elder Bush said in an interview earlier this year. “That is the way it will remain.” But sources close to the Bush family say the elder Bush thinks his son has mishandled the war in Iraq.
posted by Postroad at 1:30 PM PST - 27 comments

Paul Johnson executed

Body of Paul Johnson found in Riyadh. Johnson, a New Jersey native, was a contractor working in Saudi Arabia. It appears that he was beheaded, and his execution was photographed and posted on a web site.
posted by MarkO at 1:26 PM PST - 87 comments

Where's my flying car? I want my flying car!!!

It's Official - the future sucks. Why has the future been such a let down? It's more 1984 than Barbarella. If we can have ID cards and video surveillance, then why can't we have intergalactic flying cars and hot chicks in skimpy plastic outfits? Clearly I'm not the only one wondering where all the cool stuff went - check out RetroFuture
posted by dodgygeezer at 1:25 PM PST - 14 comments

Top ten music E-Zine's that start with the letter

Guilty Pleasures (i.e. Def Leppard – “Hysteria”; Justin Timberlake – “Justified”), Essential Albums (i.e. Beastie Boys – “Paul’s Boutique”; The Tragically Hip – “Day for Night” ), and That Damn List Thing (i.e. Everybody Dance Now: 18 Songs That Might Make You Reconsider Disco; Hitched: A 17-Song Tribute to Gay Marriage). Fantastic music related essays and more at Splendid’sDepartments”.
posted by Quartermass at 1:24 PM PST - 21 comments

The Limerick packs jokes anatomical ...

Wordcraft, an on-line community of linguaphiles, best known for its extensive collection of eponyms, has taken on a new and fairly ambitious project -- they're trying to rewrite the entire Oxford English Dictionary -- in limerick form. So far they're only on the a's, but they do seem optimistic.
Shamelessly stolen from languagehat's blog
posted by anastasiav at 12:47 PM PST - 7 comments

Stupid Banner Ads

Stupid Internet Ads. From Scary Crayon. SHOOT TERRORIST WIN IPOD.
posted by brownpau at 12:43 PM PST - 9 comments

Soldiers Under Command!

Soldiers Under Command! - 57mb Quicktime documentary of the Second Annual Stryper Expo.
posted by Peter H at 12:35 PM PST - 7 comments

A Flash animation involving kittens? REVOLUTIONARY!

S'been a hectic week, so chill out. [Flash, also]
posted by Pretty_Generic at 12:11 PM PST - 3 comments

We have your best interests at heart

SOMA, Orgy-Porgy, Centrifugal BumblePuppy help!
posted by Capn at 11:50 AM PST - 17 comments

Mad As Hell

Mad As Hell

First we had Al Gore letting loose with both barrels at NYU, and now Bill Moyers drops the bomb on the poverty gap in this country.

"The rich have the right to buy more homes than anyone else. They have the right to buy more cars than anyone else, more gizmos than anyone else, more clothes and vacations than anyone else. But they do not have the right to buy more democracy than anyone else."

P.S: Earth to Kerry: mebbe you want to talk to one of these guys, they seem to be on to something. Have one of your speech writers give them a call...
posted by piedrasyluz at 10:21 AM PST - 45 comments

Lie to me. Tell me all these years you've waited...

The poet of nightfall Twentyfive years ago, film director Nicholas Ray died in New York. Like Jacques Tati and Samuel Fuller, Ray did a lot of living before he ever got around to filmmaking: he was of part of Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin Fellowship, a devotee of southern folk music, an avant-garde theatre director. He had made Rebel Without a Cause and survived James Dean, and the title of the film seemed to dramatise his terrible, self-destructive battles with Hollywood. His films (They Live By Night, In a Lonely Place, On Dangerous Ground, Johnny Guitar, The Savage Innocents, King of Kings) were in love with imprisoned life, but the dark edge of mourning was always there, too. He was idolised by the young Cahiers du Cinema critics who would become the directors of the New Wave. François Truffaut once noted: "There are no Ray films that do not have a scene at the close of day; he is the poet of nightfall, and of course everything is permitted in Hollywood except poetry." Contrasting Ray and Howard Hawks, he added: "But anyone who rejects either should never go to the movies again, never see any more films". Jean-Luc Godard offered another sweeping panegyric: "There was theatre (Griffith), poetry (Murnau), painting (Rossellini), dance (Eisenstein), music (Renoir). Henceforth there is cinema. And cinema is Nicholas Ray. These days, lucky Chicagoans can admire one of Ray's greatest works, Bitter Victory -- the film about the dangerous games men play with macho self-images... (more inside)
posted by matteo at 10:06 AM PST - 16 comments

marther! clive! drunky!

man who catch fly with chopstick can accomplish anything - friday flashfilter. play nice, kids!
posted by quonsar at 9:05 AM PST - 12 comments

nyctalopia

nyctalopia --- an interactive portfolio. Part puzzle, part artwork. I can't tell you what the payoff is because I got stuck on, like, the 5th page. [note: flash]
posted by crunchland at 9:03 AM PST - 7 comments

Clapton at Chuck E. Cheese's

Clapton at Chuck E. Cheese's
posted by ColdChef at 8:28 AM PST - 29 comments

House size meteorite?

Nah, it couldn't be... ...could it? Was a prediction previously posted to MeFi partially fulfilled, or was it was just an optical illusion?
posted by Stoatfarm at 7:35 AM PST - 22 comments

Psst!

Putin says Iraq planned US attack
posted by terrymiles at 7:20 AM PST - 64 comments

Bison: The Healthier Meat?

Bison is not buffalo according to restauranter Ted Turner. Recently devegetarianized and looking for ways to reintroduce meat it seems bison would be the logical choice as it appears to be the healthier alternative to all other meats including chicken and fish. Plus it's high in omega 3's and the notorious vegetarian and organic purist Dr. Andrew Weil gives it the thumbs up.
posted by oh posey at 6:55 AM PST - 26 comments

Who wouldn't vote for free beer?

Register to vote and you can get free beer! What better way to reach that vast pool of unregistered twenty-one year-olds than offering them something they actually want? Brought to you by the Democrats, of course. But not without some controversy (from health experts, not Republicans), even though they only get two 2-ounce glasses.

Any other examples of inventive voter registration drives out there?
posted by tommasz at 5:09 AM PST - 22 comments

9 designers, 9 cities, 9 chairs

Un-Fold. (quicktime clip) City Magazine asked 9 designers, from 9 cities across the world to design a chair in 90 days. Oh, and it had to fit in a FedEx box. Pics and more about the designers and the project.
posted by madamjujujive at 3:12 AM PST - 26 comments

BlueStarPR

This postcard (possible NSFW), likens Israel to a small penis in a speedo. If it's small on your monitor, there is a larger PDF version. Confused yet? It turns out blueStarPR produces several other curious pro-Israel postcards, including this one, featuring Ray Charles (who knew?). I have to give them props for being funny and slick. Some of their material is pretty extreme, though, such as this one, which likens the Jews to the Navajo, with the punchline: "Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism." Then there's this one, about Israel's liberal gays-in-the-military policy (I think they actually have to serve, don't they?). An interesting mix of humor, media, and politics. [warning: propaganda]
posted by scarabic at 2:24 AM PST - 14 comments

June 17

Thy Name be Cognitive Dissonance

Bush Insists on Iraq-Al Qaeda Links Despite Report
Not knowing when to give up and admit that he was wrong, Mr. Bush is digging in his heels and insisting, in spite of the 9/11 commision's findings to the contrary, that Saddam Hussein and Al-Queda are linked.

Said Mr. Bush, "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda."

I guess that'll be good enough for just under half the population.
posted by fenriq at 11:39 PM PST - 86 comments

He sure can down a cheeseburger

Michael Moore witheld Abu Ghraib torture footage - So, when do we get to see it, Michael ? Liberal torture apologia is OK then ?
posted by troutfishing at 10:58 PM PST - 39 comments

Findory Blogory

Findory Bloggery is an an aggregator with a difference--this one (supposedly) learns which types of stories you enjoy reading, automatically suggesets more, and doesn't require a login.
posted by arto at 9:12 PM PST - 8 comments

Crazy

Hammers, once the pop culture for music, suddenly become popular weapons of death. Why? Anyone else find this odd?
posted by shepd at 8:26 PM PST - 23 comments

Fire GL Mod

Do you have an ATI Radeon video card? If so, Adrian's Rojak Pot has a story up that shows you how to convert your Radeon based video card into a Fire GL card, with no physical modification through a process which modifies the video BIOS. The difference primarily between a normal Radeon video card and a Fire GL card is (drum roll.....) $120+ dollars, and enhancements designed for CAD and rendering programs. (entire list of certified programs that take advantage of Fire GL are in this PDF, including Adobe Premier) Video BIOS images are available here. Of course, modding your video card is certainly nothing new, as hacking ones BIOS can be an easy (if not somewhat dangerous) way to get more power from your investment. (Note: Although you can save a bad flash, the process is somewhat difficult. Attempt mod at your own risk.)
posted by Keyser Soze at 7:28 PM PST - 33 comments

Who gets what?

Revenue Watch, yet another project from Soros' Open Society Institute, brings you research, information, and advocacy on how revenues from natural resources are being invested and disbursed--and how responsive governments and companies are to demands for accountability. Currently focused on Azerbaijan, Iraq, and Kazahkstan, you can find information on everything from the CPA's rush to award contracts in Iraq before June 30, to reports on the Caspian Oil Boom, to journalist training and full transcripts of international conferences.
posted by amberglow at 3:21 PM PST - 4 comments

Fantastique!

Galleries of the Society for Art of Imagination. [via Clifford Pickover's Reality Carnival]
We intend to assist the resurgence of interest in fantastic and visionary art and make the Art of Imagination accessible to all...
posted by moonbird at 3:14 PM PST - 4 comments

not even good looking

Meet the Weblog. Time Magazine describes the trendy fascination with online digests.
posted by plexi at 2:04 PM PST - 30 comments

Doctors put spotlight on Plan B pill

Doctors put spotlight on Plan B pill The American Medical Association voiced its support for over-the-counter sales of morning-after birth control, saying the Food and Drug Administration was wrong to reject such sales and urging doctors to write advance prescriptions.
posted by Postroad at 1:24 PM PST - 9 comments

Prom Story

Prom Story In a series of essays at Slate (1, 2, 3) a journalist in his mid-20s lightheartedly recounts the experience of escorting a 17-year-old girl to her high-school prom (purely for journalistic purposes, it's worth noting). Posters at Slate's reader discussion forum, in spite of its supremely cumbersome interface, express their strong (and not always coherent) disapproval, based mostly on the age difference between the author and his prom date. The author of the essays responds: "As the film critic Richard Roeper (who is much older, and much more influential than myself) pointed out in Esquire recently, this is indeed a strange cultural moment, one made all the stranger by the fact that we're not supposed to admit [it] actually exists." I'm not the biggest fan of journalists who engage in seemingly socially taboo behavior for the sole purpose of writing an article, but this made for interesting reading nonetheless.
posted by Prospero at 11:52 AM PST - 53 comments

The piracy police are out to annoy you...

Fed up with anti-piracy warnings in your local cinema? Why not take a picture?
posted by Katemonkey at 10:40 AM PST - 54 comments

Mutant Variety

Ray Abeyta. "At first glance, many of Abeyta's works appear to be Spanish colonial paintings dating from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. However, the artist incorporates present-day imagery with Spanish colonial and indigenous elements." A short bio and history here. Here's one of my favorites.
posted by protocool at 10:15 AM PST - 4 comments

Rumsfeld hidews prisoner from Red Cross

Pentagon officials tell NBC News that late last year, at the same time U.S. military police were allegedly abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered that one Iraqi prisoner be held “off the books” — hidden entirely from the International Red Cross and anyone else — in possible violation of international law.
posted by hipnerd at 9:32 AM PST - 58 comments

covert ops

splinter -- despite an 11pm curfew imposed by your girlfriend, you have returned home very late from a drink fest with your mates. You've forgotten your keys and you must now gain entrance to your flat and get into bed without upsetting your light sleeping girlfriend. [note: shockwave, alt link <--- nsfw banner ads]
posted by crunchland at 8:53 AM PST - 23 comments

Dr. Cat v. Dog, Esq.

Doctors refuse laywers. So your last client managed to get restitution from that quack who left the clamp in her abdomen, just in time to pay for your daughter's delivery. Good luck finding an OB. Or perhaps your husband works for a law firm. Good luck with that nursing job. Maybe you're a neurosurgeon making less take-home than your insurance premiums. What are you going to say to the next ambulance chaser with migrane trouble? The war between the two solitudes could start racking up a real body-count.
posted by bonehead at 8:36 AM PST - 56 comments

Ecclesiastical Architecture, et al.

The Churchmouse: Ecclesiastical Architecture, Stained Glass, Church Monuments and other Funerary Monuments such as Cast Iron Grave Markers.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 7:56 AM PST - 3 comments

The Kingdom Of God Is Within You

Dear Leo, Dear Mohandas "The longer I live -- especially now when I clearly feel the approach of death -- the more I feel moved to express what I feel more strongly than anything else... the doctrine of the law of love unperverted by sophistries. Love... the highest and indeed the only law of life". The Kingdom of God Is Within You (full text available) is Leo Tolstoy's tractatus of "Christianity Not as a Mystic Religion but as a New Theory of Life", a primer of (among other things) the doctrine of non-violence. Among the many fans of the 1894 book was an imprisoned Hindu barrister, a "half-naked fakir" if you want, a certain Mohandas K. Gandhi who was fascinated by "the independent thinking, profound morality, and the truthfulness" of the book. So he ended up writing fan letters to the great Russian man: who warmly wrote back to his young Indian "friend and brother". The old wise Christian anarchist literary giant and the shy, insecure young man who sparked a revolution: to paraphrase another wise, badly-dressed , pacifist old man, "Generations to come, it may be, will scarcely believe that such men ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth."
posted by matteo at 7:48 AM PST - 16 comments

We said the free speech zone was over there, liberal scum

Weapons that can incapacitate crowds of people by sweeping a lightning-like beam of electricity across them are being readied for sale to military and police forces in the US and Europe. From guns that shoot streams of conductive fibers to plasma that will stop a truck, the military and the police are getting whole new ways to deal with protestors.
posted by dejah420 at 7:10 AM PST - 29 comments

Bear Wanders Into Hospital in Franklin VA

A 350 pound black bear wandered through the automatic doors of Carilion Franklin Memorial Hospital. After being trapped in a computer room, law enforcement officers killed the bear. Sadly, as suburbs and towns grow out into the country, more bears are getting the worse of their relationship to humans.
posted by borkus at 7:04 AM PST - 18 comments

Church-Turing thesis

Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design. Tanenbaum and Torvalds discuss the future of kernel design.
posted by the fire you left me at 6:22 AM PST - 13 comments

England Hooligans On Tour

It's time to send the team home: "England has bred a contemporary culture of immoderation at every level, with particular reference to drinking and fighting. The recent Panorama programme on weekend binge-drinking in city centres provided a wake-up call, as should the novelist Andrew O'Hagan's admirable essay on current British attitudes to masculinity, reprinted in yesterday's G2." (via The Guardian)
posted by n o i s e s at 6:17 AM PST - 27 comments

no talent AZ clowns in 11th place!!

