MetaFilter

Have time travellers really returned to our present to save the eventual savior? Or was it just an elaborate intricate hoax played by total strangers? The answer lies in part 2 of this bizarre real-life tale. I guarantee that you find this an amusing and quite entertaining read. Hollywood, please take notes. All hail Kolin Pope!
posted by hidely at 11:52 PM PST - 18 comments

Iran: Eight website technicians arrested in undisclosed location since two weeks ago They are said to have been providing hosting services and other technical support to the editors of the news websites. However, the banned websites are still operating with new addresses on free hosting services such as BlogSpot. Is it not newsworthy for the Western media? This is just the beginning of a major crackdown on Iranian news websites and ISPs after filtering them haven't been successful enough.
posted by hoder at 10:23 PM PST - 4 comments

Mandonna: The All-Male Tribute to the Material Girl . (Warning: sound on every page)
It's exactly what you think it is. Go straight to the videos for capital F-U-N !!
...via go BLORT yourself.
posted by planetkyoto at 9:50 PM PST - 19 comments

The AOL CD Preservation Guild & Museum
posted by anastasiav at 9:44 PM PST - 5 comments

Mint Rubbing: time and life management technique developed in Romania and practiced by millions of people worldwide. Learn to properly rub mint online and join the RMRA for free! Don't forget the testimonials and ancient wisdom...
posted by loquax at 9:14 PM PST - 14 comments

Following a long history of innovative designs Apple has created a loyal following. Today they released their newest iMac into the wild.
posted by elwoodwiles at 6:25 PM PST - 99 comments

Alain Finkielkraut's reflections on French Anti-Semitism.
posted by semmi at 2:49 PM PST - 38 comments

Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific! Yes, back in the 70s it was all right to say this to unsuspecting strangers here in the US. We live in different times now, but the product is once again available, imported from the Phillipines by The Vermont Country Store, also selling all manner of odd products from yesteryear. (Midget joke not included)
posted by Ogre Lawless at 2:32 PM PST - 14 comments

Death Masks (Keats, Newton, Etc.)
posted by gwint at 1:40 PM PST - 16 comments

Up north, Canadian Customs contend with porn all day. Down south, Utah's former Porn Czar lost her job due to budget cuts after fielding 1,500 complaints. In California, private "porn trackers" look at porn so other's won't be able to. Over in Washington D.C., Lam Ngyen sips coffee and trolls the Internet for porn. What a job that must be. [Some links may not be suitable for work]
posted by cmonkey at 12:00 PM PST - 26 comments

Fired from Friendster.com • Scott Sassa, CEO of Friendster, has canned a programmer named TroutGirl for blogging about her job in what appears to be a generally positive and non-specific manner. Some are suggesting we cancel our accounts in protest.
posted by dhoyt at 11:25 AM PST - 52 comments

By entering a 2-digit code in a hidden location in the Diebold voting machine, a second set of votes is created. "This set of votes can be changed, so that it no longer matches the correct votes. The voting system will then read the totals from the bogus vote set. It takes only seconds to change the votes, and to date not a single location in the U.S. has implemented security measures to fully mitigate the risks."
posted by mr_crash_davis at 11:23 AM PST - 74 comments

Spiderman Reviews Crayons (via YesAnd.com)
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:16 AM PST - 9 comments

Found: Hand in Bottle "No one is sure why, but bottles with photographic images of hands have been drifting onto the shores of Clopper Lake in Seneca Creek State Park this summer." (Pictures in the second link, about 1/3 of the way down the page.)
posted by amarynth at 10:01 AM PST - 13 comments

Iron Women, Foxy Ladies- A collection of propaganda posters depicting the ideal, but contradictory, roles for Chinese women in the nation. Even if you're not interested in the politics, the evolution of style and form in the artwork is fascinating to examine.
posted by headspace at 9:19 AM PST - 6 comments

Best Conspiracy Site Ever. It covers just about everything, from microwave mind-programming to aliens who want to assimilate us and, of course, the Matrix. Also, a guest article about why Arnold Schwartzenegger might just turn out to be the Antichrist.
posted by Masi at 6:21 AM PST - 16 comments

A Blog entry about a guy who melted a kilo of Iridium in New Jersey with Oliver Sacks. There are also pictures and movies of the 200,000 eV electron beam furnace in action.  Theo Gray, co-founder of Wolfram Research was there too (the pictures are all his). For any laymen who may have wondered in, Iridium is not a phone company, it is a precious metal that shares an element group with the likes of Platinum and Rhodium.
posted by pxe2000 at 5:27 AM PST - 22 comments

BetaVote.com If we had our say - things would be very different. This is obviously not very reliable data but thought provoking non the less. I am pretty sure the 90 to 10 in Kerrys favor is a just about an accurate measure of Denmarks opinion.
posted by FidelDonson at 3:04 AM PST - 20 comments

Half of New Yorkers Believe US Leaders Had Foreknowledge of Impending 9-11 Attacks and “Consciously Failed” To Act; 66% Call For New Probe of Unanswered Questions by Congress or New York’s Attorney General, New Zogby International Poll Reveals On the eve of a Republican National Convention invoking 9/11 symbols, sound bytes and imagery, half (49.3%) of New York City residents and 41% of New York citizens overall say that some of our leaders "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act," according to the poll conducted by Zogby International. The poll of New York residents was conducted from Tuesday August 24 through Thursday August 26, 2004. Overall results have a margin of sampling error of +/-3.5. This is probably bad news for Rudy Giuliani.
posted by jackspace at 2:27 AM PST - 112 comments

Exploring Emergence. [Java]
posted by Gyan at 11:24 PM PST - 8 comments

Snorri Sturluson, author of the Prose Edda and the Heimskringla, was also a hot tub enthusiast.
posted by homunculus at 9:07 PM PST - 11 comments

My name is Scott Camile. I was a Sgt. attached to Charley 1/1. I was a forward observer in Vietnam. I went in right after high school and I'm a student now. My testimony involves burning of villages with civilians in them, the cutting off of ears, cutting off of heads, torturing of prisoners, calling in of artillery on villages for games, corpsmen killing wounded prisoners, napalm dropped on villages, women being raped, women and children being massacred, CS gas used on people, animals slaughtered, Chieu Hoi passes rejected and the people holding them shot, bodies shoved out of helicopters, tear-gassing people for fun and running civilian vehicles off the road.   Here is the Swift Boat related back story from The Sixties Project: Winter Soldier Investigation - Testimony given in Detroit, Michigan, on January 31, 1971, February 1 and 2, 1971. Sponsored by Vietnam Veterans Against the War. This testimony was published in the Congressional Record, "Extensions and Remarks," April 7, 1971: 2825-2900, 2903-2936. (Much More Inside)
posted by y2karl at 8:42 PM PST - 17 comments

What if the citizens of Springfield mated?
posted by ColdChef at 5:26 PM PST - 20 comments

Old school ginuwine gin-joint jass, just cos. [MP3] From the home of boogie-woogie, Austria!
posted by Pretty_Generic at 5:04 PM PST - 7 comments

The Power of a Blog: take one conservative Republican Representative from Virginia (a co-sponsor of the Federal Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment and representing a district that includes Pat Robertson's homebase), mix with gay sex phone lines, and you have it: his resignation, over "allegations."
posted by amberglow at 4:59 PM PST - 83 comments

And the training wheels would go where, exactly, on the Sideways Bike?
posted by Dick Paris at 3:56 PM PST - 18 comments

How to build yourself a Glow Discharge Panel. No, really. Woah, that's freakin' cool. UFO stuff, I think to myself. Heh. Oh.. Oh holy crap!
posted by loquacious at 3:23 PM PST - 3 comments

Womans flesh grows over her wedding ring via waxylinks
posted by bob sarabia at 3:08 PM PST - 38 comments

An Open Letter to Zed. Someday people will realise that the GPL offers no protection from anything, and use a real free software license instead.
posted by reklaw at 2:43 PM PST - 40 comments

Perhaps you had a one-hit wonder in the '80s, with more people remembering your mohawk and nose chain than your actual music. Fear not, as you can now have your own ponderosa where you don't have to fall in love. Or perhaps you were a backing musician for Prince, known more for your penchant for playing in surgical scrubs. You too can find solace online. The Internet: helping musicians everywhere.
posted by solistrato at 2:30 PM PST - 8 comments

4-paddle pong [note: flash]
posted by crunchland at 2:24 PM PST - 11 comments

It's made of fluffy silicon. Others think differently. It could explain some UFO sightings. It can be dangerous. And you can make it at home in your microwave. It's ball lightning.
posted by biscotti at 1:35 PM PST - 5 comments

Cooper Black. A True Story. [flash]
posted by armage at 12:53 PM PST - 8 comments

The Colombia you don't know. Sure, we all hear about the drug trade and the violence. Unfortunately this overshadows a lot of the good things about the country. There's a lot of Colombia outsiders don't see. Like the Caño Cristales, the five-colored river. [more inside]
posted by caution live frogs at 10:14 AM PST - 8 comments

Tensegrity. It didn't originate with Bucky, as often credited - See FAQ. Tetrahedral spaceframe weaving, page 18. And Three strut tensegrity with five magnet spherical gear set, page 21. For your mind-melting Monday pleasure.
posted by yoga at 8:07 AM PST - 3 comments

The maven of midwestern gentility weighs in on today's GOP.

How did the Party of Lincoln and Liberty transmogrify into the party of Newt Gingrich’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk?
posted by psmealey at 7:26 AM PST - 154 comments

Father Cornelius (Neil) Horan doesn't just spread his end-of-the-world message by running onto the track during Formula One races and accosting hapless Brazilian marathoners (more here, here and here) -- he writes books, too, excerpts of which you can download for your edification and salvation. From what he says, better hurry. (Via Colby Cosh)
posted by mcwetboy at 7:00 AM PST - 19 comments

a visitor to rio takes a bunch of disposable cameras and hands them out to children in the favela of rocinha to take pictures of their lives (via k5) (scroll down)
posted by pyramid termite at 5:37 AM PST - 53 comments

Breathing could cost you your health. If the *best* quality air in a UK city is equivalent to smoking 10 fags a (24 hour) day, are we all going to end up like the people in the anti-smoking adverts?
posted by asok at 3:02 AM PST - 18 comments

Banned by the Vatican and created by a tone deaf engineer... presenting the Hammond.
posted by drezdn at 12:57 AM PST - 20 comments

What's stranger than Madeline Kahn (who passed away 5 years ago) appearing in an upcoming animated feature for TV? Her co-star is John Candy, who's been dead for a decade.
posted by RavinDave at 10:44 PM PST - 14 comments

neo-conned
"FBI espionage probe goes beyond Israeli allegations, sources say ... The linkage, if any, between the two leak investigations, remains unclear. But they both center on the office of Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's No. 3 official."

Juan Cole pulls back the curtains on the neo-cons and Franklin here ... if you have friends or family in the US military is this the guy(s) you want calling the shots??
posted by specialk420 at 9:05 PM PST - 60 comments

Adam and His Eves. Genetic research suggests that polygyny was the norm for most of humanity's past. [Via the Intersection.]
posted by homunculus at 9:00 PM PST - 14 comments

Nicole Tran Ba Vang [NSFW] has some pretty fierce artwork. [via RileyDog]
posted by sciurus at 4:15 PM PST - 11 comments

Personal ads in the Arab world "Resident of the UAE, 28 years old, high-school diploma, looking for a veiled wife, a citizen of UAE or any other Gulf county. Will be allowed to continue working after marriage." ~ "Syrian, 36 years old, holds a government position, is interested to meet a tall, fair-skinned and green-eyed virgin, Lebanese or Moroccan."
posted by onlyconnect at 3:41 PM PST - 21 comments

Warholstars is a comprehensive guide to the colorful cast of characters that made up Andy Warhol's constellation and that Lou Reed sang about in Walk on the Wild Side...meet Holly, Candy, Little Joe, Sugar Plum Fairy, Jackie Curtis, and more.
posted by madamjujujive at 12:26 PM PST - 9 comments

Welcome to the Lizard Motel. Barbara Feinberg's new book is both a memoir of certain childhood memories and an indictment against the dismal state of books for young adults. Feinberg became concerned when her two children, once avid readers, became agitated at the prospect of reading the current crop of assigned literature for the upcoming school year. Curious, she started reading these books for herself, and discovered that, by and large, they were all examples of "problem literature," stories intended to educate children about the cold, harsh realities of life. Her conclusion:

"We seem to have lost sight of what children can actually process, and more important, of their own innate capacities. Instead of our children being free to roam and dream and invent on their own timetable, and to read about children doing such things, we increasingly ask our children to be sober and hard-working at every turn, to take detailed notes on their required texts with Talmudic attention, to endure computer-generated tests." Yet such books are are ever so popular with educators. Why? And what books to MeFites recall from their formative years? What makes for good reading for children?
posted by Ayn Marx at 11:19 AM PST - 54 comments

New super strain of coca plant stuns anti-drug officials DRUG traffickers have created a new strain of coca plant that yields up to four times more cocaine than existing plants and promises to revolutionise Colombia’s drugs industry.
posted by Postroad at 9:59 AM PST - 21 comments

Opening Hooks. You're in the bookstore, browsing the shelves for... something. You don't know what, exactly, you're looking for but you'll recognize it when you see it. Picking a book at random you open to the first page and begin to read. Two hours later you're home in bed with a mug of sweet tea, still reading.
posted by thebabelfish at 9:06 AM PST - 65 comments

What is the justice department trying to censor in the ACLU's case against the Patriot Act? Anything they feel like, apparantly, including quotes from The Supreme Court. [via boingboing]
posted by ursus_comiter at 8:55 AM PST - 36 comments

A Kind of Innocence We'd Never Seen Before: Thoughts on the Grateful Dead, the Beatles, and Collective Consciousness
posted by moonbird at 7:30 AM PST - 17 comments

Tragic Beauties: antique wax mannequins. "Unlike the frozen, lifeless mannequins of today, these European busts were posed for, many at the turn of the century, by flesh and blood women". (I'm not sure how this one found it's way in there.)
posted by taz at 3:10 AM PST - 21 comments

Was it something in her head? Singer Laura Branigan dead of a brain anuerysm. Conspiracy theorists note - actress Sunny Johnson, who ice-skated to "Gloria" in the film Flashdance, died of the same ailment in 1984.
posted by Oriole Adams at 12:33 AM PST - 16 comments

Shutting Down NYC for one day in protest of the RNC. A couple of guys from New York propose to protest the Republican National Convention by trying to get every New Yorker to call in sick for one day -- 9/1 -- one day before Bush's acceptance speech.

CNN article link

While I'm doubtful about the chance for success, it's always good to creativity with dissent.
posted by superchicken at 11:44 PM PST - 64 comments

The insolent art of Michel Houellebecq. "There are certain books—sardonic and acutely pessimistic—that systematically affront all our current habits of living, and treat our presumptions of mind as the delusions of the cretinous." Julian Barnes' 2003 review in The New Yorker.
posted by semmi at 9:59 PM PST - 4 comments

All Songs Considered offers a sample of new tunes for the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election. "In this election year it seemed a good idea to put out a call for music about politics. What we wanted was satire; what we got were earnest and passionate songs that mostly bashed the incumbent president." There's also "a sample of the songs used to pump up crowds at political rallies" by both sides.
posted by mmahaffie at 7:06 PM PST - 9 comments

Odd Collections: plastic bags, X-rays, fish posters, air-sickness bags, uggly Fozzies, impaled garden gnomes, owls and bananas.
posted by grumblebee at 4:41 PM PST - 4 comments

The Gold-Digging Ant-Lions of India is but one tale about insects and culture. Although, The Cultural Entomology Digest seems to have been out of circulation for a decade, you can still read about Japanese Crests based on Butterflies, Chinese Cricket Culture and hints of a Greek Cricket culture, Beetles as Religious Symbols or the Insects of MC Escher.
posted by vacapinta at 3:49 PM PST - 8 comments

Rachel Wingfield does all sorts of cool stuff with electroluminescent technology. I want some.
posted by majcher at 2:47 PM PST - 2 comments

I *heart* Bea Arthur:

Bea Arthur sparked a security scare at Logan Airport in Boston this week when she tried to board a Cape Air flight with a pocketknife in her handbag. The "Golden Girls" star, now 81, was flagged by a Transportation Security Administration agent, who discovered the knife - a strict no-no following 9/11. "She started yelling that it wasn't hers and said 'The terrorists put it there,' " a fellow passenger said. "She kept yelling about the 'terrorists, the terrorists, the terrorists.' " After the blade was confiscated, Arthur took a keyring from her bag and told the agent it belonged to the "terrorists," before throwing it at them. As she boarded the plane, she told the TSA employees, "We're all doomed."