Young But Legal, Shays Lounge and the Swinging Johnsons, and Pete Sessions and the Wicked Kitten Militia. This year's battle of the bands losers? No, it's just a small selection from the roster of the Congressional Softball League. Some of the teams even have their own blogs.
posted by jessamyn at 5:53 AM PST - 4 comments

Thinking About It Twice, This *Is* Alright

Music That Paints a Picture
Whether you're a fan of Biggie or Dylan, this Flash project has you covered.
posted by yerfatma at 4:43 AM PST - 9 comments

Slushkiller

Why does no-one recognise my genius? A guide for aspiring authors on how not to deal with rejection slips.
posted by etc at 2:47 AM PST - 21 comments

June 16

Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld, et al

Consider Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, military defense attorney, now representing Salim Ahmed Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni who admits he was a driver for Osama bin Laden, a prisoner at Guantanamo since 2002. He was transferred to solitary confinement in December in preparation for trial, but no trial date has been set. He has been told the trial will be fair but that evidence may be withheld from him, and his lawyer must ask the government's permission before revealing any facts of the case. He can seek redress only up the chain of command--in other words, to the people who decided he should be charged in the first place. Swift has filed lawsuit in Federal District Court in Seattle against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and President George W. Bush, arguing not only that Hamdan is an innocent civilian, but that the military tribunal President Bush's administration created to try him is unconstitutional. Also, he says, the tribunal rules violate military law and the Geneva Conventions. If the government is right and Hamdan cannot use this legal avenue, "the logical result" is that Hamdan "could serve a potential life sentence without ever being charged with a crime and without being afforded a chance to prove his innocence," legal filings state. (More Within)
posted by y2karl at 11:57 PM PST - 21 comments

Vonly You

Scientists find rodent monogamy gene. Emory researchers say that a single gene can change promiscuous rodents into faithful partners. Insert a certain gene of the monogamous prairie vole into the brain of the normally slutty meadow vole, and suddenly the meadow vole stops going to bars and hitting on other field mice. Previously, the same scientists' extensive research uncovered a vole sociability gene. In addition to its implications for autism and Asperger's Syndrome, the study could spawn the next reality show hit, "Who Wants a Monogamy Implant?" (Would you do it, if you could?)
posted by onlyconnect at 9:15 PM PST - 21 comments

Animation Training

AnimationMentor. [Flash].
In case you want to learn animation from home.
posted by Gyan at 7:07 PM PST - 9 comments

Got Fried

Fried Society is not a new comic strip, nor has it been updated in quite a long time. But it remains the most insightful use of the medium I've ever seen.
posted by effugas at 7:01 PM PST - 8 comments

Really Angry Veterans

The Swift Boat Veterans video you didn't hear about. Shown on CSPAN-2, now available on their website (downloadable video in WMV format), but not widely reported by any major news service. The angriest group of Vietnam vets you might ever see--men who served with and around John Kerry, united in their opposition to his becoming President. Part 1 Part 2
posted by kablam at 6:32 PM PST - 99 comments

A molecular biologist's best friend

Just when you think all government endeavors are going to hell, the National Center for Biotechnology Information comes to the rescue (well, has been coming to the scientist near you since 1988). For free, search everything from dna sequences in organisms where the genome is known to searching known Mendelian inheritances for Homo Sapiens (example here). Also of much use and interest is PudMed with the ability to search and read virtually any established molecular biology paper.
posted by jmd82 at 5:53 PM PST - 4 comments

2004 Power Tool Drag Races

Pictures are up from the 2004 Power Tool Drag Races (brought to SF by Charlie and Jim), an event in which people retrofit store bought power tools for racing down a track. The Ridden Class re-rigs tools to locomote vehicles. Several action-packed movies (and one boring one) can be found here. Our own CTP (in hat-->) took 2nd!
[Note: the Qbox site lists multiple photo galleries off-site. Some of them have NSFW pictures.]
posted by scarabic at 5:47 PM PST - 7 comments

The City of God

The City of God (#29 IMDB top 250) is a film about life in Brazilian "favelas" (shantytowns) where poverty, drugs, violence and crime rule the streets. At murder rates of more than 40 per 100,000, one person shot every 30 minutes in the city, Rio ranks as the world's most dangerous places along with Cali, Colombia and Johannesburg, South Africa. Rio has over 600 favelas and the crime and violence is becoming so bad corporations are fleeing the city while the military is under direct assault and the prison system is breaking down. Favela guided tours available or see the movie available now on DVD.
posted by stbalbach at 5:41 PM PST - 28 comments

Virtual Replay

Virtual Replay - Shockwave recreation of the major incidents in all the Euro 2004 matches. Select from multiple cameras, players' viewpoints or even the point of view of the ball. note - doesn't seem to work in Firefox.
posted by chill at 4:03 PM PST - 13 comments

Military Medicine

The Textbooks of Military Medicine. An engrossing collection of pdf versions of textbooks used to train military medics. My favorite one is the one on War Psychiatry, which includes summaries of studies that have been done on veterans of WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, and another section on POWs and their phychiatric reactions (perhaps it might explain some things about Kerry or McCain?). Other topics include Medical Aspects of Harsh Environments (Vol. 1), Medical Aspects of Chemical and Biological Warfare, and Medical Consequences of Nuclear Warfare (<-- pdf file).
posted by acridrabbit at 2:06 PM PST - 4 comments

Antique American Posters

Poster Glory: Antique American Posters.
posted by hama7 at 1:47 PM PST - 7 comments

Operators Standing By

You Too Can Profit From The War on Terra "You’d think with both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars well under way and with the war on terrorism being more than two years old that the share price of any bullet proof vest manufacturer would be fully valued. Not so! The company that manufactures the amazing life saving bullet proof vests that Sgt. Travis L. McKinney wrote to from the Iraq front line is not only undervalued but is a screaming takeover candidate that is poised to enjoy an up to 450% increase in its stock price." Operators are standing by...
posted by owillis at 1:43 PM PST - 10 comments

Defining Deviancy Down

Defining Deviancy Down In 1993, one of our greatest statesmen, Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan (D- N.Y.) published one of the most important pieces of social theory entitled "Defining Deviancy Down." Moynihan started from Emile Durkheim's proposition that there is a limit to the amount of deviant behavior any community can "afford to recognize" (called the "Durkheim Constant"). As the amount of deviancy increases, the community has to adjust its standards so that conduct once thought deviant is no longer deemed so. Consequently, if we are not vigilant about enforcing them, our standards would be constantly devolving in order to normalize rampant deviancy. Shortly after Moynihan's article, Charles Krauthammer offered his now-famous response to Moynihan's article in which he argued that the corollary is that society can also "define deviancy up."

Moynihan's theory has been applied to movies, courage, dress codes, sexual indiscretions, corporate behavior, and possibly even to webpages. One might feel compelled to ask, "Do standards even mean anything?" Today, the debate still rages about where we ought to be defeatist about the devolution of standards, or whether we can right the boat by establishing base principles and fight to raise standards up.
posted by Seth at 1:35 PM PST - 61 comments

Ponzi!

What's a Ponzi Scheme? Enron was described as a Ponzi scheme. Social security has also been described as a Ponzi scheme. The originator of this scheme was Carlo Ponzi who led an interesting life and bought a nice pink house with his ill-gotten gains. There's even a website where you can read about him in more detail, including the intro to his autobiography.
posted by dodgygeezer at 1:32 PM PST - 9 comments

Operation Shoe Fly

Operation Shoe Fly • From Afghanistan, Sgt Hook writes, "So my esteemed friends of the blogosphere...I announce the beginning of Operation Shoe Fly in an effort to shoe the children with no shoes on their feet. If you can collect the shoes, used or new, boys' and girls' (age 14 and under), and send them to me, my crewdogs and I will fly them out to the Afghani kids who so desperately need them."
posted by dhoyt at 12:26 PM PST - 38 comments

Virus Inflicts James Joyce on Mobile Phone Users

Bloomsday Virus Inflicts James Joyce on Mobile Phone Users
The first ever computer virus that can infect mobile phones has been discovered, anti-virus software developers said today, rendering many phones virtually useless.

The virus was apparently released in time for the 100th anniversary of the eponymous literary holiday. It infects the Symbian operating system that is used in several makes of mobiles, notably the Nokia brand, and propagates through the new bluetooth wireless technology that is in several new mobile phones.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 11:56 AM PST - 18 comments

What’s his accomplishment? That he’s no longer an obnoxious drunk?

Reagan's Son is Not Too Impressed. [An interesting Article from Salon, More Inside.]
posted by chunking express at 11:44 AM PST - 32 comments

fucking

Have you heard of Fucking? In Austria? According to Wikipedia, Fucking's sign is "the most often stolen street sign in Austria". Despite the cost of constantly replacing the sign, however, residents of the small village thankfully refuse to change its name.
posted by reklaw at 9:47 AM PST - 43 comments

Avatars

These days, we remember the age of legends by reliving them, virtually. Is it a sign of the fall of civilization when modern leaders are so bland as to be indistinguishable from one another? Oh how I miss the golden years.
posted by zekinskia at 8:44 AM PST - 3 comments

And don't forget your SPF-256 sunblock

Consciousness Timeline ll : 1970 - Present (summer reading) Here's a wee summer reading list - on human consciousness and more. A few from the list : Stanislav Grof (altered state/transpersonal consciousness), Charles Tart (altered state/consciousness research), Chogyam Trungpa (Buddhism), Jean Houston, James Hillman, Ralph Abraham (Chaos, Gaia, and Eros), Howard Rheingold (being himself), Mihaly Csikszentmihaly (On "flow"), Joanna Macy, John Lilly (Dolphins, LSD, and more!), James Gleick (Chaos Theory), Thomas Berry, Rianne Eisler, Howard Gardner, Stephen Laberge (Lucid dreaming), Sam Keen (on the manufacture of the "enemy"), James Lovelock (Gaia Theory), Eugene Gendlin ("Focusing"), Hazel Henderson (An alternative economics - for human beings), Jeffrey Mishlove ("The Roots of Consciousness"), Michael Harner (leading world authority on Shamanism), Amory Lovins (on alternative energy), Elaine Pagels ("The Gnostic Gospels"), Huston Smith (on World religions), Ilya Prigogine ("dissipative structures")....now, to the beach.
posted by troutfishing at 7:54 AM PST - 23 comments

When the circus came to town...

Defunct amusement parks. It has postcards and historical photos. It also has relatively current photos of parks in various states of disrepair. A great site for fans of entropy, like myself. (via Linkfilter)
posted by jester69 at 7:21 AM PST - 27 comments

Spate! It wins votes

The spite factor - Or, why Democrats are in danger of losing their wonderful, angry momentum.
posted by Space Coyote at 7:12 AM PST - 40 comments

All the presidents' presidents

US Presidents: Lists and Records. For Presidential Historians and Trivia addicts only. More inside
posted by psmealey at 6:22 AM PST - 5 comments

Mark VII

Commodore 64 Hip-Hop that you might enjoy, depending on your tolerance for lowfi obsoleet funk freakin.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 5:45 AM PST - 28 comments

Dramatic photographic essays

Dramatic photographic essays on a variety of themes from the Bilderberg Archiv der Fotografen. I particularly liked "mazes," "water rooms" and "Kenya."
posted by madamjujujive at 4:38 AM PST - 11 comments

Grim Numbers

Winning hearts and minds in Iraq (or anywhere else, for that matter)? Not really. Check this U.S.-sponsored poll, then pray and hope for the best.
posted by acrobat at 4:15 AM PST - 19 comments

Pitchformula: music criticism as a creative tool

pitchformula.com This project combines a computer science background and a songwriting hobby with an unhealthy obsession for popular music reviews. In it, I attempt to come up with a new computer-assisted songwriting method which takes music critics' opinions into account. By writing software to statisically analyze the content of several thousand record reviews from the Pitchfork music website (www.pitchforkmedia.com), I generate a set of compositional guidelines based on the musical preferences expressed by the critics. I then use those guidelines to write and record a couple of original songs, discussing in detail the relationships between the songs and the data that I have collected. [via music (for robots)]
posted by soundofsuburbia at 3:51 AM PST - 18 comments

Creepy-crawly close-ups

My Tiny Garden. (Note: Flash; via milton.)
posted by misteraitch at 2:23 AM PST - 5 comments

June 15

'Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.'

'To-day, 16 June 1924 twenty years after. Will anyone remember this date?"
posted by riviera at 11:57 PM PST - 21 comments

Our Bicycling Heritage

High wheels, hard tired, pneumatics and children. The Wheelmen is a national, non-profit organization dedicated to keeping alive the heritage of American cycling, promoting the restoration and riding of early cycles (1918 or earlier), and encouraging cycling as part of modern living.
posted by quonsar at 11:09 PM PST - 13 comments

LifeSwitch

Nice Flash , weird experience. These guys say they will help you get a new life on another continent, in a new city. Take the ”psychometric test”, but somehow you always end up in the Bolivian slum. Of course, it's not what it appears to be. Is it good or bad advertising? It's called LifeSwitch.
posted by Termite at 10:41 PM PST - 16 comments

On Waking Up and Living The Mindful Life

Our discussion of the human condition centers around a basic but seldom accepted or understood idea: We are "asleep", compared to what we could be. We are caught in illusions while thinking we are perceiving reality.
On Waking Up by Charles Tart, who provided my introduction to Gurdjieff. I am currently reading his Living The Mindful Life. As a perusal of his site will reveal, he is interested as well in the psychedelic experience, altered states, the paranormal, psi, out-of-body experiences, near death experiences, remote viewing and the whole woo woo schmear. All these are of less interest to me. He does provide a good introduction to Gurdjieff, however. There are more links within.
posted by y2karl at 10:28 PM PST - 19 comments

Unreal or Really Real?

Plain Layne, a compelling weblogger from Minneapolis, appears to have disappeared (in the internet sense) leaving many of her cult followers grasping at straws. Aside from the cryptic Polish message left on her site, many are wondering: Was she even real?
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 8:42 PM PST - 41 comments

German Helmets

The Online Reference Guide to World War II German Helmets 1933-1945.
posted by starscream at 6:40 PM PST - 31 comments

Fileshare Networking

CleverCactus Share Combine the social networking aspect of Orkut and Friendster with the filesharing aspect of programs like Kazaa and WinMX, and you get clevercactus share. Get the RIAA off your back by only sharing file folders with people you actually know. Throw in encrypted transfers and platform-independency as a bonus. General Public release is scheduled for tomorrow, but you can sign up and start today.
posted by quasistoic at 6:40 PM PST - 73 comments

Terrible affair that General Slocum explosion...

One hundred years ago today, 1,358 members of the Kleindeutschland, the German neighborhood on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, boarded a chartered ferry named the General Slocum for a picnic excursion to Long Island. A fire broke out in the ship's hold while it cruised up the East River, the captain ran the vessel aground on the rocky shores of North Brother Island amid the swift currents of Hell Gate, and when it was all over 1,021 people (mainly women and children) had perished by drowning or from the fire, and it remained the worst single-day New York City disaster until 9/11.
posted by Vidiot at 6:09 PM PST - 16 comments

too...many...bands

Underexposed displays an exhaustive list of little-known rock bands seen live by the proprietor. With photos and a near-functional guestbook. UK-centric.
posted by LionIndex at 5:49 PM PST - 3 comments

Making over Mona

Making over Mona.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 5:04 PM PST - 5 comments

The Web's #1 Axe In My Head Page

"Oh my god! There's an axe in my head"
posted by anastasiav at 3:38 PM PST - 21 comments

The Old DuMont

Forty years before Fox, America had ABC, CBS, NBC and the DuMont Television Network.
posted by LinusMines at 3:04 PM PST - 6 comments

Pop goes the Gmail

Ain't this grand? Pop Goes the Gmail is a program that sits between the http://gmail.com web server and your email client, converting messages from web format into POP3 format that a program such as Outlook Express or Thunderbird can understand.
posted by sunexplodes at 3:00 PM PST - 43 comments

Kiitos, Kalevi!

Europe's oldest language? Kalevi Wiik makes the argument that most of Europe may have spoken a proto Finno-Ugric language before the appearance of Indo-European speakers in the region. It's still controversial a few years after the paper was published (and likely always will be).

Modern European derivitives of the language in question are Hungarian, the Ugric branch's sole representative in Europe, (although it has relatives in central Asia), as well as the Finnic Finnish, Estonian, Karelian (which is considered by some to be a dialect of Finnish and not a separate language), Izhora and Veps (which are both disputed in language v. dialect and are nearly dead), Vod (which is dead), Liv (which is dead and doesn't Google well), and the Saami languages, which have about 10 dialects and a sufficiently different grammar and lexicon that it gets the "strange cousin" title.
posted by Mayor Curley at 2:57 PM PST - 58 comments

360 Degrees

360 Degrees :: Perspectives on the U.S. Criminal Justice System. { flash | html }
posted by dobbs at 1:37 PM PST - 3 comments

Citycat's Railway Web Site

Citycat's Railway Web Site.
posted by hama7 at 1:27 PM PST - 3 comments

Magazine Art.