Kuro5hin offers a novel proposition: Bea for President!
posted by Vidiot at 12:12 PM PST - 58 comments

The Essential Foghat Timeline. Is it any wonder that Foghat is so hard to keep track of? (Found here). There were two versions of Foghat touring from 1990 to 1993. Roger Earl was touring with his version of Foghat (originally called the Kneetremblers) from 1986 to 1993 and Dave toured with Lonesome Dave's Foghat from 1990 to 1993...
posted by inksyndicate at 11:42 AM PST - 3 comments

Sometimes beautiful games just get screwed in the sequels... But thanks to obsessive fans, it doesn't have to be that way anymore!
D1X and D2X are OpenGL/SDL updates of (in my opinion) the best first-person-shooters of all time.
Xenocide, still in progress, and UFO2000 are overhauls of the classic X-COM, UFO Defense.
And finally, Anacreon Reconstructed is a graphical update of Anacreon: Reconstruction, an amazing old ASCII game about inter-galactic empire building.
Know any other good Indie overhauls of classic games?
posted by kaibutsu at 11:33 AM PST - 19 comments

What is the Higgs Boson, and why do we want to find it?
posted by plep at 11:31 AM PST - 10 comments

Miami importer distributes toys depicting 9-11 attack. Makes me wonder how long it'll be before these will be on Ebay...
Don't wait, get your own 9-11 inspired figures.
Tired of toys, how about games?
posted by jpburns at 8:21 AM PST - 56 comments

Safer vandalism campaign initiated by LRPD Vandalsquad. Most Wanted.
posted by yoga at 7:09 AM PST - 5 comments

Euros That Never Were 1945 - 2001 (I think).
posted by dobbs at 9:40 PM PST - 12 comments

Fuck it ...the word game
posted by ColdChef at 9:15 PM PST - 13 comments

Amidst all the fun pre-expo speculation as to what the new G5 iMac will look like [1,2,3], we have a possible sighting in the wild at Charles De Gaulle Airport.
posted by brownpau at 8:12 PM PST - 29 comments

The President plans yet another silly boondoggle and introduces faith-based driver education. What President are we talking about? Why, Saparmyrat Niyazov, the president-for-life of Turkmenistan. Or, as he likes to be called, "Turkmenbashi"--the "leader of all Turkmen".

He's got a lot of spiritual ideas and 24/7 TV coverage. Hey--he's against gold teeth and circuses. If it weren't for his dismal human rights record, I might vote for him myself. Sometimes I have to remind myself that there are, in fact, much worse choices than the ones I have for November.
posted by Sidhedevil at 7:41 PM PST - 13 comments

FBI Probes Pentagon Spy Case - Interesting how bad news about the Bush Administration seems to always come out on Fridays - "the FBI has a full-fledged espionage investigation under way and is about to -- in FBI terminology -- "roll up" someone agents believe has been spying not for an enemy, but for Israel from within the office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon."
posted by jackspace at 5:14 PM PST - 37 comments

Former Texas Lt. Gov. says he helped Bush dodge 'Nam. "I got...I got a young man named George W. Bush into the National Guard when I was the Lt. Governor of Texas, and I'm not necessarily proud of that. But, But I did it, and I got a lot of other people into the National Guard because I thought that's what people should do when you're in office and you helped a lot of rich people. And I walked to the Vietnam Memorial wall the other day and I looked at the names of the people that died in Vietnam, and I became more ashamed of myself than I've ever been because it's the worst thing I did was help a lot of wealthy supporters, and a lot of people who had family names of importance get into the National Guard. And I'm very sorry about that, and I'm ashamed. And I apologize to you, the voters of Texas."
Video available here.
posted by insomnia_lj at 5:09 PM PST - 42 comments

Swimming Suits, Motor Boats, Sheet Music, Auto Parts, Movies and Music, Online Maps. Looks like the Butterfly Guy has a plan.
posted by strangeleftydoublethink at 5:00 PM PST - 5 comments

Clear Sky Clocks. How dark is it going to be tonight?
posted by gottabefunky at 2:49 PM PST - 3 comments

For the love of Crusade. A short animation that may not be played at the 2004 Republican Convention.
posted by the fire you left me at 1:35 PM PST - 19 comments

Pleasure Boat Captains For Truth. Those who knew Bush best are now revealing the truth: he was no party animal. See their ad, read their stories. This is probably very bad news for Bush.
posted by punishinglemur at 12:37 PM PST - 19 comments

"...i'm cleansed, spent, and just a little moist."
the lachrymal performances of the elderly.
posted by quonsar at 11:45 AM PST - 23 comments

Add to this week's professional “secrets”, and scams to rube employers another idea of work: one person’s career can be your next hobby.
posted by xtian at 11:13 AM PST - 22 comments

Prosecutor who attacked Kerry admits lying to boss Liar, liar, pants on fire--"Clackamas County prosecutor Alfred French, who called Sen. John Kerry a liar in a political commercial, acknowledged Thursday that he lied to his boss when confronted about an extramarital affair with a colleague. ...
posted by Postroad at 11:12 AM PST - 35 comments

A letter from the wife of one of the commanders of the three Swift boats, killed in action later, reports on her husbands's views. (via NYT)
posted by semmi at 11:07 AM PST - 15 comments

Utica Club, Utica Club. This Friday, enjoy the strains of the Utica Club Natural Carbonation Beer Drinking Song.
posted by neckro23 at 10:30 AM PST - 5 comments

Can you make it as a waitress?
Can you make it as a cuckoo?
Can you make it as a burger munching documentarian pursued by floppy-shoed ghosties?
Can you make it as a corn dog munching naked mole rat?
Can you make it as a shark jumping Fonzie?
Product tie-in productivity killers unite!
posted by putzface_dickman at 8:52 AM PST - 7 comments

"I was lost, proper lost, but thanks to Cris Formage and the fine folks at The Epsilon Program, I've found a better way to live. No more cocaine, no more heroin, no more ceaselss, boundless self pleasure. henceforth, ladies and mental patients, I am following the words of the tract!" - Maccer

Viral marketing nicely done in advance of the new Rockstar games production of Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas (some slightly NSFW words and images)
posted by triv at 8:52 AM PST - 5 comments

Tired of quizzes where you get no credit if your answer is just slightly off? Then you'll like the Estimation Quiz.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 8:42 AM PST - 13 comments

How Torture Came Down From the Top  The latest official reports on the prisoner abuse scandal contain a classic Washington contradiction. Their headlines proclaim that no official policy mandated or allowed the torture of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that no officials above the rank of colonel deserve prosecution or formal punishment. But buried in their hundreds of pages of detail, for anyone who cares to read them, is a clear and meticulous account of how decisions made by President Bush, his top political aides and senior military commanders led directly to those searing images of naked prisoners being menaced with guard dogs.    (More Inside)
posted by y2karl at 8:03 AM PST - 24 comments

Crush - an article by Brendan Eliason (assistant winemaker at the David Coffaro Winery) that explains in plain English what it takes (mechanically speaking) to put out a good bottle of red wine.
posted by Irontom at 7:59 AM PST - 3 comments

After the FBI raid five pople's homes (and the offices of one ISP) seizing their equipment for operating a "network" sharing the equivalent of 60,000 movies or 10.5 million songs (according to Mr Ashcroft) as part of Operation Digital Gridlock's attempts to crack the "organisation" known as The Underground Network (and perhaps to rail against the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals' recent decision backing up the legality of P2P networks) one of those raided - "The Answer Man" - contacts P2Pnet, to give the inside scoop and talk about the distortions created by the media reporting of the case. [Thanks Squeak]
posted by Blue Stone at 6:50 AM PST - 20 comments

Radzilow. Memorial to a once-vibrant Jewish shtetl.
posted by plep at 5:58 AM PST - 23 comments

Well it's friday, and like the rest of you, I could use a good laugh.
If you're going to sell your house, nowadays, it's important to take pictures of the exterior, the interior to share with prospective buyers, what a great deal they're getting.

Real Estate pictures.

Just, make sure you tie up the dogs first? (third picture down) [via fark]
posted by filmgeek at 5:32 AM PST - 28 comments

I've been having a good time with "You and We", a project from Born Magazine that invites you to "contribute your words and images to this continuously evolving, collective experiment." Users upload art, text and photos to be collaged together in a fast-moving montage that actually turns out to be pretty nice. So far there have been over a thousand contributors. [Flash, Sound (toggles), and possibly NSFW.]
posted by taz at 5:22 AM PST - 1 comment

"Innate intelligence has to do with capability and ignorance to do with variables such as educational opportunity and personal diligence. But the conundrum remains. Is intellect important in presidents? If Americans can't solve the question definitively in the matter of John Kerry and George Bush, we damn sure ought to make an educated guess."
posted by acrobat at 4:28 AM PST - 30 comments

The Man With the Smallest Penis in Existence and the Electron Microscope Technician Who Loved Him (flash cartoon)
posted by dydecker at 2:50 AM PST - 11 comments

China is positioning itself to profit from the response to global warming and the eventual shift away from fossil fuels. [Via WorldChanging.]
posted by homunculus at 10:50 PM PST - 17 comments

Here's a good guide to posting, in flash form.
posted by sequential at 10:20 PM PST - 9 comments

John Kerry gets caught mocking the famous Iowa Jima flag raising photograph on the cover of his book. Someone decides to put the entire book online. This is probably very bad news for Kerry.
posted by aznblader at 8:55 PM PST - 174 comments

Pour Some Sugar On Me, as reinvisioned by Townsend, a boy band. Some would say it's the worst thing they'd ever seen, but I'd hazard a guess that it may actually be the worst thing ever filmed. The song is enhanced with a rap section, and the video is enhanced with the addition of the jackass from Smashmouth, for some bizarre reason. NSFNSAVI (not safe for the non sight & vision impaired)
posted by jonson at 7:17 PM PST - 65 comments

"[M]y intention is to offer some advice to all of you men out there who crave a decent bout of testicular pain, but have no-one to administer it to you." Advice on injuring one's own testicles. A dozen delicious methods, ranging from the old apple in the sock trick everyone tries to a tennis ball machine. It'd be better as a half-hour infomercial.
posted by yerfatma at 5:22 PM PST - 22 comments

Ernie Cline - Spoken word. Unleash your Geek.
posted by seanyboy at 5:00 PM PST - 10 comments

Ultimate Flash Face.
posted by Gyan at 4:51 PM PST - 9 comments

Met@l Goddess Bellydancing. That's it, what more do you want. The entry page rocks, but I found Crazy Train a more trenchant hermeneutic discourse.
posted by freebird at 12:02 PM PST - 24 comments

How to write a best-selling fantasy novel. Ten steps towards instant literary fame.
posted by Robot Johnny at 11:50 AM PST - 30 comments

Impeach Tony Blair. Backed by a large dossier, supported by a handful (so far) of UK members of parliament. Summarised by The Spectator.
posted by iffley at 11:15 AM PST - 21 comments

Just a hand-few of eggcorns grows a forest? Among the pursuits of linguistics blog Language Log is the examination of certain quasi-spelling errors appropriately dubbed eggcorns. Not quite results of folk etymology, they nonetheless possess a certain inner logic that invites their recurring use as well as their analysis.

No proper repository exists yet; enter 'eggcorn' into the site's search engine to view the growing harvest.
posted by LinusMines at 11:03 AM PST - 31 comments

Winnipeg Police Service's Operation Snapshot: Winnipeg is the first Canadian city to post pictures of johns picking up hookers on their website: "The goal is to discourage customers of street prostitution in these areas. It is NOT to publicly identify individuals. These are random video clips of vehicular and pedestrian traffic in the areas known to be frequented by sex trade workers and their customers. The Winnipeg Police Service acknowledges that not everyone depicted in these clips are sex trade workers or their customers. As a result the faces of all persons and the license plates of all vehicles have been blurred out." However, at least one activist is posting licence plate numbers of johns: "Rev. Lehotsky, of the New Life Ministries, said some people complain he is violating their privacy, but he doesn't have much sympathy. "People have privacy concerns," he said. "But I say, if you're pulling your weenie out in a laneway, you've forfeited your right to privacy." ('Police 'john-cam' riles critics', Winnipeg Free Press, August 26, 2004)
posted by Esco757 at 10:38 AM PST - 50 comments

The Extreme Gravity Racing Series: featuring cars from Porsche, Volvo, and mazda among others. Yeah, it's basically soap box derby racing for adults. [via red ferret]
posted by mathowie at 10:24 AM PST - 12 comments

Substitutes for your honey from the Far East: For him: Virtual girlfriend on his cellphone. For her: Boyfriend Arm Pillow: "a snuggly alternative to the real thing."
posted by onlyconnect at 9:20 AM PST - 24 comments

Bush's latest accomplishment may not be one that he's willing to brag about. The Census Bureau is reporting that an additional 1.3 million Americans are now living in poverty. They also offer a number of pretty graphs (all in pdf).
posted by bshort at 8:19 AM PST - 110 comments

Heterosexual marriage rates in Denmark increased after adoption of same-sex marriage, study shows. "In the end, the Scandinavian and Dutch experience suggests that there is little reason to worry that heterosexual people will flee marriage if gay and lesbian couples get the same rights," Badgett concluded, in a report published by The Institute for Gay & Lesbian Strategic Studies. Much of the report covers the same ground which Hoover Institution professor Stanley Kurtz testified on before the US Congress in April this year, drawing almost diametrically opposite conclusions.
MORE FROM THE PRESUMABLY STRAIGHT KURTZ HERE; FROM THE POSSIBLY GAY BADGETT HERE.
posted by dash_slot- at 6:52 AM PST - 36 comments

Nice Flash presentation of images on his site from photographer Hans Neleman's books "Night Chicas", "Moko-Maori Tattoo", "Body Transformed", and "Silence". NSFW, fer shure. (Note that you can switch from slideshow mode to manual with controls on the right.) More Neleman at Kodak's Legends Online (work-safe), and more from "Night Chicas" here (almost work-safe, but if the policy is strict - don't go.)
posted by taz at 5:15 AM PST - 6 comments

Like Hands Across America, only with less hand-holding and more shouting, it's The Great American Shout Out. (via Chayefsky.)
posted by soyjoy at 11:45 PM PST - 8 comments

Operation Truth seeks to educate the American public about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from the perspective of the soldiers who have experienced them first-hand. It was founded by U.S. Army Reservist Paul Rieckhoff, who gave a Democratic radio address in May.
posted by homunculus at 10:33 PM PST - 10 comments

State Blogs As a companion to the Blogs around the world project, Oscar Jr. posted the Blogs around the US project. His point/focus being blogs that focus on the US states in which they reside. All of this as a lead up to Big Sky Blog. A blog by Montanans, about Montana, a project of our own davidmsc. (Whoops, USAfilter. Miguel's gonna be pissed ...)
posted by Wulfgar! at 9:45 PM PST - 10 comments

In other news... Bush’s security detail gallantly protects President from triple amputee. Meanwhile, a local father expresses his opinion of Bush’s foreign policy results in a more illuminating fashion.
posted by EmoChild at 5:16 PM PST - 76 comments

Focus On Your World. A beautiful collection of photographs from the Focus On Your World competition put on by the United Nations Environment Programme. They are beautiful, stunning, charming, and, at times, wonderfully common. The thing to remember is that each of these photos is someone else’s daily life.

A fantastic exhibition of these photos is currently on display at--of all places--Heathrow Airport, thanks to the support from BAA and HP.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 2:50 PM PST - 9 comments

Some media are reporting the prediction by computer experts at Moscow's Kaspersky Labs that parts of the Internet will be shut-down tomorrow by cyber-terrorists. The Internet Storm Center's comment: "The ISC would like to go out on a limb and predict that the Internet will not vaporize into a cloud of nothingness this Thursday, but if it does, it's been our pleasure to help stave off its inevitable annihilation this long."
posted by tranquileye at 1:21 PM PST - 30 comments

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, the pioneering psychologist who devoted her life to studying death and dying, has moved on.
posted by moonbird at 1:15 PM PST - 13 comments

Fire Diving is the "hottest" new Extreme Sport around.
posted by Wet Spot at 1:08 PM PST - 6 comments

Grayson, the movie that doesn't exist. John Fiorella and Gabe Sabloff have managed to create the most exciting film trailer I've seen in years. The only catch? It's for a movie that might never be made.

Apparently, the two worked weekends for 18 months, creating storyboards, acting, directing, shooting, and editing a gorgeous short film designed to pique interest in a movie about what happens after Batman dies and Wonder Woman and Superman go to work for the enemy. It's a professional-looking and well-edited piece of work (that anamorphic lens pays incredible dividends for them) that somehow manages to come in at a budget of just under $18,000. Imagine what they could do with 100 times that.

[Go to 'MOVIES' and then 'Grayson'. The full trailer is long but worth every second of download time, as is the 'Grayson- Pieces of the Puzzle' short. Also, the film files are mirrored here]
posted by yellowcandy at 12:17 PM PST - 60 comments

What Went Wrong in Iraq, By Larry Diamond, From Foreign Affairs, September/October 2004
posted by semmi at 11:10 AM PST - 19 comments

Introducing Holographic Versatile Disc, for all your trillion-byte needs. That's 1250 compact discs, on a disc which is similarly compact.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 10:46 AM PST - 33 comments

Sure... the liger has been getting all the cross-species press lately (with the jackalope getting a close second), but what about the growing menace of the cabbit?
posted by ph00dz at 9:11 AM PST - 10 comments

Radel Electronics Pvt. Ltd.: electronic musical instruments for Indian music.
posted by Quartermass at 8:15 AM PST - 6 comments

Welcome to the first and never again 2004 Asian Mustache Olympics.
posted by dong_resin at 8:08 AM PST - 11 comments

Mark Thatcher busted for trying to get his hands on the oil rid the world of a nasty dictator.
posted by magullo at 7:55 AM PST - 26 comments

Peace breaks out. War surrenders! Grand Ayatollah Sistani has returned to Iraq, and is leading a nationwide march to the holy city of Najaf to peacefully resolve the conflict. Moqtada al-Sadr's people have called upon their supporters to join the march too. Will Sadr and his Mahdi Army walk away free men? Double secret probation, maybe?!
posted by insomnia_lj at 7:13 AM PST - 3 comments

Mr. M, Live and Direct from Iraq
posted by angry modem at 5:57 AM PST - 12 comments

Dying in Darfur. Can the ethnic cleansing in Sudan be stopped?
posted by homunculus at 10:18 PM PST - 79 comments

Alternative Olympic medal tally from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, ranking countries by population per gold medal. (Updated daily for the duration of the games.)
posted by mr.marx at 9:45 PM PST - 58 comments

Are the Republicans starting to hedge their bets?

WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 -In a break with months of Republican efforts to outlaw gay marriage, Vice President Dick Cheney offered a defense of the rights of gay Americans on Tuesday, declaring that "freedom means freedom for everyone" to enter "into any kind of relationship they want to."

posted by lilboo at 8:25 PM PST - 65 comments

I found a digital camera in the woods
posted by bob sarabia at 5:09 PM PST - 55 comments

Russian Plane Crashes, Another Missing.
posted by johnnydark at 4:30 PM PST - 41 comments

Jason Alexander thinks the McDLT is the best tasting lettuce and tomato hamburger ever. [link to 10mb MPEG file]
posted by Peter H at 3:54 PM PST - 61 comments

A recent non-scientific poll conducted by ABC News in the US found that 35 percent of voters feel that hot-saucing is an acceptable form of discipline. Blair Whelchel (yes, that Blair Whelchel) is a fan. Whatever happened to soap?
posted by emelenjr at 3:47 PM PST - 53 comments

The Hamburg Cell.
posted by reklaw at 3:15 PM PST - 2 comments

Instructions for building your own hamster-powered night light.
posted by alms at 2:46 PM PST - 3 comments

Tivo Time!
The major news networks just got snubbed it seems. Whatever your position this is guaranteed to be entertaining. Even my 'newsfilter' link has a few chuckles! Don't miss the fun tonight!
posted by nofundy at 12:35 PM PST - 71 comments

...badger badger badger...
posted by nthdegx at 12:15 PM PST - 19 comments

Gridcosm is a collaborative, recursive art project.

From Gridcosm: how it works: each level of gridcosm is made up of nine(9) square images arranged into a 3x3 grid. the middle image is a size version of the previous level. artists add images around that center image until a new 3x3 grid is completed, then that level itself shrinks and becomes the seed for the next level. this process creates an ever expanding tunnel of images, the newest level a direct result of the previous level which is a result of the previous level... and so on.

Choose a random level, the top level currently in creation, or the very beginning bottom level out of nearly 2000 levels so far. Neat stuff. I love recursive and algorithmic art.
posted by loquacious at 12:15 PM PST - 9 comments

Bunny of the Month Club from Morbid Tendencies "Something dreadful in the mail each month to brighten your life." Some have real skulls, others are just cute. Found via Neil Gaiman's journal.
posted by amarynth at 11:58 AM PST - 4 comments

Banner Ad Museum Can't get enough of those 'hit the bullseye' banner ads? Don't feel you've seen enough ads today? Head on over to the internet banner ad collection!
posted by graventy at 8:42 AM PST - 9 comments

Drink to Your (Cognitive) Health. Moderate alcohol drinkers smarter than non-drinkers. [Abstract]
posted by Gyan at 8:34 AM PST - 18 comments

Tricks of the Trade . In an article in The Morning News, Defective Yeti asked readers to reveal the secrets of their profession:

Attorney: Do whatever it takes to fit your contracts onto a single page. Even sophisticated negotiators can be charmed by the lack of a staple.

Auto Mechanic: Always put copper grease on the battery terminals after servicing a car. The performance benefit is negligible, but when customers look under the hood they will immediately see that something’s changed and thus feel happy to pay you.

Handyman: If you have to change a light bulb where the glass is broken, you can press a potato into the metal base to unscrew the remains of the bulb from the fixture. Got any secrets to success or even just survival in your racket?
posted by planetkyoto at 8:21 AM PST - 130 comments

Live, play, fight, and die in the Matrix. While the Times catches on to the XboX warriors who train with Full Spectrum Warrior and There, Wired takes a look at what's next for the military-entertainment complex. After Toys and Ender's Game, after America's Army and 9/11 Survivor, where will the convergence of real killing, simulated killing practice, and killing for fun lead?
posted by muckster at 8:17 AM PST - 11 comments

Change This - We're betting that a significant portion of the population wants to hear thoughtful, rational, constructive arguments about important issues. We're certain that the best of these manifestos will spread, hand to hand, person to person, until these manifestos have reached a critical mass and actually changed the tone and substance of our debate.
posted by dobbs at 11:34 PM PST - 11 comments

"The camp is in northern California, almost at the Oregon border. It has an almost mockingly poetic name, Camp Tule Lake. It as there in a barbed wire camp built on a wind-swept dry lake bed that I spent two and a half years of my boyhood after a year and a half in another internment camp in Arkansas...These pilgrimages back to a little remembered time in our history help enlarge my appreciation of the preciousness of our American liberty and my awareness of its fragility. They also deepen my understanding of the painful human price paid by such failures of our democracy." Star Trek's George Takei (the unflappable Mr. Sulu) revisits the internment camp of his racially-profiled boyhood.
posted by inksyndicate at 10:50 PM PST - 11 comments

The Curious Case of George's Medals. Does this picture contain a medal that GW Bush did not earn? All day at the Democratic Underground they've been congratulation themselves for finding the smoking gun. Is it really that easy? Acutally looking at a picture? Must the president *now* release his records to prove that he wasn't wearing a medal that isn't documented in any of his records?
posted by tsarfan at 10:42 PM PST - 75 comments

Utopian Surgery: Early arguments against anaesthesia in surgery, dentistry and childbirth. [Via Long Road to Paradise.]
posted by homunculus at 10:08 PM PST - 3 comments

The upcoming entertainment lineup for the GOP convention next week is mostly country music, but this article mentions that Stephen Baldwin will be there. Yep, you heard me, a Baldwin. Alec Baldwin was at the DNC last month, and now it's brother vs. brother, Baldwin vs. Baldwin. Remember when you're voting this fall that it's basically a best of the Baldwins contest. You either like Alec, or Stephen, but not both. Now choose your poison Baldwin. [via devoter]
posted by mathowie at 9:16 PM PST - 37 comments

Islamic law, traditionally, as practiced in countries such as Iran, is being considered by courts in Ontario, Canada as to whether it should receive status as a legal manner of settling disputes through arbritration. Canadian women are worried it will be unjust.
posted by shepd at 9:00 PM PST - 19 comments

An Ugly Buildings Hit List seems to be developing in Scotland. The president of the Royal Institute of British Architects is calling for the demolition of the ugliest buildings in Scotland. The Architects have their list, and the press is asking the public to chime in as well (with pictures).
posted by mmahaffie at 8:18 PM PST - 10 comments

Outsource Your Own Job! -- "Says a programmer on Slashdot.org who outsourced his job: "About a year ago I hired a developer in India to do my job. I pay him $12,000 out of the $67,000 I get. He's happy to have the work. I'm happy that I have to work only 90 minutes a day just supervising the code. My employer thinks I'm telecommuting. Now I'm considering getting a second job and doing the same thing." " via BBspot.
posted by Space Coyote at 8:00 PM PST - 23 comments

D.Film Moviemaker --a cute little toy (just pretend it's Friday, ok? flash, i think.)
posted by amberglow at 7:17 PM PST - 6 comments

' "Oh, you're going to the MLA? What a riot. They're a bunch of sitting ducks." I hadn't been planning to shoot at them, I said'. Lewis Kraus attends the 119th Annual MLA Conference, and asks what it means to be an English professor after the 'crisis of the humanities'.
posted by Sonny Jim at 3:41 PM PST - 10 comments

Do's and Don'ts of Photography. According to Viceland your photos are cliche. Some NSFW language and images.
posted by trbrts at 3:27 PM PST - 22 comments

DCist. Like Gothamist, but for Washington, DC.
posted by brownpau at 1:20 PM PST - 7 comments

The next big one has long been in the works. A most bubble-licious swimming center (flash, non) and an equally dramatic main Olympic stadium design were chosen among the shortlist. Does this get an armchair architect's heart racing or what?
posted by of strange foe at 12:17 PM PST - 15 comments

Snatch first prize at a Halloween party! There's plenty of, umm, interesting costumes over at Ronjo. The kids' ones aren't of the pimp and ho caliber, but the doggie pimp is excellent. Or you could just become a prophylactic superhero in your spare time.
posted by bbrown at 12:01 PM PST - 15 comments

The Just Cause Law Collective is an excellent resource for outlining what your rights as citizens or non-citizens are within the U.S. in text and illustrations that are understandable by the layperson. It also includes advice on how to survive police encounters and a special section for activists. via BoingBoing
posted by substrate at 9:57 AM PST - 21 comments

A 16 year-old girl was hanged in Iran for having a "sharp tongue," i.e. back-talking the judge.
posted by tbc at 7:49 AM PST - 137 comments

There are now more home internet users using broadband than dialup in the U.S. - Does this mean that web designers will continue down the same path as some programmers and create bloated code? Are the days of trying to be efficient and keeping pages less than 70k a thing of the past?
posted by tomplus2 at 5:08 AM PST - 29 comments

How to Build Your Own Scientific Laboratory For Free: Parts One, Two, and Three. (Though I suppose if you have a bit of cash and happen to live in Boston, you can always check out the MIT Swap Meet to pick up those endless piles of oscillators or half-functioning VAX computers you almost certainly need...)
posted by kaibutsu at 3:03 AM PST - 2 comments

Many of you will lose your overtime benefits today. Welcome to Monday morning!
posted by RavinDave at 1:40 AM PST - 64 comments

Godchecker.com -Your guide to the gods
posted by Grod at 12:49 AM PST - 14 comments

When I watched the women's marathon today (which has only existed for 20 years, a shocking story in and of itself), the US coverage noted the final finisher, pulling in at just under four hours, almost an hour and a half after the gold medal. I thought it was odd, and wondered what the last place times and scores were for other events. Lucky for me, I don't have to look too far, as McWetboy's DFL blog tracks the last place in every event at this year's olympics. Because they're there, and you're not.
posted by mathowie at 10:22 PM PST - 15 comments

You've got to admit, he does have some pretty nice medals.
posted by jonson at 9:43 PM PST - 13 comments

The most recent post on Brendan Grant's site is an unfortunate one: "For those who do not know, back on July 12th I had my house broken into." The full story is over here, but it has a upside: Grant recently picked up a used webcam that takes shots automatically when someone walks past, and caught the break-in.
posted by mathowie at 9:17 PM PST - 29 comments

ugh, get away
posted by alms at 7:46 PM PST - 9 comments

Kidnapper shot twice by a Chinese cop, falls down five stories, and then comes back to life in the morgue. [Warning: Potentially graphic images]
posted by riffola at 6:39 PM PST - 9 comments

Fear Itself: an american journalist wants to put the threat of terrorism into perspective, and elects to ride on a bus line in Jerusalem, the train line through Madrid, and a British Airways flight said to be a bombing target. He comes away with it unscathed but the stories he tells about the history of terror, especially in Israel, is chilling and daily life in some parts of Jerusalem sounds like scenes lifted straight out of Brazil. [via the big K]
posted by mathowie at 4:22 PM PST - 26 comments

"Libertarianism is the hottest philosophy on the internet! Many famous people are libertarians, including John Stossel and Dave Barry. It seems like everyone is becoming a libertarian, and now you can, too! The answer lies in several simple steps, which anyone can learn. Read on, and you, too, can become a libertarian!"
posted by reklaw at 3:53 PM PST - 55 comments

Silk and Sushi : Chocolate Silk for Breakfast, Sushi for Lunch, Sushi for Dinner -- everyday for a month. It is probably more healthy then eating nothing but McDonalds.
posted by chunking express at 2:25 PM PST - 29 comments

The New York Times' guide to plagiarism resources.
Apparently Consumer Reports is busy watching bread grow mold or something, so it's nice to see someone else addressing the consumer protection needs of today's college student.
posted by NortonDC at 2:08 PM PST - 22 comments