MagazineArt.org: a free visual database of magazine cover art from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 1:20 PM PST - 5 comments

discussing words and pictures

The Webcomics Examiner launched earlier this week. Finally, a well-written magazine of criticism for online comics.
posted by Peter H at 12:56 PM PST - 9 comments

Trial by news conference

Laywer/novelist Scott Turow (non-wp, non-reg-req. link) and Nat Hentoff discuss the DOJ's decision to release a declassified document detailing the possible charges against Jose Padilla, at the same time as the U.S. Supreme Court nears a decision on the constitutionality of holding Padilla without due process ... "So at this point, you have no plans to present any of this to a grand jury?"
posted by mrgrimm at 12:19 PM PST - 8 comments

absinthe legal in Switzerland

Finally absinthe is legal in Switzerland. After nearly a century of believing the hype that the green liquor could lead people to madness, the Swiss government now realizes leagalizing "would actually enable authorities to control the production of the alcohol and tax its sales."
posted by tsarfan at 11:12 AM PST - 32 comments

Heifer International

A Living Loan
In 1936, a Midwestern farmer named Dan West travelled to Spain to serve as a relief worker in the chaos of the Spanish Civil War. Ladling out rations of milk to hungry children, he realized that he was being forced to decide who would receive the limited rations and who wouldn’t – literally, who would live and who would die. This kind of aid, he knew, would never be enough. He returned to the United States in 1938 and began working to build a better kind of aid.
posted by Irontom at 10:39 AM PST - 8 comments

iTunes, iTunes, iTunes

Finally, iTunes Launches.
posted by seanyboy at 9:34 AM PST - 25 comments

Secular government, extremist population

Secular government, extremist population? How is this going to play out? Where is America headed? Europe, France in particular, may face secular challenges because of imigration and subculture integration, but what's the excuse on the other side of the Atlantic? Is the US prepared to challenge the Middle East and Africa for the coveted Most Fundamentalist Population Prize?
posted by ewkpates at 8:58 AM PST - 14 comments

A Couple of Large Pieces, Joined at the Hip

Akamai is having some issues. It turns out a lot of really large companies use Akamai as their DNS host and apparently most of their DNS servers are no longer responding. And it's not like this is the first time. Geeks are in a tizzy. Whither the decentralized network?
posted by bshort at 8:15 AM PST - 19 comments

Score one for the SNES hipster look.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (2d). Though the original 3d version on the Nintendo 64 is still one the best of the series, Daniel Barris's recreation of the game is graphically allowing Ocarina of Time to take its rightful place beside the reigning champion, A Link to the Past (flash required). The lack of a 3d Epona aside, it just feels right.
posted by Potloaf at 8:07 AM PST - 30 comments

Soon to be "Ripped From The Headlines" on Law & Order

Murder Most Foul? Yesterday, Dave Winer, the self-described "inventor of blogs", abruptly pulled the plug on 3000 blogs being hosted by weblogs.com, saying simply, "I can't afford to host these sites. I don't want to start a site hosting business. These are firm, non-negotiable statements." He's giving his hostees a couple of weeks to request an export of their site content, but they're otherwise S.O.L. Not surprisingly, some people are a little bent out of shape, particularly since the blogs just disappeared without any prior notice. (P.S. What happened to "Blogroots"?)
posted by briank at 6:22 AM PST - 88 comments

Redemption

Redemption? At the risk of linking to another Something Awful thread and incurring their wrath, I think it's important to point this out, especially here. In the matter of a few short days, the users over there emptied their paypal accounts to help someone in need. They raised $12,000 in four days.
posted by crunchland at 6:14 AM PST - 10 comments

Yahoo vs. Gmail

Yahoo feels the heat. Yahoo webmail users logged in this morning to find that they suddenly have mailboxes with 100MB capacity, can send emails up to 5MB in size, and have a much nicer-looking interface.
posted by bingo at 6:06 AM PST - 51 comments

A history of presidential campaign commercials, 1952-2000

A history of presidential campaign commercials, 1952-2000
In 1968, presidential candidate Richard Nixon was sitting in the office of Roger Ailes, a producer on The Mike Douglas Show, before a taping of the program. Nixon remarked, "It's too bad a guy has to rely on a gimmick like television to get elected." Ailes responded, "Television is no gimmick, and nobody will ever be elected to major office again without presenting themselves well on it." This is an exhibition from the American Museum of the Moving Image which provides the advertising spots of the candidates for US president.
Real/Windows Media Player only, server is slow as molasses
posted by tcp at 4:37 AM PST - 6 comments

fantasyworldorder

fantasyworldorder Difficult questions asked without political bias.
posted by ollybee at 3:16 AM PST - 24 comments

June 14

The Hoosier Hot Shot Show

Are you ready, Hezzie? I have a complicated family history that allows be to be simultaneously from Washington state and Indiana. Over the last few years my tastes have migrated toward post-rock and traditional music played with a certain frantic desperation. Somehow, I knew that Indiana was a crossroads for these styles of music - but somehow, I missed out on the Hoosier Hot Shots, apparent popularizers of the beloved washboard!
posted by mwhybark at 10:29 PM PST - 4 comments

feed your eyes!

netdiver, a new media design portal and digital culture magazine. If you care at all about webdesign, you should see this. (Though I found it through random surfing, it was also an answer to an old question of mine.)
posted by signal at 9:27 PM PST - 8 comments

Keep the dream alive

Movies for Music
From the press release: "Movies for Music" (moviesformusic.org) is an online film contest with a simple aim: to give the public a clear and honest look at the music industry. As more people learn how the music business works, major label CD sales will plummet faster. The contest launches Monday.

The short film contest launched today, and first place is a ZVue handheld video player.
posted by bob sarabia at 6:30 PM PST - 3 comments

Speak Deutsch?

Being Bilingual Protects Against Some Age-related Cognitive Changes.
Full paper link.
posted by Gyan at 6:28 PM PST - 20 comments

Michael Moore's

AP reports that Michael Moore's upcoming film "Fahrenheit 9/11" was given an 'R' rating today by the MPAA. The same MPAA that says violence is much more acceptable than sex. The same MPAA that has close ties to the FCC, running roughshod over First Ammendment freedoms. The same MPAA headed by Jack Valenti who played himself in Freakazoid! a cooky cartoon about superheroes that save Washington D.C. Email him if you disagree at jvalenti@mpaa.org or call the MPAA 818-995-6600 x396.
posted by heyadam at 6:18 PM PST - 82 comments

we're at war, right? so?

The Allen Plan --a very interesting alternative to the possible coming draft. Makes perfect sense to me.
posted by amberglow at 5:57 PM PST - 40 comments

cassini visits saturn

Cassini's present position. Next stop: the ring plane. Phoebe sure looks mangled. Previous post here.
posted by yoga at 5:27 PM PST - 2 comments

Creating a Dot Com in 24 Hours

The 24 Hour Dot Com. Two Swedish students at the 'Wizards of OS' conference in Berlin decided to start a dot com, build it up, and cash in within twenty four hours. Their IRC logs make great reading to see how they bought the PR and 'product' together. The dot com has now 'IPOed' and is available to buy on eBay.
posted by wackybrit at 5:25 PM PST - 8 comments

The Apartheid Wall continues.

The Apartheid Wall continues. Haaretz reports that Israel will soon begin construction of the wall around the illegal settlement of Ariel , deep inside the West Bank, stealing thousands of acres of Palestinian farmland in the process.
posted by Ty Webb at 4:02 PM PST - 62 comments

A Temporary Coup

"A Temporary Coup" -- after a brief commercial, read Salon's interview with CIA historian Thomas Powers, who wrote The Trouble with the CIA and The Failure previously for the NYRB, and herein relates a tale of terror and truly Byzantine intrigue.
posted by y2karl at 2:28 PM PST - 6 comments

Secret world of US jails

Secret world of US jails The United States government, in conjunction with key allies, is running an 'invisible' network of prisons and detention centres into which thousands of suspects have disappeared without trace since the 'war on terror' began. In the past three years, thousands of alleged militants have been transferred around the world by American, Arab and Far Eastern security services, often in secret operations that by-pass extradition laws. The astonishing traffic has seen many, including British citizens, sent from the West to countries where they can be tortured to extract information. Anything learnt is passed on to the US and, in some cases, reaches British intelligence.
posted by Postroad at 2:11 PM PST - 34 comments

Agent Orange

Vietnam's war against Agent Orange. "The Vietnam War ended in 1975, but the scourge of dioxin contamination from a herbicide known as Agent Orange did not."
posted by homunculus at 1:46 PM PST - 12 comments

All that flesh and all those chains is a recipe for disaster

The World Naked Bike Ride unfortunately took place yesterday, but is probably something worth doing next year. I imagine it's a lot like Critical Mass, with less driver anger and more rider embarrassment. Sounds like it was fun in Portland. (slightly NSFW photo on the front page of WNBR)
posted by mathowie at 12:54 PM PST - 27 comments

Supreme Court ducks pledge question.

The Supreme Court ruled today that Michael Newdow did not have standing to sue on behalf of his daughter in challenging the recitation of the pledge in a public school classroom in California.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 11:45 AM PST - 80 comments

Car Traditions

Show Me Your Motor! "Some guy once said he had an awesome car he imported from Japan. No one believed him so we said "take a picture of a carton of milk, bread, and a sign that says "Initial D World" or "IDW" in your passenger seat". He responded saying "Ok, when I get milk tomorrow". We never heard from him again but it has evolved into doing it on the hood instead." Tradition! Tradition! Car traditions! [Via AlexChat]
posted by azul at 11:40 AM PST - 11 comments

Calling K10K!

300 images from 1800 sites. Ro London sifted through icons from Fortune 1000 company sites, major online retailers, well known blogs, top advertising, publishing, and design agencies, technology and software industry leaders, & the very largest online news publisher and created a collection of the most interesting, unique, and beautiful formations of pixels to display. [via svn]
posted by riffola at 11:15 AM PST - 13 comments

New Political Protest Ideas

Signal Orange has an idea to protest the Republican National Convention. Sounds a lot more effect than some other plans going around.
posted by gwint at 10:44 AM PST - 25 comments

Mike and John and Yoko make your day

We'll Be Right Back For a full week in February 1972, Mike Douglas (warning: pop-up ads; page design) featured John Lennon and Yoko Ono as co-hosts of his hit afternoon talk show. The accompanying mash-up of counterculture and the mainstream must have been interesting to watch (at least to the Nixon administration). The folks at Rhino Home Video were kind enough to leave behind Stephen K. Peeples' extensive liner notes (see links 2-8 at bottom of page).
posted by LinusMines at 10:23 AM PST - 1 comment

Before and After

Before and After
Cosmetic surgery was born 2,500 years ago and came of age in the inferno of the Western Front. The Great War not only gave birth to plastic surgery as a modern medical specialty but also marked a rare moment when the proponents of reconstructive or “serious” surgery and the defenders of cosmetic or “frivolous” surgery declared a truce in what would become a long and morally charged battle.
posted by Irontom at 9:43 AM PST - 3 comments

Invisibility cloak!

Invisibility cloak! "The idea is very simple. If you project background image onto the masked object, you can observe the masked object just as if it were virtually transparent". The Optical Camouflage page has more applications and video of a (nearly) invisible man. (First seen in Time's coolest of 2003)
posted by iffley at 9:32 AM PST - 10 comments

Alcohol Powder

Alcohol powder is a new product on the US market. It is classified as a flavoring, despite being 60 proof, and doesn't require any kind of license or special handling for purchase. You can apparently use it as a flavoring for many different recipes. I'm not sure if it will actually get you tipsy since the page mentions that it is "denatured". (courtesy of the Vice Squad).
posted by rks404 at 8:13 AM PST - 19 comments

Dracunculiasis

A worm that builds a home inside the human body, lives there happily until breeding time, then begins a journey to emerge from the skin and find a body of water to lay its eggs in. Although this may very well be a pleasant journey for the worm, for the human, it's an excrutiating one. And so we begin The Tale of the Guinea Worm.
posted by Space Coyote at 7:43 AM PST - 9 comments

gezelligheid

H2OLLAND. Get your feet wet with an exposition of projects.
posted by four panels at 7:31 AM PST - 3 comments

Tapeworm Collective

Tapeworm Collective is an online music collaboration project. The purpose of this site is to exchange sound and media files for the sake of creating music. The published mp3's are a result of this collaborative process. [via die puny humans]
posted by soundofsuburbia at 6:43 AM PST - 3 comments

Denizens of New Crobuzon?

Wonderfully surreal. Five galleries of (literally) fantastic, mostly figurative images by Maggie Taylor. Serendipity has me reading Perdido Street Station at the moment, and these quaintly eerie portraits seem almost as though they could have been plucked from Miéville's mythic population of bizarre Remades, uncanny constructs and outlandish alien races. Beautiful. (Click the eye.)
posted by taz at 4:40 AM PST - 9 comments

Who said white men can't jump?

Pogo Pr0n Coming soon is a pogo stick that can supposedly get you up to 4 foot in the air and was chosen as one of strangest new toys of 2004. Quite possibly replacing the scooter as the fad you can ride, or maybe we will end up designing cities around them.
posted by drezdn at 1:29 AM PST - 23 comments

June 13

what kind of planet will we leave future generations?

what kind of planet will we leave future generations
as the human race gets "richer? and if those future generations will look back fondly at our stewardship or with disdain?
posted by specialk420 at 10:37 PM PST - 18 comments

The so-called Golden Ratio

A good article on the so-called Golden Ratio.
posted by stbalbach at 9:47 PM PST - 19 comments

Opiates and Tacos. Mmmm.

A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing?  Walgreens, a nationwide drugstore chain, has been unsuccessful in obtaining city approval for a new store in a south Austin neighborhood. Now, they're trying a new approach:
Along with plan revisions and numerous neighborhood meetings, they made public in February their intention to build a permanent home for a nearby icon, Maria Corbalan's Taco Xpress.
      —Austin American Statesman, 6-13-04
...and they've hired a political consultant, reportedly with green leanings and a history lobbying the city of Austin, to drum up support for this cause (specifically the Maria's Tacos portion of their strategy). Insidious? Benign? Is this a new trend?
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:27 PM PST - 35 comments

Predicted Change: Global Warning Facts & Our Future

The Marian Koshland Science Museum, Washington D.C.'s newest, has an interactive, online exhibit that allows us to "cut through the noise and discover the facts" about Global Warming. Is this education at it's finest, or a bunch of hoo-hah in pretty packaging? Courtesy of the National Academy of Sciences.
posted by grateful at 7:43 PM PST - 9 comments

Censor Michael Moore!

Even paranoids have enemies... A Web site posing as nonpartisan that is funded by a GOP PR outfit and a Senate candidate urges people to call theaters to complain about their plans to show the Michael Moore film "Farenheit 9/11" when it opens. Some theater owners report death threats. The movie's infamous trailer has already been called one of the most effective anti-Bush campaign ads in circulation. So who is behind the censorship effort? Cosmic Iguana, "the voice of the evildoers", has some clues. Why, it's Howard Kaloogian, one of the men behind the Gray Davis recall, who also ran a successful campaign to kill an unfavorable CBS biopic of His Holiness the Gipper. Small world.
posted by Slagman at 5:12 PM PST - 55 comments

The Pentagon—Spying in America

We have some questions for you The DoD, with the help of some friendly legislatures, is getting an exemption to restrictions put in place after the scandals of the early '70s against intelligence operations inside US borders. PATRIOT Act III?
posted by billsaysthis at 4:23 PM PST - 5 comments

The Elephant's Graveyard

Goodbye, Norma Jean. Norma the elephant was killed by a stroke of lightning. Seventy years earlier, though, Topsy was electrocuted by Thomas Edison, to "demonstrate" the danger of alternating current. Only a few years later, Mary was sentenced to death by hanging, to the amusement and edification of onlookers. It's rough being an elephant in America.
posted by SPrintF at 3:22 PM PST - 11 comments

Emotional Labour

Emotional Labour It's been ages since an article so perfectly distills how work makes me feel and what it's probably doing to me. Claire works in a call centre for Orange mobile phones and on her "computer screen, a series of little squares indicates calls waiting, and tells her how long she has been on her current call. If a call has been difficult, there are only eight seconds in which to take a deep breath and compose her voice into the expected tone of friendliness. ... What is striking is how on the one hand Claire is dealing with very rigid systems set down by company procedure and the vagaries of the computer system, while on the other she is expected to convey a sense of naturalness and her own personality. "
posted by feelinglistless at 12:20 PM PST - 21 comments

Somewhere Smarty Jones Is Crying

Man Beats Horse, wins 25,000 pounds. For the first time, two legs triumphed over four in the annual Man Versus Horse Marathon in Wales.
posted by Frank Grimes at 10:41 AM PST - 10 comments

a whack with the cluestick

For next time someone asks one of those questions...
posted by reklaw at 10:24 AM PST - 13 comments

Mutilation of victims and Muslim law

Mutilation of victims and Muslim law The ruling by Sheik Omar Abdullah Hassan al-Shehabi specifies two circumstances in which the desecration of an infidel -- a non-Muslim -- is permitted. One is retaliation "when the enemy is disfiguring Muslim corpses or when it otherwise serves the Islamic nation." The other is when mutilation will "terrorize the enemy" or "gladden the heart of a Muslim warrior."
posted by swerdloff at 9:27 AM PST - 44 comments

Next - A patch for stupidity ?