And when an American mouths off about French military history, he's not just being ignorant, he's being ungrateful. The War Nerd provides a little historical perspective. [via monkeyfilter]
posted by jb at 2:01 PM PST - 31 comments

Pat Buchanan has realsed a new book called "Where the Right went Wrong" just in time for the Republican National Convention. The politics of war in the U.S. must make strange bedfellows if Pat Buchanan, Lou Rockwell and more recently Rep. Doug Bereuter of Nebraska can have anything in common with Moveon.org and Common Dreams. What does it mean for such a notable Republican to publish an anti-war book and be this critical of President Bush? Will moderate Republicans stay at home, vote third party or even switch to John Kerry? A growing trend or blip on the radar? [More inside]
posted by Bag Man at 12:15 PM PST - 20 comments

Liberation Drive-In. Brought to you by the Nonchalance collective. Drive to the vacant lot where the film is shown on a building. Tune to the designated FM station via Ramsey FM-100B kit. BYOWhatever.
posted by yoga at 12:02 PM PST - 2 comments

A little tale of 2 men, and one bank, with special guest stars Osama bin Ladin, Saddam Hussein, Abu Nidal, and Jackie O. more here, including passages deleted from the final report.
posted by amberglow at 11:58 AM PST - 14 comments

Let there be light - Canadian researchers have devised a new polymer material by manipulating buckyballs (carbon atoms that look like soccer balls). The technology could be used to create optical (light based) switches to replace electronic network switches. It could lead to an Internet based entirely on light.
posted by paladin at 11:36 AM PST - 4 comments

Two Writers Drinking, Sitting Around, Talking About Stuff. That about says it! Two online veterans get drunk and exchange e-mails. (An ongoing series. The above link is part one. Part two is here, and part three can be found right here). (Via Maud)
posted by braun_richard at 11:35 AM PST - 4 comments

The Great Neurotic Art. A historian of science examines the cultural significance of Atkins and low-carb diets. But the true cost of meat may be that corporate farming is killing the land, killing communities, and killing us. Take the red pill.
posted by homunculus at 11:08 AM PST - 11 comments

Fired for grading honestly? Historically black Benedict College's president recently fired two professors for "insubordination" after they refused to comply with the school's SEE ("Success Equals Effort") policy. One of the fired faculty members claims his academic freedom had been violated. (Gratuitious opinion: I think what's getting violated here is the idea that you're supposed to do college-level work in college....)
posted by alumshubby at 10:09 AM PST - 25 comments

The Peace Parks Foundation is an international, neutral body that coordinates the creation of "Peace Parks" -- a more foundation friendly name for "Transfrontier Conservation Areas." Peace Parks are defined as "relatively large protected areas, which straddle international frontiers between two or more countries and cover large-scale natural systems encompassing one or more protected areas."

Executive Vice-Chairman Willem van Riet of South Africa, in San Diego, California, this month to receive the Presidential Award from GIS software giant ESRI, is that Peace Parks remove the fences of international frontiers -- the "scars of history" -- to let elephants resume their natural migratory paths. An early success of this idea was profiled in full and stunning color by the National Geographic in 2001.
posted by mmahaffie at 9:50 AM PST - 6 comments

Armed Robbers Steal Munch's 'The Scream' in Oslo [more inside]
posted by bluedaniel at 7:01 AM PST - 24 comments

Highlights bigotry or encourages it?
Ali G comedian Sacha Baron Cohen's latest Channel 4 show, 'Borat's Television Programme', is being investigated by TV watchdogs following complaints about a sketch featuring an anti-Semitic song titled 'Throw the Jew down the well'.

A Channel 4 spokesman said: "Sacha Baron Cohen's humour is ironic and actually highlights bigotry and ignorance." The irony being that Baron is himself a Jew.
posted by Jase_B at 3:13 AM PST - 24 comments

Miamicon I. December 18-21 1975 - The Ultimate Star Trek and Comic Art Experience.
posted by Stynxno at 8:47 PM PST - 6 comments

828 - 844: You will say, “A picture like this will make people sick of war.” You will be wrong. If a picture is worth 1000 words, here are exactly 1000 spoken ones by Garret Keizer. {flash} Or, read them yourself, but it's not the same thing. {Both links contain an Abu Ghraib photo.}
posted by dobbs at 8:02 PM PST - 17 comments

Delightful photographs of pigs, cattle, sheep, and horses by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. (Previous discussion of his aerial photography.)
posted by Wet Spot at 6:20 PM PST - 10 comments

Curse you, cruel ironic cybersex bot.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 6:14 PM PST - 9 comments

Doing a Lynndie
posted by bob sarabia at 6:10 PM PST - 19 comments

All Hail the New Jazz! Getting slightly bored with pop and looking to expand your horizons? Can't believe the musty Burns/Marsalis version is all there is to jazz? Try the "avant jazz" tradition whose central figures are the amazing bassist William Parker (so big and strong I've seen him pick up a bass and play it like a fiddle), David S. Ware (to my mind the greatest tenorman since Trane—see him live and you'll never forget it), and pianist Matthew Shipp (a frequent collaborator of both). Want a convenient guide to their recordings, with brief descriptions and (tacky but useful) letter grades? Here ya go—Tom Hull has great taste, and if he gives a record an A you can be sure it's worth hearing (and he gives you fair warning about somebody like Peter Brötzmann, who "sounds more like late Coltrane run through a blender by Einstürzende Neubauten: great heaps of noise unleavened by conventional musical signposts").
posted by languagehat at 4:59 PM PST - 16 comments

The journey to burning man. Part 1. Part 2 An interview with a Burning Man founder. Bike Ride man. Thunderdome. QT vids.
posted by srboisvert at 3:25 PM PST - 27 comments

Sapir/Whorf raises its head again in study of the Piraha tribe. I can't stop thinking about this article which appeared in the Globe and Mail Friday.

A study appearing today in the journal Science reports that the hunter-gatherers seem to be the only group of humans known to have no concept of numbering and counting. Not only that, but adult Piraha apparently can't learn to count or understand the concept of numbers or numerals, even when they asked anthropologists to teach them and have been given basic math lessons for months at a time ... the Piraha are the only people known to have no distinct words for colours.
They have no written language, and no collective memory going back more than two generations. They don't sleep for more than two hours at a time during the night or day. Even when food is available, they frequently starve themselves and their children, Prof. Everett reports.
They communicate almost as much by singing, whistling and humming as by normal speech.
They frequently change their names, because they believe spirits regularly take them over and intrinsically change who they are.
They have no creation myths, tell no fictional stories and have no art.

Can any of our anthropologists or linguists comment? I had thought that narrative was the common link in all human cultures....
posted by jokeefe at 3:08 PM PST - 59 comments

Organized crime growing in Canada, police chiefs ask for public to help Police chiefs in Canada seem to confuse Canadians with Batman. Who do we take on first? The Hell's Angels, the Mafia, or the Asian gangs. So many gangs, so few Batgadgets.
posted by Coop at 2:47 PM PST - 19 comments

Non-NewsFilter From the India Times: "The family cannot be named because we have no written proof. Nor can we give details of the exact nature of the trouble, because that would reveal more than would be prudent, at least for the moment." Or maybe the India Onion.
Just doing my part in keeping the 'Filter from being too USA-centric, via a Monkee who apparently knows who the story's talking about.
posted by wendell at 2:31 PM PST - 12 comments

Kodomo no kuni - children's book illustrations and songs from 1920s Japan. I found the artist's index the best way to navigate. (via the always entertaining quiddity)
posted by madamjujujive at 7:34 AM PST - 12 comments

Tele-Snaps: "Operating for 21 years, until 1968, this gifted amateur took considerably in excess of 250,000 still photographs of television programmes as they were being broadcast, perhaps even as many as half a million. He called them Tele-Snaps, the name a literal definition: by the direct method of fixing a 35mm camera to a tripod a short distance from his screen and shooting rolls of film, John Cura photographed entire programmes from the opening titles to the closing credits, creating usually up to 80 stills, sometimes more, as a unique record of a broadcast." One of the results of his hard work can be found here.
posted by feelinglistless at 6:31 AM PST - 12 comments

Artist vs. Porn Star -- Law firm wins! Jeff Koons is liable for $4 million in attorneys fees to his NY divorce lawyers, even though he ultimately lost custody of his son to his porn-star-turned-politician wife. Court says hey, that's fair, because he's not even complaining that the firm "charged an unreasonable hourly fee to have associates, for instance, watch pornographic videos, a necessary part of preparing to litigate the underlying custody dispute."
posted by onlyconnect at 8:45 PM PST - 16 comments

Once upon a time, a little doggy poo lived on the side of a road.
[via The Tofu Hut]
posted by moonbird at 8:40 PM PST - 18 comments

A Dutchman at Google. His blog has some gems: a glimpse into life as an Google engineer, and a brief history of searching (going a short way into the future). Some of his projects are neat: Google talks, Google tells you the best time to visit any place. And he has a little Google joke: type "bush's foreign friends" into Google and click [I'm Feeling Lucky]
posted by iffley at 5:25 PM PST - 8 comments

Bugmenot is back Pass it on...
posted by konolia at 5:12 PM PST - 14 comments

Cybermohalla --really interesting group project in and around Delhi, bringing young people together via "Compughars" (fully-equipped media centers in their neighborhoods). Located in LNJP Basti (an illegal neighborhood) in Delhi, and Ambedkar Nagar (a resettlement colony) at Dakshinpuri in south Delhi, and cyberspace, and created by ANKUR - Society for Alternatives in Education (an NGO) with Sarai, the New Media & Urban Culture Programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, they've created everything from texts, collages, posters, animations, and publications, to videos, and large-scale installations. Don't miss by lanes --collected excerpts of some of the kids' personal and public diaries (pdfs), and the scratchbook (55-page pdf) and the animated gifs.
posted by amberglow at 4:07 PM PST - 3 comments

The Toronto Healthy Houses is "off the water grid." Potable water via rainwater collection; all other water use via black- and grey-water recycling. The home-builder will be living in one of the homes and will sell the other. These houses also provide their own electrical energy. Times, they are a-changin': the Healthy Homes are being developed using research funding from the Canadian Housing and Mortgage Corporation, which is becoming very active in finding better ways to build affordable, efficient, liveable housing.
posted by five fresh fish at 3:14 PM PST - 9 comments

"Two lifelong friends, always together, everything in common. Except one, political stance. Neither of them could find a decent shirt to wear out depicting their stance on the issues of the day. They searched everywhere. Finally they were fed up. If they couldn’t find it they would make it themselves... So it’s come down to this: liberalhipster.com v. conservativehipster.com."
posted by reklaw at 1:44 PM PST - 30 comments

"While Cannondale claims that their design is 'bullet proof' our evaluation of the Headshok [front fork] after 72 direct hits showed that it is merely 'bullet resistant'."
You, too, can survive the coming apocalypse with the advice of the Mountainbike Militiamen Movement.
posted by kaibutsu at 12:53 PM PST - 8 comments

Guess who's really into computer animation, and is also a professional CG animator? Dick Van Dyke.
posted by GriffX at 11:29 AM PST - 25 comments

Huckapoo! OMG is that the worst band name ever, or what? ...Daniel Radosh extends his healthy obsession with teenage female celebrities with a list of why Huckapoo is now officially his new favorite band. ("Say what you want about Modest Mouse, but do they have a logo like that?")
posted by soyjoy at 11:12 AM PST - 53 comments

Thoughts from Within is an interesting multimedia poem from Woody Harrelson, whose work has been previously discussed on Metafilter here. [Warning: link goes directly to .swf flash file]
posted by banished at 11:06 AM PST - 12 comments

Catch and Release As I find this nearly impossible I have great confidence that the mefites will quickly master this. It beats working. Fun Flash Friday
posted by geekyguy at 10:23 AM PST - 18 comments

Swim, Katie, Swim! From the Hike With Your Dog site comes the story of Katie, a water-loving dog who is on a quest (well, maybe it is her owner's quest) to swim in "all the great waters of North America." The quest started on her way home from the kennel in September 1998, and continues to this day. From the Atlantic Ocean to the Yampa River, this animal has done some serious doggy paddling. [Caution: lots of pictures may cause slow loading]
posted by terrapin at 9:51 AM PST - 6 comments

The NYT's investigation into the birth and background of the anti Kerry ad about his Vietnam service record.
posted by semmi at 9:50 AM PST - 155 comments

Dinosaur invades New Zealand volcano. A few months ago, some daring joker went ashore at White Island and pasted a Flintstones Dino doll in front of the Crater Cam, in the volcano. The dinosaur has since become world famous, and is still visible on the webcam to this day.
posted by brownpau at 7:53 AM PST - 26 comments

The USA is sending the refugees from Monserrat back home. Why? Because the threat from their volcano is no longer regarded as "temporary", but "permanent".
posted by Pretty_Generic at 6:09 AM PST - 22 comments

Introducing: Metal Rubber. "Twist it, stretch it double, fry it to 200°C, douse it with jet fuel—the stuff survives. After the torment, it snaps like rubber back to its original shape, all the while conducting electricity like solid metal." Sounds familiar, no? Here's the son of the Roswell air field's intel officer, describing the debris he says he saw in 1947: "It was possible to flex this stuff back and forth, even to wrinkle it, but you could not put a crease in it that would stay, nor could you dent it at all. I would almost have to describe it as a metal with plastic properties." The UFO freaks are already all over the "back engineering" of Roswell crash debris. Meanwhile, there's something unusual in the sky over Minnesota right now.
posted by CunningLinguist at 5:14 AM PST - 49 comments

British Kung Fu ! // We don't want any of that Jackie Chan Bollocks ! QT - some swearing.
posted by srboisvert at 5:05 AM PST - 9 comments

Get A Google Poem
posted by ubueditor at 4:28 AM PST - 18 comments

Famous Curves. Safe for work.
posted by plep at 12:59 AM PST - 10 comments

Quantum Sleeper ... If I blow $100,000+ on a bed, Sandra Bullock better be in it.
posted by RavinDave at 8:29 PM PST - 33 comments

Remember this, from a few days back? Retro vs Metro? Well, the book is out, and the publishers have made it available for free download in pdf format. I've read the first chapter and so far it's pretty good.[more inside]
posted by condour75 at 8:28 PM PST - 21 comments

Was Iraq always about Iran? Iran turns toward the United States, again.
posted by four panels at 8:10 PM PST - 62 comments

Follow the Rhinos Weblog tracking two white Rhinos as they travel next month to the Phoenix Zoo. Nice looking site (via CSS Vault). In related news, poachers have killed about half of the world's population of wild white rhinos in the last year (more here).
posted by oissubke at 8:07 PM PST - 2 comments

Iran systematically filters political websites: In contrast with what the Iranaian President had said in the UN summit on Information Technology last year, the OpenNet Initiative, in its latest bulletin, concludes that "Iran is indeed engaged in extensive Internet content filtering beyond just pornography, including many political, religious, social, and blogging websites.
"Most of these censored websites are Iran-specific; very little non-pornographic, "global" content is filtered from Iranian users. "
posted by hoder at 7:48 PM PST - 8 comments

Hello, my name is Tamara! As you can probably tell, I'm a Christian who loves Jesus and cares for all humans, even the wicked. What you probably don't know is that I'm hot.
posted by loquacious at 4:09 PM PST - 68 comments

Pageant of the Masters : if the tableaux vivants presentation in the Olympics opening ceremony leaves you wanting for more, it's not too late to find your way to southern California this month. This is the 71st season of this famous and unique event in Laguna Beach. (More behind-the-scene stories here and here.)
posted by of strange foe at 4:07 PM PST - 8 comments

Passed Out Wookies • Photographs of comatose hippies who may have smoked too much granola. Carolyn Cole it ain't, although this one might be worth framing.
posted by dhoyt at 1:51 PM PST - 24 comments

The Tsurezuregusa, or Essays in Idleness, of Yoshida Kenko. Those of us who, like myself, cannot read Japanese will have to be content with incomplete sets on various sites.
posted by kenko at 1:16 PM PST - 5 comments

Memory and Manipulation. The trials of Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist who questions the reliability of recovered memories. [Via Disinformation.]
posted by homunculus at 1:03 PM PST - 4 comments

George W. Bush's latest TV ads juxtapose Iraq's and Afghanistan's flags with footage of Olympic sport, proclaiming, "At this Olympics, there will be two more free nations — and two fewer terrorist regimes." At a campaign stop, Bush said, "just the image of the Iraqi soccer team playing in this Olympics. It's fantastic, isn't it? What a fantastic thought." The possibly medal-bound Iraqi soccer team, however, objects to any such association. While Bush goes on to say, "Here's a country now, battling for a country that is now free. It wouldn't have been free if the United States had not acted," Ahmed Manajid, midfield goes so far as to say, "if he were not playing soccer he would 'for sure' be fighting as part of the resistance."
posted by rafter at 11:39 AM PST - 65 comments

Want to be ecologically responsible yet still blingin' like a superstar? Duece Bicycle Spinner Wheels has you all set. Hell, Jamie Foxx endorses them, they've got to be good. (flash site)
posted by Ufez Jones at 11:32 AM PST - 18 comments

The celebration of the 25th anniversary of the transference to Greenland of its Home Rule Authority from Denmark sparks this ironic exhibition in Copenhagen, posing the questions: What position can Greenland take in the future as a people? Culture? Nation? When answer, of course, is to conquer the world:

GREENLAND! WE ARE AT WAR!

AT THIS MOMENT THE TROOPS OF GREENLAND ARE ADVANCING FROM THE SOUTH OF EUROPE, TO THE WEST OF AMERICA, TO THE EAST OF INDIA, TO THE NORTH OF RUSSIA.

I, for one, welcome our new Greenlandic overlords.
posted by AwkwardPause at 11:18 AM PST - 13 comments

Worst. NewsFilter. Ever. "No details are available", but at last count, Google News had over 250 sources for the "Paris Hilton's Missing Dog" non-news story. I'm a dog lover myself, and was once broken-hearted by the loss of a chihuahua, but too few alleged journalists are treating this 'news' with even a small dose of the disrespect it genuinely deserves. Meanwhile one TV show is crowing about getting "the scoop" (but apparently not on their own website, which can't even spell Rumor). But The Daily News and USA Today connected the story to Tinkerbell's upcoming book, ghost-written by MeFi's beleved Dong "Don't Call Me 'D'" Resin, and USAToady gave the book a sidebar story. Which raises the big question: with the book's release about two weeks away, could our own Delightful Dong have been the dognapper? I've seen worse publicity stunts for a book.

In other entertainment news, remember the suitcase full of priceless Beatles memorabilia? Well, a Beatlemania expert says It's Fake. You just can't trust anybody these days.
posted by wendell at 10:45 AM PST - 18 comments

FreedomOfChoice's Apple petition was shut down yesterday by Real Networks after a single day. Why? Seems that allowing comment backfired. Instead of lambasting Apple, everyone used the forum to vent their ire at Real. Only so much freedom at a time, thank you very much.
posted by rtimmel at 10:20 AM PST - 16 comments

It's our language, not yours. So, you were born in an English-speaking country founded by the English, speak English, have a degree in English, write and publish in English, have lived in England for years, and would like to become an English citizen? Sorry, you failed our English test to determine whether you have workable English, so you can't be English.
posted by rory at 10:19 AM PST - 37 comments

JAWS reenacted by bunnies
posted by konolia at 9:29 AM PST - 37 comments

Just because you're in a wheelchair doesn't mean you can't have a ruck. Browsing our current favourite website I found myself intrigued. This year's paralympics will again feature Wheelchair Rugby, a sport that has been alternatively described as 'Chess with Violence'. The rules are explained here though I think you might have to actually see a game to figure out how they would work in practice.
posted by biffa at 8:42 AM PST - 8 comments

Toogle Google image search represented in ASCII. [via Hot Links]
posted by DBAPaul at 8:42 AM PST - 15 comments

The World's Worst Website? Well, yes, it is really bad, but is it the worst? More importantly, isn't there a better way to educate budding web designers? How about sites that encourage, with examples of what to do, rather than the opposite? [via The Red Ferret Journal] [SFW, annoying MIDI]
posted by tommasz at 8:24 AM PST - 13 comments

Loglands. Ongoing mobile phone cam coverage from the rainy mud Lowlands Festival taking place this weekend.
posted by sebas at 7:10 AM PST - 2 comments

The 60 best cheapest places to live in America.
posted by PenDevil at 6:50 AM PST - 45 comments

You know how it is ... you date someone for a little while, it's "interesting and significant" ... but in the end, it just doesn't work out. She has her graduate work at Harvard and you've got your own political career, but you manage to part ways amicably. Heck, given the right circumstances, she'd even ask people to vote for you in November.
posted by grabbingsand at 6:32 AM PST - 14 comments

Trendwatching. "Vast groups of immigrants now travel back and forth between their old and new homelands", "the fast growing class of products and services that cater to consumers' need for simplicity", "no-frills chic", "light versions of countries or societies, stripped of annoying 'features' like crime, bad weather and excessive taxes", "the obsession of ordinary citizens wanting to leave ‘something’ behind in print, audio or imagery", online access everywhere, the C Generation (where C means 'Content' - and that's not a reference to how they feel).
posted by iffley at 5:30 AM PST - 9 comments

Lord Whimsy--Mammal of Paradise --Essays, Charts, Trifles, and News. A COMPENDIUM of DEEDS and THOUGHTS never before seen in this, our Benighted Age; the BRILLIANCE of which cannot last long in our WORLD of MUD and TEARS.
posted by amberglow at 9:15 PM PST - 7 comments

Six-part NPR series The Middle East and the West, history of Western involvement in the Middle East.
posted by stbalbach at 8:33 PM PST - 4 comments

Hear D and D players roll the dice in a fantasy battle with nefarious foes.
posted by sudama at 8:20 PM PST - 21 comments

Korean entertainer Yu Zhen Huan aka "Hair Child" - child actor, popular singer even in the face of adversity.
posted by page404 at 7:42 PM PST - 8 comments

bugmenot.com is a casualty. It's gone. No word as to why, how or when. Buh'bye to another great subversion of the corporate web.
posted by dash_slot- at 5:25 PM PST - 48 comments

Blowing Up Gotti. A weekly series from The Smoking Gun featuring prison videotapes of John Gotti behind plexiglass talking to his kids and grandkids. Check out Episode One: Grandpa Blows a Gasket (Quicktime required). Makes you think twice about your baseball career. (Via Gawker).
posted by adrober at 3:34 PM PST - 19 comments

Backpacking Stove collection from Japan. Amazing variety with pictures and heat ratings.
posted by Mitheral at 2:16 PM PST - 4 comments

truecosteconomics.org: “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.” – Kenneth Boulding. Adbusters latest campaign is against (surprise?) neoclassic economics. A tad less controversial than their last endeavor.
posted by Quartermass at 2:02 PM PST - 22 comments

California bill to ease "move aways" by custodial parents pulled. Until a recent CA Supreme Court decision, it was easy for custodial parents to move themselves and their children far from their ex-spouse. The Court reversed the old rule and held that the move could be blocked if the non-custodial parent could show that it would interfere with his/her relationship with the kids. Legislation to reimpose the old permissive standard passed through the State Senate, but has now been pulled off the legislative calendar after an outcry by father's rights groups.
posted by MattD at 1:03 PM PST - 17 comments

New York retail prescription drug prices. New York [USA] has a state law requiring pharmacies to keep and provide a Drug Retail Price List for the 150 most commonly prescribed drugs. The NY State Attorney General's Office collects that information monthly and makes it searchable by zipcode, city or county. The stark comparisons show that even within one region, retail drug prices can vary by as much as $120, or 50%. With five million New Yorkers uninsured and having to buy their medications at retail prices, this is a handy new tool.
posted by jessamyn at 12:26 PM PST - 6 comments

Flickr's been around as a photo posting/gallery/sharing kind of place for almost a year now, but today they launched something pretty impressive (ignore the dumb name): Organizr. Check out the demo movies or try it out yourself if you already have photos there. This is the first time I've used a web application that rivaled my desktop application of choice (iPhoto, for photos). Pretty impressive what you can do in Flash these days, besides singing kittens and work-dodging games.
posted by mathowie at 12:13 PM PST - 18 comments

It's out there someplace. The NOAA and the Office of Naval Research are about to start searching for the U.S. Navy's first submarine, which went to the bottom of the Atlantic off Cape Hatteras in 1863. Unlike the Confederacy's CSS Hunley, the USS Alligator never saw action, but it's historically significant nonetheless. Perhaps it can be recovered, as its Rebel cousin was.
posted by Man-Thing at 11:24 AM PST - 1 comment

Nepal: A traumatised nation. 'Besides the physical cost of the conflict, many Nepalis are suffering hidden psychological trauma.' Looking at the war in Nepal. This as Maoists blockade Kathmandu.
posted by plep at 10:57 AM PST - 4 comments

Mariel Zagunis has become the first United States woman fencer to ever win a gold medal , the first US fencer to win a gold since Albertson Van Zo Post won an extinct event called Single Sticks in 1904, and the first US fencer to win any medal at all since Peter Westbrook in 1984. Zagunis fences Sabre, along with her fellow medal winner (and #1 world ranked womens saberist) Sada Jacobson and former medalist and current coach and philanthropist Peter Westbrook. Could this be the start of a new championship sabre squad in the US? Well, no, not if you look at the men's sabre results.
posted by Inkoate at 9:07 AM PST - 33 comments

As the population of the world ages and the prospect for future technologies to either cheat death or increase longevity could we be looking at a schism between the conservative old and the young? Is it possible to heal this rift or should we be looking at alternatives?
posted by longbaugh at 8:30 AM PST - 28 comments

Collaborate! Photography website. Have you ever wanted to be an art director or are you a photographer looking for an assignment? The Collaborate website lets art directors and photographers connect over the internet and work on creating a photograph. Are there similar photo collaboration sites out there that people know of?
posted by jeremias at 8:21 AM PST - 6 comments

Go ahead, just sign it. You can trust us. NY's Mayor Bloomberg offers hotel and museum discounts to protesters as long as they are peaceful. And all they have to do is sign up, add a few personal details and voila! voluntary cointelpro. And I'm sure we can trust Mike with that list. Oh well, at least there's other perks.
posted by lumpenprole at 6:34 AM PST - 68 comments

The making of Lauren ... from woman to mannequin, step by step. (mild sculptural nudity - link via A Complete Waste of Time)
posted by Orb at 6:08 AM PST - 16 comments

64=65? there must be some kind of trick to this, right?
posted by pyramid termite at 5:42 AM PST - 30 comments

John Kerry's Flip Flop Olympics. Flash fun from the folks over at the Bush/Cheney campaign.
posted by Otis at 4:55 AM PST - 31 comments

Now that's a bridge. Highest bridge in the world from Jan 2005. Slightly scary as well. (euro post week)
posted by johnny7 at 4:38 AM PST - 48 comments

"For your protection and ours we have established a procedure for parties wishing to introduce a link to the ATHENS 2004 website on their site."
posted by reklaw at 2:55 AM PST - 36 comments

Wok Boarding [QT]
posted by scarabic at 2:23 AM PST - 8 comments

Want to know what the difference is between real life and the internet? The funny folk at Red vs. Blue would be happy to demonstate. (Warning: 22.125MB Quicktime .mov file but worth the wait, I thought. The Red vs. Blue site also offers a DivX download.) Metafilterians may enjoy the Political Section, where they do political discussions as badly as we do. One naughty word may make the audio NSFW in some locations. Seen at Bifurcated Rivets.
posted by Lynsey at 1:21 AM PST - 12 comments

The OEDILF is an audacious project which is attempting to write a limerick for every word in the English language. 642 limericks have been completed so far. Here's an overview of the project. Is it possible? Here's what editor-in-chief Chris J. Stolin says:

Skeptics say it's inconceivable.
A new OED? Unbelievable!
But I feel secure
That if we only endure,
It's a goal that is wholly achievable!

(via languagehat.)
posted by Vidiot at 12:42 AM PST - 16 comments

It's Time For Blaire To Get Married ....and She Needs Your Help! Heh. Looks like she's looking for an ex-husband.
posted by tbc at 10:27 PM PST - 54 comments

Crimsonland. This game is more fun than riding the Astrotrain to Cybertron.
posted by bargle at 8:01 PM PST - 13 comments

Vote for your favorite ad icon and slogan! In celebration of something called Advertising Week in NYC in Sept, Yahoo and USA Today ask for your vote. (more inside...)
posted by braun_richard at 4:58 PM PST - 35 comments

Cool! Toronto's Deep Lake Water Cooling System was launched today. The system cuts electricity consumption in commercial buildings by 75 per cent by drawing near-freezing water through pipes extending five kilometres out into Lake Ontario. According to the city, the system will save enough power to service more than 100 Toronto office towers or 4,200 homes per year, and it will eliminate 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Here's a public television segment explaining the process. Seems like it makes a nice complement to the lakeshore windmill.
posted by stonerose at 4:30 PM PST - 48 comments

"This site was created with one goal; to create the most comprehensive online archive of information and digital photos of the Coventry Vermont Phish show, August 14th and 15th 2004." Seems odd to think folks went to the trouble of dedicating an entire website to just a single concert, until you learn it was the very last one for Phish.
posted by mathowie at 1:57 PM PST - 99 comments

What If... Speculative fun with Indian history.
posted by homunculus at 1:02 PM PST - 13 comments

Pixelfield [game]
posted by gwint at 11:22 AM PST - 10 comments

The Melbourne Anarchist Archives 1966-73. Part of an extensive site on radical history in Australasia.
posted by plep at 10:20 AM PST - 4 comments

Indian Superman is a movie of questionable legality released in India in the mid eighties. Perhaps it should have had a wider release since it has a great deal of humorous appeal for Western audiences. Check out this review from Stomp Tokyo. I'm looking forward to a crossover when Indian Superman meets Indian Spider-Man. via Sepia Mutiny
posted by rks404 at 9:15 AM PST - 10 comments

The Pierre Boulez Project. (via Alex Ross)
posted by kenko at 9:01 AM PST - 3 comments

Why 2004 won't be like 1984. A phenomenal read detailing why Apple's reluctance to open up iPod is not the harbinger of doom that so many pundits claim it is. The horror! Apple may have learned from its mistakes with Macintosh 20 years ago and guess what? Macintosh's failure had little to do with licensing. That is, if you agree with the analysis over at daringfireball.net. This article points out why the media pundits are wrong about Apple's reluctance to open up iPod and shows why their position today is entirely different, and stronger, than 20 years ago. Let the flame wars begin!
posted by tgrundke at 9:00 AM PST - 23 comments

Official Website of the Olympig Movement (NSFW)
posted by ronsens at 8:24 AM PST - 5 comments

The campaign website of Alan Keyes , Illinois Republican Party's nominee for the United States Senate. [via Chicagoist]
posted by azul at 7:24 AM PST - 43 comments

How to tell someone that you like them.
posted by Orange Goblin at 7:22 AM PST - 52 comments

"The story of Scott's last expedition to the south pole will, I feel sure, be already known to many of you ... it is one which for courage, endeavour, endurance and unselfishness even in the face of death, will, I feel, never be surpassed.... I feel you will understand the difficulties met with when I tell you that the negatives from which these slides were made and the slides themselves were developed and washed with the aid of melted ice."
posted by rory at 6:53 AM PST - 11 comments