Testosterone patch 'boosts women's sex drive' but, warn researchers, "If a couple doesn't like each other then no patch will improve their sex life." (BBC)
posted by troutfishing at 8:38 AM PST - 10 comments

Saddam's daughter: I want to go to Iraq

Saddam's daughter: I want to go to Iraq "...My life is a series of collapses," Raghad Saddam Hussein said in an interview in Friday's edition of Sayidaty magazine. "If age is measured by anguish and sadness, I would have been 80 today."...
posted by Postroad at 8:21 AM PST - 6 comments

Governor's Schools

Arkansas Governor's School , one of over 100 "Governor's Schools," starts today. The program is going in to its 24th year despite years of controversy over several mediums.
posted by whoshotwho at 8:17 AM PST - 17 comments

Sky Dancers

Yoginis and Dakinis, Tibetan Goddesses of anger and transformation.
posted by homunculus at 3:18 AM PST - 4 comments

June 12

Shockwave fun.

A new Samarost-style game brought to us by Amanita, the same folks who authored Samarost. You can see the same style, although this one is actually a band advertisement and is much shorter and easier than Samarost.
posted by Lynsey at 11:33 PM PST - 15 comments

I'm sure it goes well with Hennessy

We deliver to Pyongyang in 30 minutes or it's free. Well, not quite. But this is what happens when Kim Jong Il orders a pizza.
posted by pieoverdone at 9:52 PM PST - 33 comments

Bet your bottom dollar

The East Timor/Australia rift over the Greater Sunrise natural gas field in the Timor Sea is the latest struggle for the world's newest nation.
posted by kliuless at 8:15 PM PST - 8 comments

MmmmMm .. . I wants me one o' them robot corpse thingies. . ..

Videogames are falling into the uncanny valley. (Previous mefi discussion: 1 2 -- aw, hell).
posted by Tlogmer at 6:52 PM PST - 26 comments

from realism to near abstraction

Alexandra Gapihan Fine Art
"Born in Cape Verde, raised in both Cote d'Ivoire and France, Alexandra Gapihan is currently studying fine art in Baltimore, Maryland. Inspired by her heritage and guided by a unique vision, Alexandra interprets the struggle, passion, and tradition of three worlds—sharing with us an intimate vision of life's deeper meanings."
posted by quonsar at 6:13 PM PST - 8 comments

Evil Dead: The Musical

Evil Dead: The Musical
In making your list of should-be musical theater productions, you've likely considered the Evil Dead series, right? Fortunately for you, Montreal's Just for Laughs comedy festival has put together just that, believe it or not, for this year's festival.
A special run will happen in Toronto on the week of June 22nd before moving to Montreal for a full run.
posted by Evstar at 6:06 PM PST - 10 comments

ClassicalFilter

Assorted Classical Music Links:
SoundAdvice, Classical and Opera Music Used in Movies, Andante and ArkivMusic.
posted by Gyan at 4:08 PM PST - 3 comments

Onomatopoeia, gee it's good to see ya!

If you don't like dictionary posts, look away, NOW!
But if you like to play with words, the dictionarians at Merriam-Webster have announced the winners in their poll for the Ten Favorite Words for 2004:
defenestration, serendipity, onomatopoeia, discombobulate, plethora, callipygian, juxtapose, persnickety, kerfuffle and flibbertigibbet
Also, a list of runners-up with more of my personal faves: oxymoron, copacetic, curmudgeon, conundrum, euphemism, superfluous, and of course, Smock! Smock! Smock!
[more inside] Via vidiot.
posted by wendell at 3:53 PM PST - 40 comments

Martha Ballard's Diary

Martha Ballard's Diary Includes a transcription of the diary (written between 1785-1812), images of the original MS, and a number of contextual documents and photographs, plus many other things. (Those of you who enjoy old diaries should bear in mind that one of the greatest diarists of them all, Samuel Pepys, has a blog.)
posted by thomas j wise at 3:45 PM PST - 5 comments

PandaMania!

PandaMania! The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities is presenting PandaMania, 150 creatively designed Panda sculptures placed on display throughout Washington DC, May through September 2004. The exhibition will conclude with a public auction with proceeds used for arts grants and arts education programs. Some other public art links (a couple previously mentioned, but worth a second look): LA, the Bronx, Chicago, NY Public Art fund, and Keith Haring, worldwide.
posted by tetsuo at 1:40 PM PST - 20 comments

Who's back? Ed's Back!

Ed's Back! Ed Broadbent was the most successful leader in the history of Canada's New Democratic Party, leading the NDP to win 43 seats in the 1988 federal election. Now Ed's back, and he's running for under new leader Jack Layton -- with video! (.rm, .mov, .wmv formats) Canadian hip-hop will never be the same. Is this the future of Canadian politics?
posted by mrmcsurly at 12:23 PM PST - 15 comments

Plain of Jars

What is the Plain of Jars, what does it look like, and where is it?
posted by moonbird at 11:27 AM PST - 14 comments

The Leo Masuda Architectonic Research Office Homepage

The Leo Masuda Architectonic Research Office Homepage.
posted by hama7 at 7:48 AM PST - 4 comments

Where is this country headed?

Is U.S. like Germany of the '30s?
posted by Rastafari at 6:04 AM PST - 132 comments

Would it have been Kerry-McCain or McCain-Kerry?

Kerry unsuccessfully courted McCain as his running mate. He deliberately didn't officially offer the position, but apparently it's solid that he unofficially offered it. Very interesting news. (NYTimes link)
posted by eyeballkid at 3:39 AM PST - 63 comments

anniversary

10 years ago today, and the killer is still at large.
posted by crunchland at 3:16 AM PST - 44 comments

June 11

Iraq, Manchuria, Askari Street--It's The History News Network!

From Nanjing 1937 to Fallujah 2004; Is the U.S. Repeating the Mistakes of Japan in the 1930s?; Attempting Analogy: Japanese Manchuria and Occupied Iraq and Manchuria and Iraq, 1932 and 2004: you can kiss that Vietnam analogy good bye--when historians talk history, they range farther afield. I ♥ the History News Network! Here is food for thought at an all night, all you can eat smorgasbord--those who teach history are condemned to discuss it and we're all the better for it.

For example, Hala Fattah's Askari Street is my current favorite Iraqi weblog. She gives us the history of the Arab horse, the Pachachi family, the Shammar tribe and Kirkuk, and its place in Iraqi History and she has barely begun to write.
HNN: oh, it's an embarrassment of riches and a fount of endless fascination.
posted by y2karl at 9:47 PM PST - 23 comments

Pie hole

I've got a pie hole on the front of my head.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 9:10 PM PST - 9 comments

Down boy! I said, DOWN!

The Son of Sam has a blog. Most recent entries are here.
posted by CunningLinguist at 4:13 PM PST - 75 comments

Reagan should be on a $3 bill

Reagan should be on a $3 bill "For the funeral of Ronald Reagan, they took the body from Beverly Hills to Simi Valley, the white Los Angeles suburb, where it stayed for a day and a half or so then they drove it in one of these two hearses to the airport and flew it to Washington and then they had a march and afterwards put the casket into the Capitol for crowds to pass by and now there was to be another march and a religous service and then a drive to the airport, where the casket will be shuttled back to the airport south of Los Angeles and in a hearse to the final ceremony at his library on Friday. That is quite a funeral. They buried George Washingon in half the time. You keep thinking of Harry Truman, whose code was, "Do not impose." He left an order that there were to be no eulogies at his funeral."
posted by Postroad at 4:03 PM PST - 99 comments

Most.Tasteless.Journal.Evar?!

Most.Tasteless.Journal.Evar?!
Ladies und Germans, it's the LiveJournal of Anne Frank.
(How is it we didn't see this one coming?!)
posted by insomnia_lj at 3:50 PM PST - 19 comments

And I pray you can make it better down here. I don't mean a big reduction in the price of beer

Pray For Reason is a call to Americans of all religions and belief systems who want to see their country's policies at home and abroad based on facts, history, and reasonable thought processes.
My favorite: Dear God (in all your forms), protect us from those humans among us who wish to direct the destiny of the world for their own gain. Bring them humility, compassion and enlightenment, and allow them to see the interconnection of all beings. (Or bring down upon them a rain of burning rocks, whichever strikes your fancy.) Amen
posted by amberglow at 3:38 PM PST - 10 comments

Let her go, let her go, God bless her...

The story of "St. James Infirmary." You thought it was a piece of old New Orleans? Turns out St. James Hospital was in London (and treated lepers), and the song goes back at least to the 18th century (though it used to be sung to the tune of "Streets of Laredo"). Rob Walker's Letter From New Orleans #13 describes the results of his obsessive researches. If you have more info, he wants to hear from you! (Via Wordorigins, a site any word lover should know.)
posted by languagehat at 11:50 AM PST - 9 comments

Ralph Snart Returns!

The return of Ralph Snart...to the web and to print! This is Marc Hansen's outrageous story of a mild-mannered alcoholic accountant gone completely mental, featuring Dr. Goot (evil scientist and nemesis), Mr. Lizard (thanks to radioactive crickets) and Holly Hornswoggle (evil lab assistant and love interest). It originally ran from 1986 to 1994 and of course there is always the obligatory unofficial site.
posted by boost ventilator at 11:31 AM PST - 6 comments

Pictures from the First Weblog Festival in Tehran, Iran

Pictures from the First Weblog Festival in Tehran, Iran, in which the deputy of the Ministery of Information Technology wished that every Iranian could have a weblog. While western media has not covered it yet, there are many reports about it in Persian news agencies.
posted by hoder at 10:17 AM PST - 9 comments

All I was hoping to accomplish was having a wife who wanted me

The Emotional Costs of Fidelity
I recently came across Suburban Sex Blog, the blog of a 30-something, married with children, sexually deprived male suburban dweller who posts about the frustrations of having a wife who just doesn't want sex. After reading this entry where his wife tells him to just "get over it" after he confronts her about the complete lack of sexual contact between the two of them for months, I knew I'd found a blog that I'd be checking in on frequently. Guys blogging about their sex lives is nothing new you might think, but instead of filling their blogs with macho bragging about their conquests, there's a growing number of good blogs where married guys are opening their hearts about the insecurities, depressions and fear that goes with trying hard to make a marriage work instead of giving into the temptation of cheating.

After going through some of these issues myself while my wife was going through a period of depression I know first hand how an emotionally distant wife can wreak havoc with everything from one's self-esteem, concentration and general mental well being. These blogs put things into a perspective that many men refuse to share, and many women never even suspect.
posted by DragonBoy at 8:45 AM PST - 129 comments

1) Your favorite band sucks. 2) Pancakes.

The Two Things. "For every subject, there are really only two things you really need to know. Everything else is the application of those two things, or just not important.”
posted by majcher at 8:14 AM PST - 23 comments

Clive Dunn Chaos

Grandad, you're lovely. [Flash or QuickTime]
posted by Pretty_Generic at 7:34 AM PST - 5 comments

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The Sound and the Fury. 75 years ago, William Faulkner finished his fourth novel. It was published later in the fall (October 7, 1929), and for the first fifteen years sales totaled just over 3,300 copies (an appendix was added in 1946, when most of Faulkner's books were out of print. Of course, a few years after that he was awarded the Nobel Prize). It was Faulkner's own favorite novel, primarily, he said, because he considered it his "most splendid failure". Many critics think it's the finest work of an American Master: the key to Faulkner, wrote Alfred Kazin (.pdf file), lies not only in the unflinching extremity of his God-blasted characters, but in the odd and unaccountable moments of redemptive human tenderness. The Internet is very kind to Faulkner's fans: we can check out the Faulkner home, his manuscripts and even his pipe, trivia from his Postmaster's days, we can read examples of his snarkiness (hurled against Hemingway and Clark Gable), we can admire the pages of screenplays from his Hollywood days. We can go to Faulkner academic conferences, too: in the USA and Japan. Want to know what Bunny Wilson and Ralph Ellison had to say about Faulkner? Here. (more inside, with Conan O'Brien)
posted by matteo at 7:27 AM PST - 30 comments

you can do anything at zombo.com

Ummm, its flash fryday!- and you can do anything at Zombo.com! Turn up your speakers and get ready to do anything! Its amazing* the skilled workmanship of flash makers these days(sarcasm*)
posted by Ladymerv at 7:27 AM PST - 18 comments

Which ones are England?

Football for Dummies With Euro 2004 about to start, the BBC provide a guide for the football-ignorant on how not to embarrass yourself in front of football hooligans fans.
posted by Mwongozi at 5:34 AM PST - 15 comments

Suck it, NYC!

The latest affront in a war of good vs. evil.
posted by lazywhinerkid at 5:27 AM PST - 7 comments

Blair in Trouble...

The UK local elections have taken place, and for the first time ever forced the ruling Labour government into third position, with their worst showing in history. Is this just a mid-term blip, or the culmination of the huge Iraq backlash that will topple the government? With Bush in trouble too, will any of the warring leaders be left come November? And can the Big Intervention website topple Blair himself?
posted by wibbler at 5:22 AM PST - 13 comments

Unprivileged in my belligerentness

You, Sir, are an unprivileged belligerent... The US charge David Hicks, the one Australian in Guantanamo, with being an "unprivileged belligerent". Confused? Try this brief (PDF) from Harvard's Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research (cached HTML) and learn how to ensure that your belligerentness stays privileged (and thus grants you rights as a prisoner of war).
posted by humuhumu at 1:36 AM PST - 23 comments

June 10

Today In Alternate History

Today In Alternate History, blogging the what if: "In 1984, John Lennon, an obscure musician who had once been in a band with international sensation Pete Best, writes a tell-all book about Best, detailing their crazy life in Hamburg, Germany, and their rough-and-tumble beginnings in Liverpool, England. The book, I Want To Tell You, is an international best-seller."
posted by feelinglistless at 11:59 PM PST - 11 comments

Do you know enough to vote?

U.S. Citizenship test. Can you get 8 out of ten???
posted by flatlander at 10:05 PM PST - 80 comments

Friday flash fun

99 Rooms Going to suck up at least a hour of your life.
posted by filmgeek at 9:37 PM PST - 24 comments

Portugese Crowd Control

"Alcohol makes fans fight. But cannabis smokers will be shaking hands and singing along together.” Confronted with the dangers of English soccer hooligans, Portugese police have found an incredibly pragmatic way to reduce crowd violence: crack down on booze and encourage the fans to smoke out. It's not some crazy new-fangled idea - it's been used successfully in the Netherlands. How does this reflect on US drug policy? More importantly, how does it reflect on the state of English soccer hooliganism?
posted by rks404 at 9:28 PM PST - 16 comments

Calling all Languagehats!

Four letter words. Mapped alphabetically to three-space, that is (ie. the 3space axes are the second, third, and fourth letters.) Interesting to see which initial letters tend to map to verbs, which to nouns, and suchlike. A nice example of data visualization.
posted by five fresh fish at 8:50 PM PST - 11 comments

Illustration Maker

Illlustration maker - design a cartoon image of yourself. Or someone else. Hours (or possibly minutes) of fun.
posted by Jimbob at 7:27 PM PST - 43 comments

Want a book? Find it at a Library [instead].

Find in a Library: Search for a book [any Google-powered engine will do], find the "Find in a Library" link, and OCLC will provide a list of member libraries in your geographic area that have the book. In something called "open pilot" through the end of the month.
posted by britain at 7:09 PM PST - 13 comments

not stick

Stigmata fraud. A mostly skeptical look.
posted by four panels at 6:32 PM PST - 3 comments

Novel Ideas

Technovelgy lists inventions from science fiction novels, including the Tasp, the Delpi Pool, Retinal Projection and the Invisible Teenager.
posted by interrobang at 5:34 PM PST - 8 comments

Is Google to be trusted?