Learn to love cannibals, hear from a cat about pet diets, discover some facts about bottled water, or create your own tornado (flying cow included) ... all this and more at the Why Files.
posted by Orb at 2:28 AM PST - 5 comments

I have recently begun Patrick O’Brian’s series of Aubrey-Maturin novels, set in the rich and vibrant world of the 18th century Royal Navy; I have also enjoyed the movie. These superb historic novel have rekindled my interest in the great age of sail, especially the exploits of Lord Nelson. The Royal Navy at this time ruled the world, although the tactics used were brutal and seaman were often taken to sea against their will. The Battle of Trafalgar is certainly the most famous engagement and HMS Victory the most famous of the ships. Next year is the 200th anniversary of the battle, the preparations sound spectacular and it is good to see the strong British sailing tradition continues.
posted by Samuel Farrow at 2:07 AM PST - 21 comments

The Conscience of Joe Darby
"Because the irony of all this is that the people in Somerset County who turned their backs on Joe, well, those people would probably feel very different if they knew the rest of the story. That it really wasn't about softening prisoners, gathering intelligence, or trying to win the war. That it wasn't even about losing control in the heat of the moment. It was about getting up in the middle of the night and going somewhere you weren't supposed to go, then beating and raping people there. It was premeditated violent crime."
posted by quonsar at 11:07 PM PST - 48 comments

Teach Yourself the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in 24 Hours. "our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism." Is a pithy Gibbon a more palatable one?
posted by weston at 9:37 PM PST - 14 comments

The Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia is a collection of medical oddities and exhibits about disease. It is the home of the Soap Lady, Chang and Eng's liver, a tumor from a U.S. president, and a rather massive colon. Gretchen Worden, director of the museum since 1988, recently passed away.
posted by titanshiny at 6:54 PM PST - 20 comments

iNeighbors is like groupware for neighbors. The site lets members define neighborhoods and provides tools for meeting and talking to your neighbors, like posting reviews and building a mailing list. It sounds like MeFites want to meet people nearby, a desire this site is banking on. (via Smart Mobs)
posted by revgeorge at 4:03 PM PST - 18 comments

Is the GOP tampering with Florida elections? The New York Times reports that State police officers have gone into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando and interrogated them as part of an odd "investigation" that has frightened many voters, intimidated elderly volunteers and thrown a chill over efforts to get out the black vote in November. Also, see here and here. Why do we even put up with this?
posted by black8 at 2:45 PM PST - 61 comments

Hall of technical documentation weirdness
posted by elwoodwiles at 2:28 PM PST - 4 comments

Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004) - one of the greatest poets of the 20th century - passed away on Saturday in Krackow, Poland. I want to remember him here with this: "Conversation with Jeanne"
posted by lilboo at 1:19 PM PST - 8 comments

A nice article on some of the engineering and economics aspects of WiFi, and the history of frequency regulation in the USA.
posted by freebird at 12:52 PM PST - 9 comments

Oxymoronica
posted by bob sarabia at 12:33 PM PST - 17 comments

Rock and Roll Part 2 Often associated with the glam rock likes of T-Rex, Gary Glitter, and Sweet, the 6/8 schaffel beat (German for shuffle) is now adding a teutonic swagger to minimal techno. DJ and blogger Philip Sherburne puts together this excellent mix (92megs).
posted by dydecker at 11:41 AM PST - 14 comments

Inter Press Service (IPS) was set up in 1964 as a non-profit international cooperative of journalists. Its founders were Roberto Savio, an Italian freelance journalist, and Pablo Piacentini, an Argentinean political scientist who was then a student in Rome.
In its early days, the primary objective of IPS was to fill the information gap between Europe and Latin America after the political turbulence following the Cuban revolution of 1959. The agency’s network grew steadily and expanded to include Asia and Africa. The objectives broadened – to cover news from the "Third World", give a voice to the voiceless, promote information on development issues, and help create a better balance and flow of international news.
posted by mr.marx at 11:38 AM PST - 5 comments

Blog Interrupted. The Wash Post Magazine does a freakishly in-depth feature on ex-Senate staffer Jessica Cutler and the Weblog she once kept, which detailed her supposed romantic entanglements with various and sundry Capitol Hill types. Excerpt: "The messages warning Jessica that her private little joke had just gone very public came from a girlfriend over on the House side. Reading it, Jessica says, she was too stunned to wonder how Wonkette had discovered her blog. Instead, the portion of Jessica's brain that had evolved to help humans survive marauding mastodons screamed: Kill the blog! Kill the blog!" (Via Obscure Store.)
posted by GaelFC at 10:45 AM PST - 67 comments

AN AMAZING JAPANESE ANIMATION based on the psychologically complicated and beautifully playful work of comic book artist Jim Woodring. (Monday morning cartoons for you, complete with a nod to the Jetsons, courtesy the Japan Media Arts Festival. Other featured work here.)
posted by Peter H at 9:16 AM PST - 18 comments

Shyamalan may face legal action over Village - The Village can now join the long list of films accused of plagiarism in recent years. A lawsuit may be filed against M. Night Shyamalan's Blinding Edge Pictures and Disney for alleged plagiarism. Kiddie book writer Margaret Peterson Haddix claims that the movie bears disturbing similarities to her 1995 novel Running Out Of Time. While plagiarism of any kind is no laughing matter, it must be stated that the "disturbing similarity" is a plot twist many of us once used in our own stories back in grade school.
posted by circe at 5:10 AM PST - 68 comments

Interesting article about Francis Fukuyama "Americas most famous thinker", who comes up on MeFi about once a year, includes information about his latest book.
posted by stbalbach at 9:36 PM PST - 26 comments

Is the CIA tampering with Venezuelan elections? A Venezuelan news organization reports that an email was sent to the world press this afternoon, claiming to be early election results indicating a defeat for outspoken Bush critic Hugo Chavez. The email in question appears to be a fraud, sent from a location in Virginia. There are also reports coming in of phony election results being broadcast on Venezuelan television, and rigged exit polls organized by the very people who supported an unsuccessful coup against Chavez in 2002 -- an organization funded by our government through the National Endowment for Democracy. Your tax dollars at work. Former President Carter reports that the elections are going well, with a huge turnout, but if Chavez wins, will there be an organized effort -- funded by U.S. tax dollars -- to discredit the election anyway?
posted by insomnia_lj at 9:26 PM PST - 69 comments

Corporate culture is nothing more than the "crystallization of the stupidity of a group of people at a given moment", says Corinne Maier, the author of the slacker manifesto, "Bonjour Paresse". Better read this before clocking in Monday. (NYT)
posted by semmi at 9:11 PM PST - 25 comments

What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It? According to Philip E. Agre, previously discussed here and the guy behind the Red Rock Eater News Service, the answers to these questions are simple (if 13k+ words = simple).
posted by boost ventilator at 7:34 PM PST - 39 comments

Tracy Givens' weblog: "The Voice to skull continues along with the attacks to my body" ... "some of the neighbors might be experimenting with a crude homemade device"... "They have child rapers in my fan club. Found it on line."
posted by snarfodox at 5:55 PM PST - 29 comments

It is well known among the computer elite, who are mostly Atheists and Pagans, that Pokemon's pro-Darwinism propaganda is inescapable...
posted by isol at 5:08 PM PST - 22 comments

When did Porn become mainstream? John Walsh asks the question in the Independant. The question might seem silly save for this. People in Buffulo asked to pose niked in public? Why not, American athletes do it, Spike Lee endorses it, and even Matt Damon wants to screw in front of you. Bosnian men don't seem to share Matt's fervor for the camera, but everyone is talking sex, even those icky old folks who frequent online football magazines. Why not have your tittilation in-your-face! Does the line between erotica and pornography even exist any more? many of the links via World Sex News.
posted by Wulfgar! at 4:52 PM PST - 45 comments

Decarcerate? More ideas here.
posted by xowie at 11:44 AM PST - 13 comments

The Ultimate Gaming Table. While looking around the webernets to find a replacement for my living room table, I stumbled across this. Breathtaking in scope and purpose; I salute this person's nerdly vision and dedication.
posted by majcher at 10:30 AM PST - 13 comments

F*ckNewYork-- very fitting quicktime piece (9 meg, NSFW--offensive language/attitude) concerning the upcoming Republican Convention. Links to RNC Not Welcome, and Counterconvention, but i don't think it's something they created. And a torrent here.
posted by amberglow at 8:01 AM PST - 42 comments

Mongo is the treasures people discover in garbage, and Ted Botha has written an excellent book about it and talked about it. If your curiousity is peaked, you might want to try it yourself.
posted by drezdn at 10:16 AM PST - 11 comments

Scamming in the MMORPG Eve Online
posted by Orange Goblin at 9:44 AM PST - 17 comments

Munich Bans Memorial Plaques Munich has decided to ban memorial plaques to Jewish, Sinti and German citizens deported and murdered during World War Two. Jewish leaders, fearful that the plaques would stir up anti-Semitic fervor, supported the ban. These plaques are the work of a German artist, Gunter Demnig. ”He first had the idea in the early 1990s when he was unveiling a memorial for the Sinti and Roma victims of the Holocaust. “An elderly woman approached him and insisted that "no Gypsies ever lived here". "It is so easy for people to deny something. I wanted to ensure that this would not happen," he says. (BBC).” This reminder of the holocaust brought to mind the Pinkas Synagogue in Prague, as well as the Viet Nam Memorial and the AIDS quilt -- monuments that really changed me.
posted by gesamtkunstwerk at 8:40 AM PST - 21 comments

2D Mathematical Fiction , imaginary two-dimensional worlds (and social satire). Once could do worse than read the illustrated original, or Edwin A. Abbott's views on women, follow Yendred's Journey (from Dimensional Geographic), or check out Yendred's homepage.
posted by plep at 8:25 AM PST - 5 comments

Kevin Hulsey. Technical illustration Portfolio.
posted by srboisvert at 6:45 AM PST - 7 comments

U.S. to Cut Forces in Europe, Asia President Bush will announce Monday that he plans to pull 70,000 to 100,000 troops out of Europe and Asia in the first major reconfiguration of overseas military deployments by the United States since the Cold War ended, White House officials said yesterday.
posted by raaka at 4:14 AM PST - 38 comments

Jazz in 2500? iTunes versus Preservation: "The digital music era should offer listeners more information about jazz, not less. The stakes are high. If jazz fragments into millions of digital files, future generations could be left with a maddening cultural jigsaw puzzle. This music could quickly become one of the mysterious art forms that is translated to the public by a small group of experts." (via ArtsJournal.com)
posted by josephtate at 12:12 AM PST - 21 comments

Hating Dick Cheney - Our vice president is so widely hated as being an evil puppeteer, but this seems to be far from the truth. He's really "a frazzled, heart attack survivor who's barely hanging on—to life, his job, his position, his sense of self-esteem."
posted by MrAnonymous at 11:12 PM PST - 51 comments

"Stone Reader makes you want to pick up a great novel and consume it in one long gulp. It’s a love letter to literature and literacy, a bibliophile’s dream film, dedicated to the joys of fiction and the passions of those who need books like they need food, water and air." (The Dallas Morning News)
posted by rushmc at 9:56 PM PST - 17 comments

Paper Napkin "So here's the scenario: You're out at a bar, riding transit, or even just walking down the street, and some bozo who desperately wants into your pants starts up a conversation with you. Rather than make a scene or make them upset (which, hey, could be dangerous), you're polite and at least nod at the proper times. Then, of course, they ask you for your number. Except this is 2004, so maybe they ask for your email address instead." Ouch.
posted by zannah at 9:06 PM PST - 32 comments

Disinfect the Core. (Shockwave.) Merciless and addictive.
posted by brownpau at 8:57 PM PST - 6 comments

When did we jump to the other side of the "uncanny valley"?
posted by LairBob at 6:11 PM PST - 59 comments

1,000 Reasons to Vote Against George Bush. Reasons are in alphabetical order, by category. Last updated Friday, August 13, 2004, 5:18 PM
posted by Peter H at 5:50 PM PST - 60 comments

The Dittohead Guide To Adult Beverages can be read in its entirety (abt. 250Kb) on the Web. (For those of you in Rio Linda, a dittohead is a Rush Limbaugh fan.) But Britt Gillette has also self-published his book and wants you to make his dreams come true by buying it on Amazon. It's got hilarious drink names in it, like "Caller Abortion" (a stunt Limbaugh used on his show -- complete with the sound of a vacuum cleaner), "Feminazi Frazzle," and "John F-ing Kerry." The recipes look like they'd make tasty drinks, but I think I'll pass on the purchase. Who really needs a novelty, right-wing drink recipe book?
posted by tbc at 3:44 PM PST - 12 comments

Vehicle Lifecycle Cost Analyzer
posted by alms at 3:01 PM PST - 12 comments

craigsbay?
according to the founder of craigslist.com, ebay has acquired a 25% stake in the site.
there is a lot of concern that ebay will influence the way craigslist works, despite craig's assurances that it won't, but will ebay allow things like the 'casual encounters' section of the personals to continue?
or is this just the next logical step for craigslist, and is a 25% stake not enough for ebay to do any real damage?
(the way ebay acquired the stake seems a little weird to me too, even though it's all perfectly legal.)
posted by dolface at 2:56 PM PST - 15 comments

P. J. O'Rourke interviews Colin Powell in The Atlantic.
posted by semmi at 2:35 PM PST - 21 comments

Shock 'N' Awe [quicktime] is a timely parody of Elbow Room, a Schoolhouse Rock song that asks the musical question, "What's the difference between Manifest Destiny and Personal Space, anyway?" [shamelessly stolen from MoFi, via eriqx.com]
posted by ulotrichous at 2:27 PM PST - 13 comments

Know Your Skate Tricks. Great video clips showing all the classic skatboarding tricks, with Matrix-style slow-mo pans.
posted by gwint at 1:16 PM PST - 9 comments

Hurricane Charley bearing down on the Southwest Florida coast right now. Maybe you'll find the next Dan Rather on WBBH or WTSP., with live streaming video. myweatherguide.com is blogging the hurricane, as are the Weatherbug people. And official information from the National Weather Service here.
posted by calwatch at 11:25 AM PST - 35 comments

Ramones Name Generator.
posted by mokujin at 11:10 AM PST - 23 comments

Borat the Kazahk goes to a redneck bar. Something light to laugh at for Friday afternoon. (.wmv file) The main page is here, but it's funnier if you don't read the lyrics and wimpy disclaimer first.
posted by Mayor Curley at 11:02 AM PST - 36 comments

Friday night is date night.
posted by oh posey at 10:38 AM PST - 15 comments

Weboggle. It's that dice based word search game, but online.
posted by jonah at 9:38 AM PST - 27 comments

Chocolate Roulette! Finally, a choice for those of us who want the danger of Russian Roulette but not the mess of a bullet in the brain. Of course, if you're watching your calories, there's hope just a click away.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:57 AM PST - 9 comments

Is Golan Cipel a "gunsel"? Gov. McGreevey's friend Golan Cipel appears to meet the original Maltese Falcon definition (a young man 'kept' for sex by an older man), but not it's later, derived one. Slantpoint provides a timeline of the relationship.
posted by Jos Bleau at 8:36 AM PST - 6 comments

Julia Child Dies at 91

Alfred A. Knopf said in a statement she died in her sleep on Thursday at her Santa Barbara, California, home.

I, for one, am really going to miss her.
posted by lilboo at 8:15 AM PST - 38 comments

Catholic church invalidates girl's first communion because she used a gluten free wafer. Haley Waldman has celiac disease which prevents her from eating wheat. It will also prevent her from receiving one of the most important sacraments of her church. Apparently, this has happened before. According to church canons wafers must be made only from wheat. Despite the Catholic Church's apparent inflexibility, an extremely low gluten wafer has been approved, but still may not be safe for some celiac sufferers.
posted by caddis at 7:28 AM PST - 110 comments

This Flash game kinda drove me nuts and I never got it right once. (turn off your sound. the game don't need it and there's some cheesiness) {click games them m3 or m3 expert if you're a glutton for punishment}
posted by dobbs at 12:17 AM PST - 18 comments

Human Beans Fictional Products. The Karmaphone, the Live Cigarettes and more
posted by ronsens at 11:05 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

A Libertarian for Kerry. John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the EFF and a former campaign manager for Dick Cheney, is taking his libertarianism into the Democratic camp. "...we need something -- and I think it’s governmental -- to reregulate the market and make it free, because the multinationals have taken it away." (More inside).
posted by liam at 8:46 PM PST - 34 comments

Head Back to Mono in 32k at the rineke.net records archive, where a rather consistent curator has digitized a goody chunk of his record collection. It's posted in more-or-less every iteration imaginable. Observe the linked scans (1 mb page, careful!) of the covers (also in multiple resolutions up to full-size). Note the records themselves, in sleeve or out, depending. Most especially, savor the clean, low-res mono mp3s that cry out to be played through the dashboard speakers of a 1967 Dodge Dart.

Bonus Big Beat Bonanza: The site's author is also behind the similarly detailed archive of shows by ex-WFMU dj The Hound, from 1987 through 1995, heavy on the rare regional sides beloved of certain of my pals down New Orleans way.

Last, but not least, rineke.net hosts the adventures of a platoon of Tux clones, sealing my geek admiration for the overseer of the site. There's more, of course. My propeller beanie's off to you, sir, and long may you wave, or particle, as is your choice and preference.

(Permission was sought and granted to post this, as I feard for the site's bandwidth. Have at it, Mefites!
posted by mwhybark at 5:14 PM PST - 7 comments

The Naked Olympics
Sex, nude sports, violence, boozing; a scholar's view of ancient Olympic practices.
posted by moonbird at 3:21 PM PST - 4 comments

Michael Moore rips Bush yet another one. While making Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore interviewed Porter Goss, President Bush's as-yet-to-be-approved nominee for head of the CIA. In the interview, Porter Goss said he wasn't qualified to even be in the CIA anymore, much less run it.

"It is true I was a case officer, clandestine services officer, and yes, I do understand the core mission of the business. But I couldn't get a job with the CIA today. I am not qualified. I don't have the language skills. You know my language skills were romance languages and stuff. We're looking for Arabists today. I don't have the cultural background probably, and I certainly don't have the technical skills, as my children remind me every day. "Daddy, Daddy, you gotta get better on your computer." And so the things you need to have, I don't have."

The video is available here. (Quicktime.)
posted by insomnia_lj at 2:47 PM PST - 72 comments

We're not in Maryland Kansas Anymore Alan Keyes sings "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" [Windows Media link]
posted by kirkaracha at 2:45 PM PST - 18 comments

MSNBC reports that NJ Gov. James McGreevey is to resign as of November 15th because of an affair he had with another man. A crazy day in politics for both Democrats and Republicans.
posted by jasenlee at 1:34 PM PST - 87 comments

Hacker Pleads Guilty. The Minnesota man who spread a modified version of the MSBlast worm over the Internet last summer pleaded guilty on Wednesday and faces 18 to 37 months in prison.
posted by semmi at 1:25 PM PST - 7 comments

"There was an attitude among editors: Look, we're going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?'' "Editors at The Washington Post acknowledge they underplayed stories questioning President Bush's claims of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein in the months leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq." The weblog Lunaville notes that The Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland found that "since September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has been especially successful at getting the American media to confirm its political and diplomatic agenda. Media reporting on the President amplified the administration s voice: when Bush said to the country that Americans are vulnerable to WMD in the hands of terrorists, the media effectively magnified those fears." Lawrence Lessig says: "As media becomes more concentrated, competition to curry favor with politicians only increases... Concentrated media and expansive copyright are the perfect storm not just for stifling debate but, increasingly, for weakening democracy as well." Can we make the media democratic?
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 1:08 PM PST - 17 comments

mp3's from a band you've never heard of
When technology and beer meet. Juvenile jam band antics. I recommend Big Red Nipples.
Not for all. But for some, delightful.
posted by Jeremy at 12:11 PM PST - 2 comments

iPod vs. Cassette Tape: a comparitive study in pictures.
posted by mathowie at 11:26 AM PST - 29 comments

California Supreme Court voids all San Francisco same-sex marriages . Said the mayor overstepped his authority and that the city violated the state law.
posted by kokogiak at 10:15 AM PST - 65 comments

The daily adventures of mixerman are back. Mixerman has started posting a new set of diary entries about his recording sessions with an anonymous band. His original diary (discussed here) is now available in hardcover.
posted by mfbridges at 9:48 AM PST - 11 comments

Light Speed! Ever wondered what it would look like to be passed by am 1957 Chevy Bel-Air going at 539,999,900 km/h?
posted by wobh at 9:22 AM PST - 11 comments

An overview of Athens' branded olympic experience. Considering how many brand geeks we've got, I thought this link to a style overview from the Athens Olympic Committee would be of some interest.
posted by silusGROK at 8:35 AM PST - 17 comments

At 7.14 a.m. on 30 June 1908 a massive pale blue fireball swept out of the sky and exploded high above the Tunguska River valley in Siberia. And who is to blame? According to the latest news, aliens. What a surprise...
posted by inkeri at 8:18 AM PST - 26 comments

Toothbrush subscriptions for yourself, your family, and your pets.
posted by rushmc at 7:49 AM PST - 8 comments

Dotster has its wicked way with Cory Doctorow. Any more horror stories involving them, or is he just unlucky?
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 6:47 AM PST - 31 comments

Retro vs. Metro. But what, why, and who?
posted by ZippityBuddha at 6:37 AM PST - 14 comments

Obese Florida woman melds with couch after laying on it for six years. Meanwhile.
posted by swift at 5:49 AM PST - 93 comments

The Office as training video? "The staff had just returned from lunch and all the managers were in a training room, sitting in a semi-circle and looking really pleased with themselves. Then one of them blurted out 'Mahna Mahna' at us without warning. We just stared blankly back at them."
posted by rory at 4:38 AM PST - 24 comments

Hollywood Propaganda

The Manchurian Candidate remake has all the makings of a cunning piece of republican political propaganda. The most obvious theme of the movie warns a politician war hero is a danger to the country.

The movie has all the makings of a good thriller. However, the script and screen play are so heavily slanted the movie comes across as a commercial just like other movies geared towards one political ideal.
posted by lightweight at 4:01 AM PST - 36 comments

Attractiveness of your name is linked to attractiveness of your face. Even more interesting, the so called "professional" researcher used the service "Hot or Not" to conduct her research by uploading fake profiles.
posted by banished at 3:59 AM PST - 12 comments

Seeing red orange. Can a company 'own' a colour?
posted by etc at 1:54 AM PST - 35 comments

Life's like that isn’t it? Only the other day I was walking in the west end and... suddenly I was set upon by hordes of fans and admirers who wanted to... touch my clothes. So I took sanctuary in a nearby cinema. Normally of course I don't go in but... that day I saw something that... really moved me I'd like to share this...wonderful experience with you it was... (more inside gentle reader)
posted by longbaugh at 1:26 AM PST - 16 comments

ColorCell: finding the most popular color combinations.
posted by Gyan at 12:46 AM PST - 11 comments

Online Historical Map Exhibits from the Smith Centre for Cartographic Education. Nice collection - take a look at the Columbus Letter, Portuguese America and the exhibit on diasporas.
posted by plep at 12:35 AM PST - 3 comments

Cookd and Bombd: With news about the drug Cake, Margaret Thatcher as the new Doctor Who questions in Parliament and Blue Jam. Turning the zeitgeist of news gathering into the spirit of investigation, an archive to savour
posted by lerrup at 11:32 PM PST - 20 comments

Henry Kaiser visited Antarctica in 2001 and kept a photojournal. He brought back some amazing photos of ice towers, strange and gross creatures, ice caves, ice dives, and a South Pole exorcism, as well as videoclips. And if you liked those, there are more photos of the icy continent here.
posted by euphorb at 11:18 PM PST - 11 comments

Game over for Toys "R" Us? A sale of their global toy business is being considered. FAO Schwarz and KB Toys have declared bankruptcy in the past year as discounters such as Wal-Mart have put the toy industry in turmoil. [full NY Times article; req.req]
posted by F Mackenzie at 10:38 PM PST - 15 comments

"WARNING!!! The puzzles on this site are very difficult, and most require the use of a good spreadsheet program in order to solve them. It will take many hours, perhaps days, to solve each puzzle..."
posted by limitedpie at 9:08 PM PST - 7 comments

TSG - Fake Police Officer (contains NSFW jpg)
posted by bob sarabia at 8:10 PM PST - 11 comments

Marvel Universe looks almost like a real social network: "We investigate the structure of the Marvel Universe collaboration network, where two Marvel characters are considered linked if they jointly appear in the same Marvel comic book. We show that this network is clearly not a random network, and that it has most, but not all, characteristics of 'real-life' collaboration networks, such as movie actors or scientific collaboration networks. The study of this artificial universe that tries to look like a real one, helps to understand that there are underlying principles that make real-life networks have definite characteristics." [Some jargon, but on the whole very readable]
posted by Johnny Assay at 7:53 PM PST - 10 comments

The Dolmetsch online music theory & history pages - short introductions to the whole of the how and why of Western music, with enough links to fill in any gaps. Amazingly good, although as yet incomplete. via haddock
posted by thatwhichfalls at 7:44 PM PST - 5 comments

Hello, MUDDA. "The relationship of artist to the business has most often been one of contract and servitude. We believe the way forward must be a partnership in which the artist can take a much bigger role in how their creations are sold, but also have the chance to stand at the front of the queue when payments are made instead of the traditional position of being paid long after everyone else." - Peter Gabriel
posted by eustacescrubb at 6:39 PM PST - 8 comments

Fox sued for trademarked slogan. Outfoxed has taken the rumblings you've heard online for ages mainstream: that Fox News claims fairness, but is grinding a sharp ax for one team. Now the battle ticks up a notch as alt-newspaper service Altnet takes them to court.
posted by mathowie at 5:39 PM PST - 8 comments

Word It is your opportunity to express in as many words, and as many other graphic elements as you need, what best describes each monthly topic. Each month we will choose a specific topic, idea or theme. For example: the first theme was “inspiration.” So you would go home, or do it at work, and find words, images, artwork, whatever that best describes what inspiration means to you. It could be anything: music, cats, chocolate, museum, love, laundry. Anything that reflects what inspiration is to you. You can do whatever you want to it: vectorize it, photoshop it, scan it or build it and then send it to us.
posted by ColdChef at 5:31 PM PST - 4 comments

best retarded cat ever
posted by timb at 3:42 PM PST - 102 comments

moveonplease.org "Everything Bad Fault Of Rumsfeld"....
posted by konolia at 1:33 PM PST - 69 comments

Former GOP Sen. Hecht owes life to Democratic candidate Kerry "Former U.S. Sen. Chic Hecht of Nevada is a staunch Republican, but he thanks his lucky stars for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts. On July 12, 1988, Hecht was attending a weekly Republican luncheon when a piece of apple lodged firmly in his throat." via Eschaton (Atrios)
posted by Postroad at 12:59 PM PST - 30 comments

That book is inappropriate We don't cotton to that kinda thing on my ferry son.
posted by Capn at 12:25 PM PST - 60 comments

A peek at Al Qaeda pre 9/11. Reports surfaced in early 2002 about al Qaeda computers purchased by a journalist from the Wall Street Journal. In this article details from one of these computers come to light - complaints about their new home in Afghanistan after being expelled from Sudan, rocky relationships with the Taliban and a difficult merger with Islamic Jihad. "Perhaps one of the most important insights to emerge from the computer is that 9/11 sprang not so much from al-Qaeda's strengths as from its weaknesses. The computer did not reveal any links to Iraq or any other deep-pocketed government; amid the group's penury the members fell to bitter infighting. The blow against the United States was meant to put an end to the internal rivalries, which are manifest in vitriolic memos between Kabul and cells abroad." via The Agonist
posted by caddis at 11:51 AM PST - 9 comments

bird and moon
posted by Fourmyle at 11:43 AM PST - 14 comments

They're going to try to save the Hubble telescope after all! Yea!
Nasa chief Sean O'Keefe has asked for a firm mission proposal to be worked up in a year, after which a decision whether to proceed will be made.

As discussed previously in this thread, it looked like NASA didn't want to devote the resourses necessary to maintain the 14 year old telescope.
posted by wsg at 11:00 AM PST - 9 comments

BugMeNot.com now requires registration. For employees, partners, affiliates or legal representatives of any site which enforces compulsory user registration to view content, that is. It should only take a moment.
posted by brownpau at 9:06 AM PST - 28 comments

Charade has never looked so good.
"Somebody told me the French made it up hundreds of years ago, but I always thought my dad invented it just for me." (And other cool shorts.)
posted by margaretlam at 7:20 AM PST - 7 comments

Advertising Copycats is a site where various ad prints are compared for resemblances, from odd coincidences to downright plagiarism. [in French]
posted by Masi at 6:30 AM PST - 12 comments

Slavery is not just the shameful stuff of history books - not in Florida. Last year, 7 journalists spent 9 months in a behind-the-scenes exploration of the state's immigrant workers. In more than 30 articles and photo essays, they revealed a system where workers are threatened, beaten, locked up, injured, forced into prostitution, and trapped in a spiral of debt and abuse. Powerful forces are arrayed against them in a state where agricultural laws are shaped by politician-farmers who have a vested interest in the status quo. - more -
posted by madamjujujive at 5:02 AM PST - 28 comments

The producer strikes back. After crowing Monday about how he made mincemeat of NYT columnist Paul Krugman on The Factor, O'Reilly gets rebutted on Tuesday via quicktime on the blog of Outfoxed co-producer Jim Gilliam.
posted by tsarfan at 12:38 AM PST - 103 comments

Euclid in Colour. 'An unusual and attractive edition of Euclid was published in 1847 in England, edited by an otherwise unknown mathematician named Oliver Byrne. It covers the first 6 books of Euclid, which range through most of elementary plane geometry and the theory of proportions. What distinguishes Byrne's edition is that he attempts to present Euclid's proofs in terms of pictures, using as little text - and in particular as few labels - as possible. What makes the book especially striking is his use of colour ... '
posted by plep at 12:32 AM PST - 15 comments

For the second time in as many years, the rhesus monkeys have escape from the Tulane University National Primate Research Center.
posted by Katemonkey at 10:51 PM PST - 19 comments

I found Gumtree.com when I looked over at the guy next to me's internet cafe screen the last time I was in London (does everyone do that?). It's sorta like the London Craigslist, but with pages for cities all over the UK, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.
posted by armoured-ant at 8:38 PM PST - 8 comments

Sh*tFilter (SFW)
posted by shoepal at 8:25 PM PST - 12 comments

New Winamp So the design guys over there quitely release this update and down played its coolest feature. Perhaps the coolest feature ever for any program. A database of searchable music videos and song offering on demand and fastforwarding and rewind. Sons are censored but there are well over 2000 videos with the promise of more to come.
posted by sourbrew at 7:45 PM PST - 41 comments

You're either with us or against us? Ok then... Two British citizens have travelled to Najaf to serve in Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. "We went to fight last night. It was quite fun, actually . . . It was dangerous," however. Reuters raw video has an interview with one of the two British on their site.
posted by insomnia_lj at 7:43 PM PST - 121 comments

At veggiedate.org, "It's even possible to narrow your search to find only macrobiotic nonsmokers, 'almost-vegetarians' who live in Australia or Buddhist vegans." Sweet site with a surprisingly large number of success stories.
posted by onlyconnect at 5:40 PM PST - 21 comments

Worst. Trailer. Ever.
posted by McBain at 5:17 PM PST - 84 comments

Ahh, Mousetrap.