Gmail is too Creepy "Dear Gmail user: Due to privacy considerations, we cannot respond unless you resend your email from a different account."
posted by o2b at 1:36 PM PST - 52 comments

Naked Words

Naked body letters. Um... letters made out of naked bodies. Obviously not safe for work, but really more artsy and "nude" than even erotic. K, T and C are particularly nice, for example.
posted by Shane at 1:20 PM PST - 7 comments

RIP Ray Charles

Ray Charles is Dead Very sad to hear. My favorite was always "Georgia on My Mind". What was yours? Any personal memories you associate with his music?
posted by jmevius at 12:46 PM PST - 69 comments

Garé!

Park. Gentlemen, stop your engines. [Flash.]
posted by DrJohnEvans at 11:53 AM PST - 27 comments

Pretty Polluted

Visualizing power plant impact. A nice use of flash to show the impact of electricity generation around the USA. You can zoom in on individual states and then individual power plants. Or you can view the national impact of several regulatory regimes.
posted by alms at 11:37 AM PST - 5 comments

Forget iTunes...

So, you want some hot mp3's? Well, this is the place (Russian, but English cookie-set option in top-left). Huge repositories of legal music, yours to download for only $0.01/Mb! If that's not enough, they'll even serve it up to you in any format or bitrate you require (MP3, AAC, FLAC, OGG, WMV). Add on to that the fact there's no DRM built into the files downloaded, and the option to pay with Paypal is a nice touch too. So, I ask you, MetaFilter, what is the catch?
posted by metaxa at 9:23 AM PST - 41 comments

IT HAS A CERTAIN JE NE SAIS QUOI

Yes, Here Are The Songs To Wear Pants To: He turns emails into music. You can send titles, lyrics, directions, and anything else that can be described in words and they may end up on this site as little songs
posted by landock at 9:14 AM PST - 15 comments

PhotoArt

Abstrakt: the photography of frank lemire.
posted by Gyan at 7:15 AM PST - 7 comments

Head-butt

Give me a Glasgow kiss! The OED's newest English words. Glasgow kiss, n. [ Glasgow, the name of a city in west central Scotland + KISS n., in humorous allusion to the reputation for violence accorded to some parts of the city. Cf. earlier Liverpool kiss s.v. LIVERPOOL n.] A head-butt.
posted by mfoight at 5:58 AM PST - 19 comments

like the sands of time through an hourglass...

Where did the time go? (flash, best with sound turned on).
posted by reklaw at 12:38 AM PST - 11 comments

NBP Combat Girlfriends

National Bolshevik Party's Combat Girlfriends. The new, prettier, face of communism. via #mefi, contains communist propaganda and mild nudity.
posted by lazy-ville at 12:36 AM PST - 36 comments

June 9

Press Going Too Easy on Bush

Bottom-Line Business Pressures Hurting Press Coverage, Say Journalists. "Press Going Too Easy on Bush" survey finds. This and more in the annual State of the News Media report, paid for and sponsored by The Pew Charitable Trusts (non profit established by the children of Sun Oil Company founder Joseph N. Pew).
posted by stbalbach at 11:18 PM PST - 19 comments

The Road to Abu Ghraib

Human Rights Watch Report: The Road to Abu Ghraib
Introduction, A Policy To Evade International Law:
Circumventing the Geneva Conventions, Undermining the Rules Against Torture, Renditions, “Disappearances” and so on and so on...
See also Human rights group finds Abu Ghraib cover-up
posted by y2karl at 9:57 PM PST - 20 comments

Factory Tours!

Factory Tours! Too cool. A site devoted to collecting and sharing publicly available tours of various production facilities: candy, breweries, cars, candles, power plants... Just the idea transports me right back to being a grade-schooler watching films about How Things Are Made. I am so there, dude.
posted by NortonDC at 9:21 PM PST - 15 comments

lies, damned lies

Terrorist incidents actually ROSE in 2003, but the State Department's "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report, issued April 29 (see Appendix G for an easy chart), said the exact opposite. Senior Bush administration officials immediately hailed it as objective proof that they were winning the war on terrorism. The report is considered the authoritative yardstick of the prevalence of terrorist activity around the world. Reports like this one were all over the news in April--will the fact that it was a lie be reported as widely? And can we trust anything this administration says anymore?
posted by amberglow at 6:37 PM PST - 44 comments

U.S. bioterrorism research leaps past defensive tactics

U.S. bioterrorism research leaps past defensive tactics - Scientists are now able to explore creating genetically engineered superbugs, plus the means to mass-produce and spread them ... 'If any other country set forth a program like this, U.S. intelligence undoubtedly would call it an offensive program,' said Edward Hammond, head of the Sunshine Project, a group in Austin, Texas, that tracks bioweapons and biodefense issues.
posted by eraserhed at 6:13 PM PST - 33 comments

Another cool Google news visualization

A couple months back, there was a cool flash-based front-end to Google News that displayed topics and their relative importance based on size. Now comes another visualization that's a little bit more abstract, but can be used in the same way, to get "a picture" of what the world considered news on any given day (and it has archives). Slick stuff, rollover all the colored boxes to see topics and click to see archived data.
posted by mathowie at 4:28 PM PST - 9 comments

Doom and Sta-Puff

"The Ashcroft Fear Remix." (a potential summer mini-blockbuster)
[link goes to broadband and dialup option for Quicktime movie file]

posted by moonbird at 4:12 PM PST - 6 comments

Microsoft does something not terribly evil

Scientific American on Microsoft's new, gigantic attempt at a Palo Alto.
posted by Tlogmer at 4:02 PM PST - 7 comments

Kao-ani maker

Kao-ani maker.
posted by hama7 at 3:59 PM PST - 9 comments

the death of lincoln

the death of lincoln. Originally from June 1865. "The murder of President Lincoln aroused a feeling of regret deeper than was ever before known in our history. Men and papers who had opposed his policy and vilified him personally, now vied with his adherents and friends in lauding the rare wisdom and goodness which marked his conduct and character." Hmmmm... sounds familiar.
posted by sunexplodes at 3:41 PM PST - 36 comments

Angkor

Water woes, not wars, ended Angkor's empire, according to the Greater Angkor Project. Ecological failure and infrastructure breakdown brought down Cambodia's great city and Hindu civilization.
posted by homunculus at 3:29 PM PST - 7 comments

What a Racket

The average PC printer's ink costs more than 16 times as much as an equivalent amount of vintage 1985 Dom Perignon champagne.
posted by brookish at 2:10 PM PST - 36 comments

Democracy...ummm - sometime ?

"No voting rights for YOU......boy!"- Florida's illegal purges of voter rolls to continue for 3rd national election? Election head resigns. While Florida refuses to release the "purge lists" to CNN, "The head of Florida's elections division resigned Monday amid reports he was feeling political heat over a push to purge thousands of suspected felons from the state's voter rolls." (Tallahassee Sun-Sentinel) " there has been little action (and worse, really) on Florida's agreement to reinstate illegally purged voters to Florida voting rolls that resulted from an NAACP lawsuit over the 2000 election ["Many voters said their votes didn't count or they were turned away from polls due to mistakes on voter lists, busy telephone lines at election headquarters, punch-card voting machine foul-ups and other problems...Statewide, the largest numbers of voting problems were found in precincts with high proportions of black and elderly voters." The NYT editorially acknowledged the scandal on February 15, 2004.]

On May 21, 2002, Ashcroft's Justice Department began a suit against Florida counties "for purging Black voters from voter rolls and other violations of civil rights" Now, four years after the 2000 election, illegally "purged" Florida voters will not be notified until it is "too late to have their rights restored for this election - or are turned away on Election Day", reports the Tampa Tribune. "The vast majority of them are black and would be likely to vote Democratic." It's difficult for convicted felons to regain the right to vote in Florida, but many on the "purge" lists were not (in 2000) and still are not felons at all. [ note : Greg Palast - busy of late - must be most credited with blowing this story wide open. See here here, here.....]
posted by troutfishing at 2:02 PM PST - 44 comments

Creature House Expressions

Microsoft is giving away a nifty piece of software. It's the beta of Expressions 3 by Creature House, something I used to use back in my Mac days but hadn't heard anything about in a long time. Apparently MS bought Creature House last year. I downloaded it (after filling out a somewhat arduous survey/profile thingy) and think it a nice drawing program. Both Mac and Win versions are posted.
posted by bz at 1:57 PM PST - 30 comments

Vote the bastards out!

Republican Survivor The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has created a cartoon "Republican Survivor." Read the profiles of the contestants. You can vote them out after each "episode." The National Republican Committee says that they are just "Playing with cartoons." But I think it's friggin hilarious.
posted by aacheson at 12:22 PM PST - 3 comments

Vote for Braaaaaaiiiiinsssss!

Bush has a new running mate: Zombie Reagan. From the FAQ: What are some other advanatages of adding Zombie Reagan to the ticket? He will demonstrate America's resolve to continue the battle against terrorism. Instead of retreating to an undisclosed location, for instance, Zombie Reagan will be on the front lines, eating illegal combatants.
posted by mathowie at 12:11 PM PST - 42 comments

Cyburbia

Cyburbia - the urban planning portal. (Check out the photo gallery.)
posted by PrinceValium at 11:34 AM PST - 1 comment

the hidden Metafilter agenda is revealed!

Going to see a movie? Be sure to get the Maoist Internationalist Movement's perspective first. Harry Potter: "This Disney-esque fantasy film deserves not to be banned under the dictatorship of the proletariat." Yaaay!
posted by furiousthought at 11:27 AM PST - 9 comments

Tidal Attraction

Tidal Attraction
Strange, delicate, and sometimes delicious, tidepool creatures never cease to fascinate – until they’re gone. Steinbeck knew all about this enchanting world.
posted by Irontom at 10:50 AM PST - 4 comments

Ingenious

3 museums, The Science Museum, The National Railway Museum and The National Museum of Photography, Film and Television have collaborated to develop a website. It is a thing of rare magnificence.
posted by Fat Buddha at 10:18 AM PST - 7 comments

Photoblogs become Internation

Photoblogging becomes international There are photoblogs from China, Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Israel. How about photoblogs by languages: Persian, Chinese, and Malay.
posted by hoder at 9:57 AM PST - 5 comments

Narconon

Scientology extends a tentacle into public schools. Just as adults can have a hard time getting drug treatments without a heavy dose of Jebus, now the Scientologists are trying to cut in earlier and give school kids a heavy dose of L. Ron via the drug prevention program Narcanon, provided free to schools.
posted by badstone at 9:48 AM PST - 31 comments

Lord of the Rip-offs

Tricksy those hobbitses What happens when two girls bilk LotR fans, trick the celebrities, and leave a volunteer holding the bag? Continued fan outrage and careful tracking.
posted by FunkyHelix at 9:45 AM PST - 19 comments

That DVD blowed up real good!

'The Cream of Sketch TV' is finally available on DVD. "Simply put, SCTV is the greatest television sketch comedy ever. Period." So says the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and who's gonna argue? Apparently a keystone of their creative success was being moved by their producers to Edmonton, where there was nothing else to do and the executives didn't want to make the trek. As someone who remembers the show as a late-night UHF-channel oddity before NBC picked it up and repackaged it (which is what's on the DVD), I have only one objection: Where's the love for Ha-harold Ramis?
posted by soyjoy at 9:44 AM PST - 20 comments

Halfway there...

Want to know who's going to win the election? Their methodology is questionable, and I'm not sure about the value of their accuracy claims, but if you think of politics as a blood sport, this is your running scoreboard. Too bad it's only parliamentary-style elections.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 9:43 AM PST - 1 comment

New coolness from Mattel Inc.

Hot Links is a visually appealing link blog portal. Featuring links from local heroes Andy Baio (waxpancake), and Tom Coates (barbelith).
posted by riffola at 6:50 AM PST - 7 comments

Superman! The official book.

Last Son of Krypton was released in 1978 as a tie-in to Superman! The movie. It was written by Comic Book Supremo Elliot S! Maggin, and based on Maggin's own treatment for a Superman film. Despite being badly written, and having a completely different plot to the film, the book was extremely successful.
[Bonus Materials: The original novel ; The unofficial novel; Elliot S! Maggin Interview; A review]
posted by seanyboy at 3:59 AM PST - 9 comments

June 8

Tales from the Mental Hospital

Tales from the Mental Hospital. "I fought them the best I could, but it was no use at all. I was rather quickly overpowered and dragged inside. A smart person would have just given up at that point, but at the time I was by no means a smart person. I started pulling and struggling to get these guys off me. This only made the situation worse, as I was forced down onto the floor of the wing so the nurse could come and administer the ever popular needle of Ativan into my ass cheek. I continued to try and fight, until a rather large fellow named Abdullah decided the best way to keep me down would to be to use his knee to pin my head to the rug."
posted by UKnowForKids at 10:25 PM PST - 12 comments

Has Jupiter aligned with Mars?

Venus Transits the Sun. Some really gorgeous pics of this rare stellar event.
posted by WolfDaddy at 10:24 PM PST - 9 comments

Get me... a toothpick

Alfred Jarry. Writer, creator of pataphysics (the science of imaginary solutions), adopted father of the surrealists and extreme bike rider (in reality as well as in Howard Waldrop's Fin de Cycle). His best known work, Ubu Roi, inspired painter Joan Miro, playwright Samuel Beckett (among others) and gave a music group its name. (More Inside)
posted by Joey Michaels at 9:12 PM PST - 7 comments

First they came for the Saskatoon berries, and I said nothing....

As if mad cow wasn't enough. The UK has pulled saskatoon berries from store shelves while they decide if the berries are safe to eat. If not, my family in Saskatchewan should be dead by now. The UK Food Standards Agency is looking for your views on these cute little berries. So juicy, so tasty, so purple. How can you say no?
posted by Salmonberry at 5:53 PM PST - 32 comments

Wizard People, Dear Reader

Wizard People, Dear Reader is a bizarre re-reading (or, if you're Tim Burton, a re-imagining) of Harry Potter and the philosophers stone (or sorcerers stone for our friends across the pond). Basically you download it, burn it to CD and play it while watching the DVD. A new art form, a childish gimmick or somewhere inbetween? Everybody will have a copy soon, so get busy with the download (courtesy of the ever vigilant Talking Tina at Sissyfight.com).
posted by ciderwoman at 4:13 PM PST - 20 comments

Mutilation losing favor in Africa

Female genital mutilation is a blight on women's lives in many parts of Africa. Today's NY Times has a story, "Genital Cutting Shows Signs of Losing Favor in Africa" by Mark Lacey, that gives grounds for optimism:
Slowly, genital cutting is losing favor. Parliaments are passing laws forbidding the practice, which causes widespread death and disfigurement. Girls are fleeing their homes to keep their vaginas intact. And the women who have been carrying out the cutting, and who have been revered by their communities for doing so, are beginning to lay down their knives.
(If you don't want to register with the NYT, here's the Mathaba.net copy.)
posted by languagehat at 4:10 PM PST - 52 comments

Yet Another Fractal Art Iteration

The Infinite Art of Kerry Mitchell and Janet Parke.
posted by Gyan at 2:12 PM PST - 8 comments

Dewey Defeats Tampa Bay Lightning!

Dewey Defeats Tampa Bay Lightning! Actually, the Lightning won the Stanley Cup, but someone forgot to tell The Tampa Tribune's crack editorial staff.
posted by tregoweth at 12:35 PM PST - 17 comments

Welcome to America, please sheath your pens and close your notebooks

British journalist strip searched and tossed in the pokey for the crime of not knowing about a never enforced 1952 law requiring "special" journalist visas. And she's not alone...according to Reporters with out Borders, the US has deported 15 reporters, 10 of those from LAX. Reporters must now provide a letter from their employer detailing their assignment, and the INS gets to decide who is allowed to report, and who isn't.
posted by dejah420 at 10:14 AM PST - 48 comments

SuperSpies Me!

The CEO with the biggest head in America (no, not Trump, I'm talking literally) is recruiting secret agents. (You want spies with that?) Or, if you'd like a slightly less creepy way to get a lot of free really junky food, you can write sauce packet slogans.
*The term "left-of-center" is NOT meant to be political in any way. Mmm-kay.
posted by wendell at 9:45 AM PST - 14 comments

The Posthumous Peregrinations of Joseph Stalin

Stalin's Funeral "The crowds were so dense and chaotic outside that some people were trampled underfoot, others rammed against traffic lights, and some others choked to death. It is estimated that 500 people lost their lives while trying to get a glimpse of Stalin's corpse." The string quartet playing at Stalin's graveside wept openly - for Sergei Prokofiev, who died the same day and hour as Stalin. Stalin was first interred next to Lenin, under glass. But five years later, it was time to physically remove Stalin from a place of honor. "Stalin had been a dictator and a tyrant. Yet he presented himself as the Father of Peoples, a wise leader, and the continuer of Lenin's cause. After his death, people began to acknowledge that he was responsible for the deaths of millions of their own countrymen."
posted by stonerose at 8:26 AM PST - 34 comments

mmm, swastikky

The British National Party discover Flash. Britons: remember to vote on Thursday to stop these guys getting their first European MP.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 8:14 AM PST - 32 comments

Eat it! EAT IT!!!

No Escape!
It's in your your music, plastered all over your public spaces, in your movies, on your clothes and in your art,
it's over there --------------------------------------------------->
(as long as this is the first story on the main page), it's in your books, in your schools
It everywhere except inside your body... until now
posted by Capn at 7:58 AM PST - 21 comments

Viewing the Transit

Speaking of Transit Watching. I found it really interesting to see the collection of AP photos about the transit of Venus today. Apparently the compelling story is not so much the science (planets orbit the sun, got it), but the global spectacle. It's a bit of an anomaly of late, but Venus watching seems to be something the whole world peacefully agrees is a good thing. [View the viewers in Abu Dhabi, Azraq, Bangkok, Beijing, Cairo, Hamburg, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Kuwait, La Linea, Lebanon, London, Madras, Minsk, Nairobi, New Delhi, New York, Pakistan Paris, Potsdam, Pretoria, Rome, St. Petersburg, Sydney, Tehran, and Yokohama ]
posted by kokogiak at 7:56 AM PST - 7 comments

Random ID checks are next

Unreasonable Search and Seizure? Boston's MBTA to begin randomly searching passenger bags and packages next month on subway and commuter trains. Last month they started playing frequent Big Brother-type announcements as part of their See Something? Say Something(pdf) - Transit Watch program. I'm either reminded of "Loose Lips, Sink Ships" or Starship Troopers' "Do you want to know more?".
posted by FreezBoy at 7:21 AM PST - 27 comments

Phil Collins? Bollocks.

The 50 Coolest Song Parts [RetroCrush] As always, bringing up our favorites... um... song parts... will be more constructive and fun than destroying the list.
posted by jon_kill at 6:25 AM PST - 139 comments

Pragmatism vs. Ideology

"End of Oil" rebuts Reagan hagiography ? Amidst the din that is the lengthy US media coverage on Ronald Reagan's demise, the BBC reports on the growing acceptance (with oil industry attendance at a recent ASPO conference in Berlin) of the Hubbert Curve Theory which predicts we are now close to or at the peak of World Oil production. (also see Metafilter,October 2002).

Now, the wayback machine : the year is 1980 and the new President, Ronald Reagan, has ordered a solar hot water system, installed by President Carter, torn off the White House roof. Reagan will preceed to gut federal alternative energy subsidies and federal R&D spending on alternative energy technologies to, instead, spend many billions subsidizing oil, coal, and gas production.... Over the next 23 years, the US lost it's role as the World leader in efficiency and alternative energy technologies.
posted by troutfishing at 6:24 AM PST - 79 comments

ClippyOrgy

Paperclip Art. Beautify your cubicle.
posted by srboisvert at 6:07 AM PST - 8 comments

asdfdfdfasdfdfdf

A history of the IBM Typewriter. When in high school (ca. 1993), a room full of these was replaced with a room full of 286s.
posted by pieoverdone at 6:02 AM PST - 12 comments

Animated subversion from within?

These educational cartoons about the upcoming G8 conference are easily some of the worst pieces of animation ever to be considered "educational." Could they be an attempt to create animated subversion from within? Or is it just par for the course when the government tries to sell the G8 to the youth of America? Oh, and if you like the cartoon, try testing your G8 IQ.
posted by hank_14 at 5:46 AM PST - 14 comments

Is Bremer running scared?

Is Bremer running scared? Chris Neidrich was one of those who died on Sunday when a carefully planned ambush by seven vehicles attacked a Blackwater security convoy headed to Baghdad Airport, killing four and wounding three. Neidrich also guarded Bremer's motorcade.
The day after the attack on Bremer, the following security bulletin was released:
Effective immediately and until further notice, all CPA ground movement to/from Baghdad International Airport is prohibited. Exceptions for mission critical movements may be requested from Force Protection at DSN.
Is the U.S. military incapable of securing 2 1/2 miles of road from the Green Zone to Baghdad Airport, or has a political decision been made to not guard the road, thereby reducing the risk of military casualties. In other words, is Bremer scared, or is Bush?
posted by insomnia_lj at 3:56 AM PST - 19 comments

I used to like 'em

Sun Microsystems gives each employee a blog. Will other companies follow?
posted by PenDevil at 3:35 AM PST - 16 comments

Lawyers Decided Bans on Torture Didn't Bind Bush

Lawyers Decided Bans on Torture Didn't Bind Bush
posted by y2karl at 2:02 AM PST - 59 comments

June 7

Naturellement, the Aristocrats.

South Park does the "Aristocrats" joke. (WARNING! Windows Media file, very very not safe for work.) "The Aristocrats" is a long-lived comedians' in-joke--or, rather, an extraordinarily filthy joke that's not really a joke. (Gilbert Gottfried knocked 'em dead with it shortly after 9/11.) Now it's going public (sort of): Penn Jillette and Paul Provenza are making a movie featuring over 100 comedians telling their own versions. The South Park version linked above is "not even in the top 5 for dirtiest." Yikes!
posted by 88robots at 10:52 PM PST - 54 comments

Cheesy Jesus!

CheesyJesus.com --Beyond the Jesus Action Figure, this is also your home for lovely Last Supper Wall Tapestries, Mosque Alarm Clocks, "Wash Away Your Sins" Bubble Bath...and of course, Jack Chick tracts! Your equal-opportunity religious kitsch supplier.
posted by ChrisTN at 8:16 PM PST - 11 comments

Of course. Haven't we already done that?

Voice of a Superpower --Foreign Policy magazine puts together an interview with John & Jane Q. Public on us, the world, terror, and stuff--based on our responses to public-opinion polls from a wide variety of sources.
posted by amberglow at 7:15 PM PST - 5 comments

Bag Tag

Bag Tag "We are sorry that our President is an idiot"
posted by alball at 6:57 PM PST - 35 comments

Stop Making Sense

Rumsfeld fears U.S. losing long-term fight against terror. The troubling unknown, he said, is whether the extremists -- whom he termed "zealots and despots" bent on destroying the global system of nation-states -- are turning out newly trained terrorists faster than the United States can capture or kill them. "It's quite clear to me that we do not have a coherent approach to this," Rumsfeld said at an international security conference. Who are you and what have you done with Rumsfeld? And Can you do it some more? via the illustrious oliver willis.
posted by jonmc at 5:26 PM PST - 59 comments

postscript houses.

Could this revolutionize architecture? A robot that can "print" a 2,000 sq-ft house in one day without the use of a single human hand. What sort of effects will this have on the future of houses?
posted by christian at 4:03 PM PST - 37 comments

Goooooooooooool!

Kick-off! With only five days to go to this year's main sports event (sorry, Athens!), it's time to get down to some serious preparation.
The excellent official Euro 2004 website has team news, video-on-demand, tournament history and - this is crucial - the official Euro 2004 spreadsheet. Because nothing beats a good "I told you so!"...
7 billion people worldwide is expected to tune in to the broadcasts from beautiful Cardoso-land. But if you won't have access to a tv, The Beeb is offering live audio commentary (and if your boss is cranky, The Guardian usually offers fast and witty SFW text-based play-by-plays). Vive o 2004!
posted by mr.marx at 3:17 PM PST - 23 comments

Way down below the ocean?

The BBC claims that Atlantis has been found.
"We have in the photos concentric rings just as Plato described"
posted by moonbird at 3:01 PM PST - 33 comments

Art of Science

Resonance Fine Art.
posted by Gyan at 12:01 PM PST - 3 comments

The Suicide’s Soliloquy

The Suicide’s Soliloquy August 25, 1838, the Sangamo Journal, a Whig newspaper in Springfield, Illinois, carried an unsigned poem, thirty-six lines long. It stands out for two reasons: first, its subject is suicide; second, its author was most likely a twenty-nine-year-old politician and lawyer named Abraham Lincoln. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin relates how historians regard a broken off engagement to Mary Todd as the trigger to his famous depression, but it was his perceived failure as politician, she maintains, that fed Lincoln's "black dog". (For his depression, Lincoln probably took "blue mass", a drug prescribed to treat "hypochondriasis," a vague term that included melancholia). Lincoln's medical history file is here
posted by matteo at 11:14 AM PST - 12 comments

Iraqis Paying 5 Cents a Gallon for Gas

Iraqis Paying 5 Cents a Gallon for Gas While Americans are shelling out record prices for fuel, Iraqis pay only about 5 cents a gallon for gasoline — a benefit of hundreds of millions of dollars subsidies bankrolled by American taxpayers
posted by Postroad at 11:04 AM PST - 43 comments

Rober Quine, R.I.P.

Another member of the Blank Generation lost. Robert Quine was found dead in his apartment in NYC yesterday, he committed suicide. He was sixty years old and had played with Richard Hell & the Voidoids, Lou Reed, Matthew Sweet, Lloyd Cole, Materia, Brian Eno and others, he also cut an LP with Jody Harris (Escape), and one with Fred Maher (Basic). It has been reported that he was suffering depression brought on by the death of his wife Alice last August. Robert also recorded the Velvet Underground on a hand held cassette deck, the highlights were issued last year as The Quine Tapes a three CD set. Personally, I'll always remember him from the jagged guitar parts from Richard Hell and Voidoids' "Blank Generation", which were the only guitar parts that I ever bothered to learn and faithfully reproduce note for note in the many times my band covered the song. Condolences to those that survive him.
posted by psmealey at 8:57 AM PST - 18 comments

Caveat Dumpee

ExBack.com is either a heartless scam or a course in Stalking 101...or both. Brian Caniglia, "Dating Coach and Author," promises to help you get back with your ex, "even if they don't want to talk to you." Right.
posted by serafinapekkala at 8:34 AM PST - 8 comments

The Long Reach of the Wolf

The Long Reach of the Wolf
Wolves were returned to Yellowstone in 1995 after a 70 year absence (they were destroyed as menaces during the 20's). There are now 16 active packs in the park, and they have triggered a cascade of unanticipated changes in the park's ecosystem.
posted by Irontom at 7:09 AM PST - 24 comments

A New Breed of Zombie?

A New Breed of Zombie? Zombies have been a fixture in horror lore, inspiring people to write about the theory behind them, plans for national security against them, and home protection. But are these experts prepared for the mutations that have developed? Rock n Roll Zombies (see above), Viral Zombies, and Drug Induced Zombies.
posted by HellKatonWheelz at 6:45 AM PST - 9 comments

Pirate-ho!

Keep your hands off! Warner Bros. distributes military-style night vision goggles to cinemas around Britain in order to scotch bootleg copies. "The staff have all been trained to use the glasses and are patrolling the cinema every 15 to 20 minutes." The company is determined to fight back after a deluge of poor-quality copies of the first two Harry Potter movies hit the black market.
posted by tcp at 5:30 AM PST - 44 comments

Order! Order!! Order!!!

They Work For You was launched at yesterday's NotCon '04 by the people who brought you Fax Your MP. It makes Hansard accessible, via search facilities (by MP or by topic), with each individual speech presented as a separate, linkable entry. Get an RSS feed of your own MP's speeches, hold them to account over their special interests, but most of all, don't forget to vote this week!
posted by cbrody at 4:50 AM PST - 5 comments

Margaret Thatcher writes about Reagan

Flashback: Margaret Thatcher writes about Ronald Reagan. President Reagan saw instinctively that pessimism itself was the disease and that the cure for pessimism is optimism. He set about restoring faith in the prospects of the American dream — a dream of boundless opportunity built on enterprise, individual effort, and personal generosity. He infused his own belief in America's economic future in the American people. That was farsighted. It carried America through the difficult early days of the 1981-82 recession, because people are prepared to put up with sacrifices if they know that those sacrifices are the foundations of future prosperity.
posted by David Dark at 3:33 AM PST - 54 comments

Better than Sex?

Hexa-Hexa-FlexaGon!
Why not waste some time with the other office supplies for a change?
posted by kaibutsu at 1:41 AM PST - 13 comments

June 6

American brands taking a hit in the new world order

Consumers send 'warning sign' to US brands Tom Miller, the managing director of NOP World, said worsening attitudes to the county's products could damage US business. "It's not like there's a massive boycott," said Miller. "Instead, it seems to be an erosion of support. It's not falling off the face of the earth, but it is clearly a warning sign for brands."
posted by Rastafari at 9:19 PM PST - 24 comments

How Houdini's escape trick worked

The secret of Harry Houdini's signature "Metamorphosis" escape trick is out of the bag. Do not visit that page if you don't want to know how he did it.
posted by riffola at 6:46 PM PST - 23 comments

Open source record labels

"Open source record labels... believe that creativity requires that musicians reappropriate and reinterpret music and sounds to enable them to create truly innovative music." Two instances: Opsound and Loca Records. (source: Wikipedia)
posted by signal at 5:24 PM PST - 3 comments

Mali gets nothing for its grain

The failure of biotech. "In June 1996, the University of California, Davis, began an unprecedented effort to help the West African nation of Mali, using the promising and controversial new tool of agricultural biotechnology... Eight years later, no help whatsoever has arrived... In the hopes that inspired the effort - and the missteps that stifled it - lies a drama larger than the sum of its parts, one that shows both the promise and pitfalls of the largest technological leap in American agriculture since the tractor: biotechnology." The start of a five-part series in the Sacramento Bee: long, but well worth it. (Via MonkeyFilter.)
posted by languagehat at 5:08 PM PST - 17 comments

Die Invasion hat begonnen!

Front Pages of News Papers from Tuesday June 6th and Wendsday June 7th 1944
The wonderful Newseum provides a look back at some of the front pages from newspapers reporting the invasion of "Fortress Europe" 60 years ago today.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 4:37 PM PST - 13 comments

The Empty Cradle: global population decline

The Empty Cradle. Our everyday personal experiences with traffic, sprawl and other irritants of modern life tell us there are too many people in the world and the problem is getting worse. However in truth world population growth peaked 40 years ago in 1963 and has been trending downward since. Demographers predict that absolute human population will peak at 9 billion by 2070 and then contract. Long before then, many nations will shrink in absolute size and the average age of the world's citizens will shoot up dramatically, including the fastest aging part of the world: developing countries, where for example Iraq is aging 2.5 times faster than the USA and Mexico 5 times as fast. Having averted the danger of overpopulation, the world now faces the opposite problem: an aging and declining population.
posted by stbalbach at 2:56 PM PST - 28 comments

The End is at 2 o'clock

Size does matter. The size of your species' telomeres. Reinhard Stindl proposed a new theory for extinction -- the internal clock model. "It could explain the disappearance of a seemingly successful species, like Neanderthal man, with no need for external factors such as climate change."
posted by raaka at 2:27 PM PST - 9 comments

When drug companies hide data

When drug companies hide data.

"The attorney general's civil suit accuses the drug giant GlaxoSmithKline of committing fraud by concealing negative information about Paxil, a drug used to treat depression. The suit says that the company conducted five clinical trials of Paxil in adolescents and children, yet published only one study whose mixed results it deemed positive. The company sat on two major studies for up to four years, although the results of one were divulged by a whistle-blower at a medical conference in 1999 and all of the studies were submitted to the Food and Drug Administration in 2002 when the company sought approval for new uses of Paxil. At that time it became apparent that Paxil was no more effective than a placebo in treating adolescent depression and might even provoke suicidal thoughts.

My Dad was on Paxil until 26 days ago..... that's when he shot himself.
posted by Lusy P Hur at 1:48 PM PST - 45 comments

BWAAAAAAAAW!

ASSASSIN'S NIGHT:A DEEPER DARKNESS is an animated graphic novel by Lawrence Van Abbema. NSFW drawin's of nekkidness and violence. Looks like someone has way too much free time in study hall.
posted by majcher at 1:33 PM PST - 12 comments

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to keep your balls from blowing right the hell up.

Exploding Billiards. Addictive time-waster.
posted by bargle at 12:47 PM PST - 8 comments

Creed has died, Creed is risen

Let's have a moment of silence to remember Creed, the widely reviled band whose attorney once offered this inspired defense to a fan lawsuit: "You can't bring a lawsuit against a band for sucking."
posted by rcade at 10:51 AM PST - 140 comments

Just the facts, M'am...umm, just OUR facts, I mean !

A bushy-tailed morning in the quest for truth : MemeTank and dKosopedia This morning, I wondered - where's the update to (the deceased) Steve Kangas' mighty liberal FAQ ? "Update?", thought I, "Well, this attempt ran out of steam" Then..."Ah, a Wiki !" Then, "well, isn't truth the point ?...shouldn't it be Bipartisan, or multipartisan ?" Daily Kos was just sniffing (May 28th) along that trail, it seemed....partway : "We hope the dKosopedia will become the progressive-political version of the Wikipedia, a political FAQ so to speak" Would the "Dkosopedia" benefit from a less partisan stance ?

But, the MemeTank rocks -with it's bestiary of Liberal/Progressive, Right Wing, and "other" memes and the (MemeTank's) "Meme Development Project....This section is for people who want to invent new memes and try to encourage professional journalists to start using them."
posted by troutfishing at 10:19 AM PST - 9 comments

"To say what you feel is to make your own grave."

Hootenanny songbook. "Music is our bomb."
posted by xowie at 8:32 AM PST - 4 comments

Bridges of New York

Bridges of New York Black and white photographs by Dave Frieder.
posted by carter at 8:20 AM PST - 4 comments

Cracking Up

Cracking Up. "In interviews with a number of White House staffers who were willing to talk off the record, a picture of an administration under siege has emerged, led by a man who declares his decisions to be “God’s will” and then tells aides to “fuck over” anyone they consider to be an opponent of the administration."
posted by alball at 6:46 AM PST - 113 comments

Juno Beach

We are minutes away from the 60th anniversary of D-day. The Canadians landed at Juno beach. (Some news) (Some history).

The U.S. has a long history of movies commemorating it's role in war, including D-day as have other smaller countries like Australia (WW1). Canadians have written some good books about our wars like "And No Bird Sang" and "The Wars" (Amazon links) and the NFB and the CBC have done many a documentary but we never seem to have done a great film to commemorate our fighting men. Hell, even recently deceased President Reagan remembered Canada's role in the D-day fighting. Why have we no great film for what our men did or about that cold blooded murder at Abbaye d'Ardenne on D-day?

We can a least remember them via the Juno Beach Centre.
posted by arse_hat at 1:04 AM PST - 16 comments

June 5

Square One TV

I always hated math, but I loved Square One Television.
posted by interrobang at 11:09 PM PST - 27 comments

Yo, Victor

(linked page needs Java, sorry) Victor Wooten's Bass and Nature Camp sounds interesting. Bass guitar and music master class in the woods, with animal tracking, meditation, health, and basic wilderness survival lessons.
posted by crunchburger at 5:12 PM PST - 6 comments

Chinese blogs

Chinese blogs. "On the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown, blogs are booming in China. But are they making any difference?"
posted by homunculus at 4:43 PM PST - 3 comments

Autopen

Is the autograph real? Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and of course Ronald Reagan have used it - the Autopen - a machine which signs an autograph in the celebrity's handwriting. It was developed in the early part of this century but only became popular in the late 1940's. Learn more at Stephen Beck's Autograph Pages
posted by azul at 4:40 PM PST - 9 comments

Photobloggers discuss subway photography ban

Photobloggers discuss subway photography ban to the villiage voice. The proposed ban on photography in NYC subways was previously discussed on metafilter here In response to the ban, photobloggers plan a protest Sunday, June 6 starting at a kiosk for an MTA-sponsored exhibit of photographs celebrating the centennial of the subway, many of which ironically were taken during the previous ban.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 4:17 PM PST - 8 comments

R.I.P. R.W.R.

Breaking History: Ronald Reagan dead at 93.
Will today be marked as the culmination of his achievements or the "end of the Reagan Era"?
MeFites are advised to please avoid piling onto the subject or the messenger
posted by wendell at 2:03 PM PST - 403 comments

English Literature and Religion

English Literature and Religion.
posted by hama7 at 12:08 PM PST - 2 comments

Tanuki!

Let's talk tanuki... tanuki and fox... traditional tanuki... trickster tanuki... tanuki culture... transformer tanuki... tanuki priest... tanuki balls.
posted by moonbird at 10:46 AM PST - 8 comments

Wave Magazine publishes its 10 Best Internet Fads

Wave Magazine publishes its 10 Best Internet Fads and ranks Star Wars Kid top. All Your Base was robbed surely?
posted by feelinglistless at 10:13 AM PST - 59 comments

sound familiar?

I have been in torture photos, too. Gerry Adams speaks out. "News of the ill-treatment of prisoners in Iraq created no great surprise in republican Ireland. We have seen and heard it all before. Some of us have even survived that type of treatment. Suggestions that the brutality in Iraq was meted out by a few miscreants aren't even seriously entertained here. We have seen and heard all that before as well. But our experience is that, while individuals may bring a particular impact to their work, they do so within interrogative practices authorised by their superiors."
posted by sunexplodes at 9:32 AM PST - 9 comments

gettin' lawyered up

Hiring a private criminal defense lawyer --the legal implications and ramifications of our President's (and veep's) move--by John Dean
posted by amberglow at 8:42 AM PST - 16 comments

robots in disguise...

transformers breakdancing. (flash video)
posted by joedan at 4:57 AM PST - 14 comments

June 4

Milked.

Still Flash Friday! Kind of. This is some crafty work, nonetheless. (Parts NSFW)
posted by travis at 10:53 PM PST - 3 comments

how it feels to get shot

How it feels to get shot. [via waxy] Each year, roughly 55,000 Americans survive firearm injuries. "People don't even get knocked backward when they get shot.. Unless hit in the head or the spine, the most common [immediate] reaction to getting shot is no reaction at all."
posted by stbalbach at 10:32 PM PST - 40 comments

CNNNN: Embedded in your heart

CNNNN: Australia's finest news source, with the very best Newstainment around, presented by professional commentators with the aid of the CNNNN Newsband, studio audience and newsbar monkey, and advertisement support from Esteem ("because you need it") and Boggs beer ("the imported beer made right here"). Featuring new reality show Animal Farm, Bush's Slumber Down Under (let's "give him the big Dubya"), extreme news from the Firth Report, CNNNN Pay-Per-News and much, much more. [warning: RealPlayer]
posted by reklaw at 7:57 PM PST - 2 comments

Flight Comics

Copper is a beautifully drawn web-comic about a dog and his boy. The author Kazu Kibuishi is also about to release Flight, a highly anticipated anthology which includes the works of Derek Kirk Kim, Jen Wang, Clio Chang, Rad Sechrist, Vera Brosgol and Enrico Casarosa, all a group of artists who met over the Internet (Most links are to comics) Scott McCloud sends in a review from the year 2054.
posted by vacapinta at 6:39 PM PST - 10 comments

I can stop if I want to!

National Review, Pro-Drug? I was searching for information of drug use in Vietnam and during wars in general, when I found this gem. Scroll halfway down to a very interesting pro-drug discussion between the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience and Mr. William Buckley. A little dated (1990), but I never thought I'd come out of an article thinking to myself, "Maybe all drugs should be legal."
posted by geoff. at 6:14 PM PST - 18 comments

Instant Environmental Satisfaction

Greenfleet is an Australian environmental organisation who aim to help citizens offset their own greenhouse gas emmissions. Their Tree Totaller (Australian-based, but I'm sure conversions are easy) works out how many trees you need to offset your annual emmissions, based on private car, home energy use and flights. It's a very neat little flash-app, and at the end it lets you chose to "subscribe" to Greenfleet so they'll plant the necessary number of trees for you. I owe 44 trees, for only AU$103 a year.
posted by Jimbob at 4:43 PM PST - 7 comments

So easy it's hard

Petals Around the Rose This little puzzle took my genius son over an hour to figure out. It took me two seconds. They say the smarter you are the harder it is...shut up.
posted by konolia at 3:29 PM PST - 140 comments

Bloody Flash Archery

Bowman. Competitive projectile motion getteth all medieval on thy Robin Hood. (Via Veer.)
posted by brownpau at 3:13 PM PST - 9 comments

it's the little things i miss.

it's the little things i miss. After trying to download a plug in through firefox i had a complete computer crash. not even talking about the years of work, images, music, research-- (still in shock and denial phase)-- ahem-- it's the little things i miss, like my millions of bookmarks, work and pure subversive fun. lots like the baby jesus butt plug are gone forever, but as i got so many from you, lovely, wide ranging, all topic sprawling metafilter, help a recall damaged, traumatized gal out? give me your wacky, absurbed and heartfelt, human endeavor, holistic and achingly funny-- prove that the monkey represents sharing?
posted by ethylene at 2:25 PM PST - 55 comments

Great television science presenters and their shows

Great television science presenters and their shows: Tim Hunkin "the Secret Life of Machines", Jacob Bronowski "The Ascent of Man", James Burke "Connections", David Attenborough "Trials of Life" "Blue Planet" etc., Marlin Perkins "Wild Kingdom", Don Herbert "Watch Mr. Wizard", Adam Hart-Davis "Science Shack" "Rough Science", Jack Horkheimer "Star Gazer". Does anyone else have any favorites, past or present?
posted by milovoo at 2:07 PM PST - 30 comments

Here's one for Languagehat

Double-Tongued Word Wrester :: Words from the fringes of English
posted by anastasiav at 1:56 PM PST - 5 comments

This game is a bugger

Apparently some guy got fired from playing this, so have fun.
posted by Orange Goblin at 1:39 PM PST - 22 comments

Torture and Truth and The Logic of Torture

Torture and Truth and The Logic of Torture--Mark Danner writes about Article 15-6 Investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade (The Taguba Report) and Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on the Treatment by the Coalition Forces of Prisoners of War and Other Protected Persons by the Geneva Conventions in Iraq During Arrest, Internment and Interrogation in the former and concludes thusly in the latter:

Behind the exotic brutality so painstakingly recorded in Abu Ghraib, and the multiple tangled plotlines that will be teased out in the coming weeks and months about responsibility, knowledge, and culpability, lies a simple truth, well known but not yet publicly admitted in Washington: that since the attacks of September 11, 2001, officials of the United States, at various locations around the world, from Bagram in Afghanistan to Guantanamo in Cuba to Abu Ghraib in Iraq, have been torturing prisoners.     (More Within)
posted by y2karl at 12:49 PM PST - 16 comments

BWAAAA! Made you look!

What is the point?
posted by dfowler at 12:46 PM PST - 43 comments

Searching for the Great Brain

Searching for Bobby Fischer the Great Brain. "The Great Brain books are based on the true life stories of John D. and his family, in particular his older brother Tom, who is so clever he always seems to get his way... While we were reading the second in the series, More Adventures of the Great Brain, we learned about a camping trip that J.D.'s family went on in Beaver Canyon, Utah. We recognized some landmarks described in the book, and decided to go on a field trip to try to find the town of Adenville where the Great Brain lived.
posted by weston at 12:37 PM PST - 37 comments

"Autochthonous. A. U. T. O. C. H. ..."

Here are the words (and the kids) that won the 2004 Scripps National Spelling Bee yesterday. I'm glad to see appear three of my favorite words, "velleity", "lagniappe" (from the Quechua!), and for the win, "autochthonous."
posted by nicwolff at 10:53 AM PST - 44 comments

That other documentary

The Corporation (U.S. premiere tonight) is "a surprisingly rational and coherent attack on capitalism's most important institution," or so says The Economist. An important but flawed documentary? Or something bigger? (imdb page | rotten tomato review collection) (wee more inside)
posted by mrgrimm at 10:11 AM PST - 70 comments

Ryan

Ryan is a documentary about Oscar nominee/animator Ryan Larkin, who now panhandles on the streets of Montreal. A preview clip is at the far right of the photo gallery.
posted by disgruntled at 9:45 AM PST - 5 comments

Gunner Palace

This is the war you haven't seen in the news. Michael Tucker spent a month in Iraq with the 2/3 Field Artillery (aka the "Gunner" Battalion), and Gunner Palace is his forthcoming documentary. (Three soldiers from the unit were on the cover of Time's 2003 Person of the Year issue.) There are two QuickTime trailers from the movie. [via WarBlogging]
posted by kirkaracha at 8:50 AM PST - 14 comments

Jesus saves (on prescription drugs)

The Son of God has Prozac and Viagra on sale now. Why bother with know-it-all pharmacists when you can get prescription drugs from Jesus Himself? He even sells birth control for only $129.99 a month (loaves and fishes not included.) via The General
posted by trondant at 8:44 AM PST - 19 comments

eBay as punishment.

eBay as punishment.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 8:36 AM PST - 52 comments

Pong! But Harder!

Psychopong - See if you can beat all 5 levels [Friday Shockwave Fun]
posted by falconred at 8:36 AM PST - 9 comments

What IS toe-jam football?

Mojofilter. Friday Flash Funkiness. (~8mb .swf. Click the animation for karaoke version).
posted by punilux at 7:48 AM PST - 11 comments

Rules for posting

Welcome to the internet. (via coolios)
posted by johnny7 at 5:29 AM PST - 22 comments

The F.B.I. knew al-Qaida was going to hijack planes in the U.S. a year before 9/11.

A missed clue. Niaz Khan walked into an F.B.I. office and told them that he had been provided money and training by al-Qaida with the aim of hijacking a plane in the United States. [more inside]
posted by rdr at 3:44 AM PST - 22 comments

Interesting Thing of the Day

San Francisco’s Terra Infirma and other Interesting Things of the Day. Putting the muse back in museum was another that struck me with its focus on unconventionally-themed museums, reminiscent of the roadside attractions in Gaiman's American Gods. Audio feeds of recent articles are available, and well read, but it seems that most of the clips are intended to become available by subscription-only. Regardless, many of the past year's articles make for fascinating reads. (via bsag)
posted by quasistoic at 1:40 AM PST - 6 comments

June 3

BOOM!

Nuclear codes = 00000000 Remember Johnson's Daisy ad, which led to the question whose finger do you want on the button? Well it seems it was not the President's finger alone. SAC took it upon itself (if this article can be believed) to set all the nuclear launch codes to 00000000 and then to tell all of the launch operators. Any one of those crews could have by themselves started WWIII. Apparently, that whole "nuclear briefcase" trick was nothing but a charade for many years. YIKES! (via Geekpress and Slashdot).
posted by caddis at 8:47 PM PST - 25 comments

This - is - Radio Gaza.

All We Hear is Radio Gaza. For the first time, Palestinians have taken to English language radio programs produced in the occupied territories. The show has its bias, of course, but all news does, of course.
posted by Captain_Tenille at 5:09 PM PST - 13 comments

HHGG Screenwriter Self-Interview

A fairly reassuring self-interview with Karey Kirkpatrick - the American (gasp!) screenwriter tasked with getting Douglas Adams' original script for "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" into filmable condition.

Here's hoping they don't screw it up...
posted by GriffX at 2:02 PM PST - 38 comments

June 2004...The Beginning Of The End?

this is the end as we know it. Aussie Bloke describes upcoming catastrophic meteor showers. A mysterious Australian astronomer is ranting about something earth shattering in on the horizon, odd naval fleet movement, strange economic activity and interesting meteor activity. Truth or hoax, What does it all mean?
posted by lsd4all at 12:19 PM PST - 51 comments

ZzzzzzzzzzzzAP!

Hardest. Flash. Game. Ever.
posted by psychotic_venom at 12:12 PM PST - 34 comments

Decline in Japanese marriage and birth rate

Interesting article on the Japanese "social recession" (from the back pages of USA Today) "To an astonishing degree, the sexes are going their opposite ways in Japan. Young women are revolting against the traditional role of obedient housewife, opting instead to live at home and shop and socialize with girlfriends. Startled men are retreating into solitary ways. Check-ins at the country's famed 'love hotels' are even falling. As birthrates slip, a social crisis looms."
posted by Prospero at 11:46 AM PST - 37 comments

50 Ways

Break up stories. NYC blogger smitten shares her friend's break-up-by-text-message story and invites readers to post their own. Resulting tales of woe (and some that aren't) include: (1) a "Dear John" e-mail; (2) he dedicates Robert Palmer's classic "I didn't mean to turn you on" to you; (3) his mother calls to say happy birthday and btw her son is having an affair; (4) you find out he has a fiance when she calls to ask who you are; (5) you break up right after sex while everyone's still naked. Maybe there should be a Strunk and White "Elements of Style" resource for break up protocol.
posted by onlyconnect at 11:13 AM PST - 34 comments

meta meta meta

Gizmodo + Cool Tools + Whole Earth Catalog = Meta-efficient -a "guide to the most efficient things in the world."
posted by luser at 9:35 AM PST - 8 comments

3 K's you're out!!!

How to score a baseball game. A childhood pleasure I've never given up.
posted by WolfDaddy at 9:15 AM PST - 24 comments

Instant light

Tarkovsky's Polaroids
posted by jazzkat11 at 8:47 AM PST - 13 comments

Tenet Resigns

George Tenet resigns as CIA director.
posted by zedzebedia at 8:25 AM PST - 81 comments

Best. Campaign. Slogan. Ever.

Let's Roll! [may be a teensy bit NSFW]
posted by Johnny Assay at 8:21 AM PST - 8 comments

I hate when this happens

Pardon? Posted on Thursday, May 27, 2004. From the transcript of a phone call made by Kevin B. Wyckoff to his parents, Charles and Martha Wyckoff, a few hours after they had attended his funeral on December 22. Kevin B. Wyckoff is an inmate at the Lexington Correctional Facility in Oklahoma, where he is serving a five-year sentence for offenses including kidnapping and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Originally from Harper's Magazine, March 2004.
posted by sunexplodes at 8:19 AM PST - 18 comments

It's a Jackelope!

It's a jackelope! Or maybe an antefeline! Or perhaps a lupursa or... heck, I don't know what this strange creature wandering Bill and Gayle Kurdian's back yard is, and neither does the curator of the North Carolina Zoo.
posted by headspace at 7:56 AM PST - 40 comments

RUSH TO JUDGEMENT? ...don't steal that, I just now coined it!

Rush Limbaugh loudly and repeatedly accuses NYT's Howell Raines of plagiarism over "Kerry / Lurch."
Jim Romenesko quietly wonders if that's possible.
posted by soyjoy at 6:53 AM PST - 35 comments

Boston man gets felony charges for dressing as hooded Iraqi

Joe Previtera, a 21 year old student at Boston College, was arrested Wednesday and charged with felonies after dressing as a hooded Iraqi prisoner in front of a military recruitment center in downtown Boston. Previtera faces misdemeanor charges of disturbing the peace and felony charges of making a false bomb threat and using a hoax device. The charges apparently reflect the District Attorney's concern that Mr Previtera might have been mistaken for a terrorist...
posted by tapeguy at 6:12 AM PST - 59 comments

First things first :: prioritizing the world's problems

The Copenhagen Consensus is Bjørn Lomborg’s latest agenda-setting enterprise. Eight top economists (of which three are Nobel laureates) were asked to rank 32 of the world’s challenges using cost-benefit analysis and estimation of importance. The resulting ranking suggested that the HIV/AIDS epidemic be prioritized first.

As always with Mr. Lomborg (previously discussed here, here and here), the whole enterprise was surrounded by controversy, and triggered a counter conference, The Copenhagen Conscience, and earned him the privilege of getting likened to Hitler by a high-ranking UN official
posted by AwkwardPause at 1:53 AM PST - 25 comments

Worth Sharing II

Remarks by President Bush Long, but worth it.
posted by David Dark at 1:45 AM PST - 138 comments

June 2

amazon plogs

Amazon's trying out "blogging" in the form of "plogs" or purchase personalized logs. It appears to be the same content as your old amazon recommendations, but served up in a blog post-style format, signed by the so very intimate sounding Amazon NewReleaseBot. I can't wait until a giant like Coca Cola starts "blogs" (beverage logs) and announces new flavors complete with permalinks and weekly archives right on every can.
posted by mathowie at 11:59 PM PST - 27 comments

It Came From the Deep!

New York's Water Ain't Kosher! - You may be aware that shellfish are not kosher. It turns out that little, itty-bitty, microscopic shellfish called copepods are in New York's water. Brita to the rescue?
posted by falconred at 11:55 PM PST - 18 comments

Bishop Castle

Bishop Castle. A lone man has been building a 160 foot tall castle in the Colorado mountains for the past 34 years.
posted by split atom at 6:44 PM PST - 25 comments

the double click

Microsoft patents the double-click. Microsoft has been granted a patent on the double-click. The Public Patent Foundation is protesting this as they did Microsoft's patent on the FAT File System. Double-click today, tomorrow... typing. Bwahaha!
posted by josephtate at 6:38 PM PST - 24 comments

Pop Goes the Bubble

Is a Market Disaster Immement? The Federal Reserve has confirmed [a] Stock Market Crash forecast by raising the Money Supply (M-3) by crisis proportions, up another 46.8 billion this past week. What awful calamity do they see? Something is up. This is unprecedented, unheard-of pre-catastrophe M-3 expansion. M-3 is up an amount that we've never seen before without a crisis
posted by willnot at 4:54 PM PST - 43 comments

[grunt!]

Impacted Colon isn't a new band name, but a favourite thriller of "alternative health" adherents. Wild claims of up to 90 lbs(!) of built-up waste are popular, and claims of the benefits of colonic irrigation abound. The medical establishment says it's bogus, while those in the business make the opposite claim. Thinking about having 20 gallons of water washed through your bum? Be careful.
posted by five fresh fish at 2:23 PM PST - 75 comments

things that make you go hmmm...

The truth, hard as it is to accept, is that Bush is an Iranian agent.
Time to ask where our president's loyalties lie? (taking a page from our Republican friends, of course) And The Logan Act--who does it apply to?
posted by amberglow at 1:53 PM PST - 30 comments

Who do you miss?

Harrison became president in 1841. He was in Washington on March 4, 1841. He was 67 years old when he was president. Harrison died in April 4, 1841. He died in office. That was William Henry Harrison. I miss William Henry Harrison. He would make a good President or delegate today. I think he should be on all dollars.
posted by dfowler at 1:01 PM PST - 23 comments

Social Activism through Design

"Don't just do good design; do some good." An initiative to promote socially-responsible projects as initiated within the design community, in small and large scales. And on a tangent, activism has certainly come a long way since Lennon.
posted by margaretlam at 12:49 PM PST - 12 comments

Have you played cornhole recently?

What is CornHole? While it's true that cornholing has been bandied about Metafilter before,the president of the American Cornholing Association has never really had a chance to speak out. The official rules for Cornhole, the chance to become a card carrying member and the freedom to ask detailed questions on the Cornhole Forum are all now available via this wonderful thing called the Internet.
posted by jeremias at 12:44 PM PST - 8 comments

The intern strikes back

The intern accused of having an affair with Kerry does some investigative reporting of her own.

And so my education had taken me pretty much as far as it could. I started out as an ambitious young woman inspired by politics and the media. I’ve ended up disenchanted with both. If I had been an ambitious young man, this story would not have happened. I’m never going to know exactly what happened, but that matters less to me now. I lost a good friend and learned a few lessons. I am struck by the pitiful state of political reporting, which is dominated by the unholy alliance of opposition research and its latest tool, the Internet. Even the Wall Street Journal’s Website ran Drudge’s story, with only a brief disclaimer that his stories weren’t always accurate.

It was important for me to set the record straight. I don’t mean to dredge up old news by writing this, and I’m not trying to create any now, though I’m not unaware of the irony that I am adding to the ink spilled on this story. I don’t intend to discuss it again in public either. But for me, this painful experience will be hard to forget. It may be only a minor footnote to the campaign, but it has changed my life completely.

posted by psmealey at 12:41 PM PST - 36 comments

The Gmail Killer

Aventure Media is the Gmail killer. No more waiting for Gmail to be released, Aventure Media is already offering 2GB of storage. [via theregister]
posted by banished at 10:27 AM PST - 51 comments

Claud Johnson is finally enjoying the fruits of the legendary Robert Johnson's estate

Son of a Bluesman The legend was that if you touched Robert Johnson you could feel the talent running through him, like heat, put there by the devil on a dark Delta crossroad in exchange for his soul. It is why Claud Johnson's grandparents would not let him out of the house that day in 1937 when Robert Johnson, his father, strolled into the yard. "They told my daddy they didn't want no part of him. They said he was working for the devil. I stood in the door, and he stood on the ground, and that is as close as I ever got to him. He wandered off, and I never saw him again." Today, in the working-class neighborhood where he raised his children, Claud Johnson, a rich man, lives in a grand house on 47 acres of property. (After Claud won his court battle in 1998 and was recognized as the son of the blues legend, his lawyer handed him a six-figure cashier's check and begged him to quit hauling gravel. Claud kept hauling gravel for five months. "After 29 years, it just gets in your blood"). His victory stands out in the annals of Mississippi probate law. It took 10 years, two trips to the State Supreme Court and two trips to the U.S. Supreme Court. Not to mention, most of the first two or three generations of blues musicians died without securing rights to their composition. Explains Thomas Freeland, a Mississippi attorney and blues historian: when the San Francisco-based band the Grateful Dead recorded songs by the North Carolina blues musician Elizabeth Cotten, Freeland said, "the story is, [she] bought a dishwasher with the royalties." (more inside)
posted by matteo at 10:02 AM PST - 13 comments

Howard Stern: Kerry's Secret Weapon

Howard Stern's anti-Bush rhetoric may be more influential than people think. With all the extra media attention that a half a million dollars worth of FCC fines can garner, it looks like Howard's rearing up against George. It's weird to see an article like this after how pro-war and pro-Bush the Stern show was after 9-11. (Free registration required, ctnow.com)
posted by clango at 9:25 AM PST - 35 comments

Cup of tea?

How to make a cup of tea
A guide by the sorely missed Douglas Adams which is part of his own creation, the now BBC owned H2G2.
posted by Mwongozi at 5:13 AM PST - 20 comments

Doctor Bono's Call to Arms

Bono's commencement address to U.Penn. "The world is more malleable than you think and it's waiting for you to hammer it into shape.... That's what this degree of yours is, a blunt instrument. So go forth and build something with it." [via Ed]
posted by rory at 3:54 AM PST - 46 comments

Go Banana!

Select your candidate the easy way, Canadians! The lazy should find this a simple way to decide. People living outside of Canada will get an insight on what topics Canadians debate! Fun for all.
posted by shepd at 12:39 AM PST - 54 comments

pendulum continues to swing swing back to the left

pendulum continues to swing back to the left
Meet Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth (D-SD)
posted by specialk420 at 12:17 AM PST - 39 comments

The Psychological Sources of Islamic Terrorism by Michael J. Mazarr

The Psychological Sources of Islamic Terrorism
Michael J. Mazarr is professor of national security strategy at the U.S. National War College. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the policy or position of the U.S. government.
posted by y2karl at 12:09 AM PST - 8 comments

June 1

The man on the moon

Moon Walk 1835 -- Was Neil Armstrong Really The First Man on The Moon? The Europeans did not arrive in American till nearly the end of six thousand years; this time was necessary for them to carry their navigation to such perfection, so as to cross the ocean. The people of the moon know already, perhaps, how to make little flights in the air, and at this time may be exercising themselves. When they shall be more able, we may see them.
posted by travis at 11:15 PM PST - 8 comments

back from iraq

From the where-are-they-now (-and-I-hope-they-are-doing-ok) file: Jeremy Botter, our medic man in Iraq, has just released all his posts from Iraq as a free downloadable PDF. It contains the story of capturing Saddam, getting bombed at camp as soldiers died, and a whole lot of playstation2.
posted by mathowie at 9:45 PM PST - 4 comments

See the USA in your CHEVROLET

The Old Car Manual Project
posted by anastasiav at 9:19 PM PST - 5 comments

Enron shoved what up grandma Millie's....

Enron traders caught, on tape, "talking energy" "They're f------g taking all the money back from you guys?" complains an Enron employee on the tapes. "All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?" "Yeah, grandma Millie, man" "Yeah, now she wants her f------g money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her a------ for f------g $250 a megawatt hour."

Wacky Enron boys, what will they say next.....
posted by troutfishing at 8:50 PM PST - 34 comments

Talkin' Engery

Talk Energy is a filter site for discussion about sustainable energy. Their goal is to get a million people worldwide talking about energy. Members can post to a main discussion page, create profile pages including their own journals and indentify their connections with other members. The chattiest people get free samples of neat products to review, closing the communication loop for green companies. They're also giving away $50,000 USD in home energy renovation funds to one lucky person.

Innovators have their own space to collaborate on ideas and projects. They're even offering partnerships consisting of private discussion areas for any non profit that wants one.
posted by will at 8:08 PM PST - 7 comments

Or he became me.

TCM is playing tribute this month to Archie Leach, better known to the world as Cary Grant. The range of films, the types of roles, the co-stars. Makes you long for another era of american film-making. Of interest to you architect types might be Mr. Blandings Builds his Dream House of 1948, with the fabulous Myrna Loy - whose 1947 film The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer partly occupies that special message place on my answering machine. Grant's films with Hitchcock - especially North by Northwest with its great fake FLW house and fantastic Saul Bass titles - Cukor, and Hawks are well worth searching out. Don't miss his final role - Walk Don't Run - a film set at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, and itself a remake of The More the Merrier of 1943. Who said that Hollywood couldn't do remakes?

One of the most interesting items to come out of the TCM documentary is Cary's embracing LSD in the early pre-illegal tests of it.
posted by grimley at 6:47 PM PST - 24 comments

Comics Character Biographies

The Marvel Directory: from Abomination to Zzzax. On the other side, here's the Unofficial Who's Who in the DC Universe, from Abel to Zauriel.
posted by interrobang at 4:15 PM PST - 16 comments

Wikipedia, a reliable source?

Wikipedia as Participatory Journalism: Reliable Sources? (pdf file) From the 5th international Symposium on Online Journalism comes this rather interesting analysis of the Wikipedia both as a news source and as a living draft of history. A surprisingly readable article.
posted by Grod at 3:03 PM PST - 9 comments

Clandestine Radios

U.S. Clandestine Radio Equipment catalogs "facts, observations, anecdotes, and stories about clandestine radio equipment as used by the United States." Includes a section on "mystery" equipment.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 2:30 PM PST - 4 comments

Canadian Conservatives, in their own words

An election will soon be taking place in Canada and the party led by Stephen Harper may form a minority government. Might as well know what these Conservatives stand for.
posted by johnnydark at 2:11 PM PST - 43 comments

Hey Hey Hey....

This Cosby show is undeserved. "These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids - $500 sneakers for what? And won't spend $200 for 'Hooked on Phonics,''' Cosby said. "They're standing on the corner, and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk: 'Why you ain't, why you is. '... And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads.''
posted by quibx at 12:35 PM PST - 110 comments

Spot-a-Frog

Frogs! Some like to climb, while others prefer the ground. Some may be feeding on fruit flies; look closely to see how they eat. You may even observe some frogs hiding in holes and crevices or behind roots. See how many you can spot!
posted by azul at 12:28 PM PST - 5 comments

Can a Pharmacist Refuse To Dispense Birth Control?

Can a Pharmacist Refuse To Dispense Birth Control? "Neil Noesen, a relief pharmacist at the Kmart in Menomonie, Wis., was the only person on duty one day in 2002 when a woman came in to refill her prescription for the contraceptive Loestrin FE. According to a complaint filed by the Wisconsin department of regulation and licensing, Noesen refused because of his religious opposition to birth control. He also declined to transfer the prescription to a nearby pharmacy and refused once again when the woman returned to the store with police...."
posted by Postroad at 9:44 AM PST - 100 comments

We Are Agents Of The Free

Be All That You Can Be . Draft legislation - Coming soon, to a real world near you!
posted by armoured-ant at 7:02 AM PST - 60 comments

Would all moral thugs please stand up.

A mother talks about her son's childhood. I'm tired of your foolish rhetoric about the "homosexual agenda" and your allegations that accepting homosexuality is the same thing as advocating sex with children. You are cruel and ignorant. (via the chimps at Monkeyfilter)
posted by ashbury at 6:48 AM PST - 53 comments

Thought crime or nought crime?

The reporter who described meeting the man who raped him as a teenager? He was arrested this week for felony stalking of the rapist.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 1:07 AM PST - 20 comments