Just turn the crank and snap the plank and boot the marble right down the chute, now watch it roll in into the pole, and knock the ball in the rub-a-dub tub, which flips the man into the pan...the trap is set... here comes the net...

Replace marble with "bowling ball", trap with "twenty three ton crane", and net with either "bank safe" or "piano", and you've got a pretty good idea of the Life Size Mouse Trap event that just hit San Francisco. (Summary pic / All pics).

And yes, of course there were protesters.
posted by effugas at 5:16 PM PST - 10 comments

Space age origami. JAXA successfully launched and unfurled two solar sails in space.
posted by homunculus at 4:52 PM PST - 6 comments

You wanna be free? Accept pornography. Or so says Salman Rushdie. He argues that a free and civilised society should be judged by its willingness to accept pornography. So which comes first, the liberty, or the boobies?
posted by Wulfgar! at 4:25 PM PST - 45 comments

The stunning photography of Yann Bertrand.
posted by moonbird at 3:58 PM PST - 26 comments

dogblog, bogblog, fogblog, cogblog, logblog, zogblog, jogblog, yogblog, gogblog, wogblog, nogblog, vogblog, hogblog, smogblog, frogblog.
posted by reklaw at 3:50 PM PST - 27 comments

Outer Burrows - A web comic experiment (some NSFW if language is a problem).
posted by grateful at 2:11 PM PST - 5 comments

Specs spots are commericals shot by people who hope that they'll be considered for shooting real commercials. Because they are vying for attention, some of them can be pretty outrageous. This site allows you to rank them ala hotornot mode.

My personal favorite pertains to that "make a wish" ritual around blowing out birthday candles.
What are your favorites? (Spots themselves are Quicktime links)
posted by jasper411 at 1:10 PM PST - 10 comments

Jason Byrne: You talk about Muhammad Ali in your latest DVD and how frightening it was to be in the ring with him. But do you reckon you could beat him now that the two of you shake like maracas?
Richard Pryor: That's your fuckin' question?
posted by dodgygeezer at 12:44 PM PST - 17 comments

The Davinci Code website hasn't been linked on the front page! Check it out and have fun with codes, conspiracies, art and a challenge. Good fun that might also make you go "hmmmm".
posted by ashbury at 11:17 AM PST - 47 comments

Landslide caught on tape. Region Pounded By Heavy Rains. Japanese government officials inspecting an area battered by weeks of heavy rain catch a dramatic landslide on video. [note: realvideo]
posted by crunchland at 10:22 AM PST - 34 comments

Bootleg Objects, the site of two artists in Germany, have done some really amazing work retrofitting popular technology to serve a new and/or unintended purpose -- just because they can. It's quite beautiful design -- who knows of other examples?
posted by aeiou at 10:13 AM PST - 5 comments

Step away from the computer. Go outside. Have a look. The annual Perseid meteor shower is gracing our skies for the next 48 hours, looking better than ever, as Earth passes through a filament trailing from a comet's tail. (Hopefully, the comet won't smash into us in 2126.)
posted by digaman at 9:32 AM PST - 12 comments

Is it the start of a moral life when one really acts as though another life is just as important as one's own, or is that an obsession skirting mental illness?
posted by semmi at 9:18 AM PST - 35 comments

"One time a guy handed me a picture of himself and he said. "Here's a picture of me when I was younger." Every picture of you is of when you were younger. Say, here's a picture of me when I'm older. How'd you pull that off? Let me see that camera."

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Comedy Stylings of Mitch Hedberg.
posted by Quartermass at 9:17 AM PST - 28 comments

Property from the Estate of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash (via a heartfelt post at saturation.org)
posted by gwint at 9:10 AM PST - 6 comments

Somebody sends me a blue dress and some DNA, I'll have an investigation, said Porter Goss while downplaying Valerie Plame's outing. Bush's choice today to replace Tenet as head of the CIA had already been shot down by the very people who'll be voting on his confirmation. It is widely believed that Bush will soon appoint a new CIA director, partly to avoid extra criticism should terrorists strike the homeland between now and November. Why Goss?
posted by amberglow at 8:10 AM PST - 45 comments

The Baker Church of Christ is looking for a new building. They're running a sort of bond drive to finance it. So far, no problem. But I heard about it via spam.
posted by MrMoonPie at 7:18 AM PST - 16 comments

NASA to consolidate all their sites into the nasa.gov portal The argument for change is that users will be served better by a single website because the agency's various sites vary in quality and content. But scientists and fans at NASAWatch say consolidation into a single NASA portal - which is more suited as collection press releases rather than in-depth information - will greatly reduce the amount of public information available from NASA. Is consolidation a good idea or is it just a power grab/manipulation by NASA administrators?
posted by stevis at 7:20 PM PST - 11 comments

Yesterday's really crappy movie is today's reality. Welcome to RePet.
posted by Krrrlson at 5:33 PM PST - 24 comments

When he was seven years old, Brandon Maxfield was accidentally shot in the face, becoming permanently paralyzed below the neck. [More inside]
posted by mr_crash_davis at 5:30 PM PST - 48 comments

Gmail Apps I'm a self-described GMail addict and overall Google product whore, so this page of applications for Gmail has me doing the happy dance.
posted by JJBotter at 5:26 PM PST - 34 comments

Boom! Forget terror attacks, the real reason for an orange alert in NYC has to do with ... rocks. I'll bet you've never heard of Cumbre Vieja. In fact, if the first hit on a google search for something is a PDF, you know it's obscure. (It's a volcano in the Canaries). If it erupts, it'll spell the end for Washington, New York and Boston (and parts of Europe will get a bit wet.) Hoo!

Now, short of hoping it will go away, there's nothing you can do, because it will take 35 million years to dismantle the dangerous bits of rock. Instead, the boffins are talking about evacuating the east coast. Yet more obscure places you wish you could forget menacing the future of the US, hey?
posted by bonaldi at 5:24 PM PST - 33 comments

Collagemania. 'collage, photomontage, assemblage'
posted by feelinglistless at 5:14 PM PST - 7 comments

She has screamed her last. Fay Wray has died at the age of 96. Which pretty much rules out her having a cameo in Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong.
posted by Man-Thing at 1:49 PM PST - 20 comments

According to Scientific Proof magazine your favorite band stinks. If you like Justin and Christina, Staind, Linkin Park or a host of others then it is a scientific fact that you have bad taste in music. Fortunately, there is a cure.
posted by mokujin at 1:31 PM PST - 35 comments

An interesting study by The Century Foundation. I found it while perusing the NY Times op-eds...specifically, Bob Herbert. It seems that "Household debt and personal bankruptcies are reaching record highs despite low interest rates and rising real estate values."
posted by BlueTrain at 12:56 PM PST - 59 comments

WordNet: "an online lexical reference system whose design is inspired by current psycholinguistic theories of human lexical memory. English nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are organized into synonym sets, each representing one underlying lexical concept. Different relations link the synonym sets." What does one do with WordNet?
posted by archimago at 11:32 AM PST - 16 comments

Orgastmatic Washing Machine, where the spin cycle is saucy and the rinse rampant.
posted by adampsyche at 9:39 AM PST - 19 comments

What's an Indian, Anyway? Just one of the essays exploring real vs. fake in Native American culture posted At Wanderer's Well. Lots of opinionated reviews of the work of Louise Erdrich, N. Scott Momaday, Tony Hillerman, Ursula K. Le Guin and many others. The surprisingly rich personal site from a former academic (who now calls his departure from scholarly publishing "felicitous") offers hours of reading with detailed side-trips and fascinating links.
posted by mediareport at 8:33 AM PST - 31 comments

cin-o-matic, it's a tool to help people decide what movies to go see or rent. The interface is simple and is growing on me, the url is hard to share by word of mouth, and it integrates with netfilx. [by and via dack]
posted by jonah at 8:00 AM PST - 20 comments

Men In Black

CNN, Aug 4: Clashes between police and insurgents in the northern city of Mosul left 12 Iraqis dead and 26 wounded, hospital and police sources said Wednesday. Rifle and rocket-propelled grenade fire as well as explosions were heard in the streets of the city.

A first-hand view of events.
posted by bonehead at 6:52 AM PST - 8 comments

Koko goes to the dentist
About a month ago, Koko, a 300-plus-pound ape who became famous for mastering more than 1,000 signs, began telling her handlers... she was in pain. They quickly constructed a pain chart, offering Koko a scale from one to 10. When Koko started pointing to nine or 10 too often, a dental appointment was made. (There's a rather funny development at the very bottom of the story)
posted by moonbird at 4:28 AM PST - 35 comments

Big Hats and Eroticism is just one of the many features of Tallulahs.com, an excellent site dedicated to images of the vintage nude. There's also lots of wonderful trivia and commentary, such as a brief biography of the Mante sisters (immortalized in the brilliant ballerina images of painter Edgar Degas), and the story of Liane de Pougy, convent girl turned runaway wife, turned celebrated dancer of the French stage, turned Romanian Princess. Or you can read about the mystery of H. Traut, elusive photographer of "the gentle eroticism of fairyland" whose images graced hundreds of postcards for several years until he seemingly vanished from the scene some time before WWI. Interested in drawing or painting nudes yourself? Here's a page of classical nude poses - studies in various categories that you can work from, including "The beauty of butts" and "seductive smoking"! Plus, you can peruse Tallulah's own art nudes, and a fabulous links page. NSFW, obviously.
posted by taz at 3:13 AM PST - 4 comments

KVRX, University of Texas' radio station, has an archive of tracks recorded live in their studio. Artists include The Magnetic Fields, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Broken Social Scene, Devendra Banhart, Explosions in the Sky, Sebadoh, Mojave 3, Okkervil River, Japancakes, Call and Response, Super Furry Animals, Cat Power, I Am The World Trade Center and the sublime Paul Burch, among others.
posted by dobbs at 10:15 PM PST - 24 comments

Prozac Found in Britain's Drinking Water. Norman Baker, environment spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said it looked "like a case of hidden mass medication upon the unsuspecting public." Or possibly something less alarming, like the recycled leftovers from the public waste... either way, very disturbing.
posted by Espoo2 at 7:08 PM PST - 54 comments

Filmmaker Alexander Hammid died earlier this week at the age of 96. By far one of the most prolific and eclectic underground filmmakers, his filmography included marital industrial films, home movies of his cats, and work as an editor on Gian Carlo Menotti's filmed opera The Medium. However, he is best known as the first husband of iconclastic director and actress Maya Deren.
posted by pxe2000 at 6:00 PM PST - 3 comments

Pepsi Blue! I mean, lots of interesting occasionally NSFW Flash video, from some-company-or-other.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 4:50 PM PST - 8 comments

Are You Ready? September will be National Preparedness Month, with an announcement on Sept. 9th. Throughout September 2004, the US Department of Homeland Security, American Red Cross, American Prepared Campaign, the National Association of Broadcasters, the US Department of Education and other partners, will host a series of events to highlight the importance of citizen emergency preparedness. Nothing like keeping us scared, huh? And it's only 3 years since 9/11--you think they could have done this sooner maybe? There's a skimpy calendar (PDF), with Parade Magazine, Starbucks and NASCAR mentioned. And for the kids, a Ready Deputy contest.
posted by amberglow at 3:02 PM PST - 28 comments

A three-story deep underground city dating from the 3rd Century AD has been discovered in Iran, near Nushabad. Unfortunately no pictures yet.
posted by stbalbach at 3:00 PM PST - 19 comments

Cut Off Tail -> Four flash cartoons by Seth Smith (note: the last one features coarse language while the others are just plain coarse)
posted by boost ventilator at 2:01 PM PST - 3 comments

"The President wants me to argue that he is as powerful a monarch as Louis XIV, only four years at a time, and is not subject to the processes of any court in the land except the court of impeachment." - James D. St. Clair, arguing before the Supreme Court in 1974.

The court didn't agree, returning an 8-0 decision and as a result, thirty years ago today Richard Nixon announced his resignation. The next day at 11:35AM it became official and Gerald Ford, the first unelected Vice-President in history was sworn in under the provisions of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution as the 38th President of the United States.

But what if Nixon had chosen to respond differently? What if he had vowed not to resign? Article II of the Constitution makes the President the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy. Could the Supreme Court really have forced Nixon to comply with their order? What if the President had viewed the Court's order as an attempted coup d'etat?
posted by snarfodox at 11:25 AM PST - 16 comments

The Savage Mountain Amongst peaks over 20,000 feet, K2 is the hardest and most dangerous. Edurne Pasadan became the 6th woman to summit on July 29th, but can she survive the curse of the women who climb K2 ? K2's danger and challenge has attracted a wide assortment of characters, ranging from the bizarre Aleister Crowley to the glamourous Araceli Segarra . The deadly toll continues. Two Russian climbers are missing on the mountain. Read a history of 50 years of K2 summits, and accounts of another ascent here.
posted by F4B2 at 10:55 AM PST - 5 comments

Extreme Instability is a site by Mike Hollingshead, a weather buff from Nebraska who likes chasing storms. On his good days, he gets some spectacular photos of tornados and supercells, but, heck, even his 'crap chasing' days aren't too bad. More of Mike's photos at photoSig.
posted by madamjujujive at 10:19 AM PST - 9 comments

Ecotonoha: Grow a virtual tree with words and NEC plants real ones. [via Cool Hunting]
posted by anathema at 9:28 AM PST - 9 comments

"After his capture he admitted being an al Qaeda member and agreed to send e-mails to his contacts," a Pakistani intelligence source told Reuters. "He sent encoded e-mails and received encoded replies. He's a great hacker and even the U.S. agents said he was a computer whiz." In its haste to get a scary headline the weekend after the Democratic Convention, did the Bush Administration deliberately blow the cover of one of its best informants within al-Qaeda?
posted by lagado at 8:30 AM PST - 34 comments

Stone Cold Saddles for hard ass cyclists.
posted by srboisvert at 8:08 AM PST - 6 comments

BBC Radio Interviews From Hell My favourite is Dr Hastings Banda the leader of Malawi in 1962 who seems to have to the perfect way of getting out of an interview he obviously doesn't want to be having. See also the minimalist pleasure of Gordon Clough's dog. [in Real Audio]
posted by feelinglistless at 7:18 AM PST - 6 comments

A San Francisco man (an "aspiring" politician) fakes his own decapitation video.
posted by bluedaniel at 5:38 AM PST - 19 comments

I've been having a great time exploring the maze that is Musarium, wandering about and peeking into into various nooks and crannies to find such exotica as the wonderfully bizarre birdhand book, and absorbing cultural artifacts and musings, including the poetic Visions and Icons (I really love the way the text works with the images on this), the atmospheric Familiar Ghosts (the texts will cue you on clicking through this somewhat dream-like landscape), the time-capsule imagery of Balkan Portraits (1906-1910), the breathtaking portraits of photographer Steve McCurry (famous for his National Geographic portait of the Afghani girl), the subterranean monologue of Grand Central: the View Down Under, and the shocking and heartbreaking Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America. There's a lot more, so take your time. You can use this page to access archived material.
posted by taz at 3:00 AM PST - 13 comments

Singapore is trying to duplicate its IT success in Biotech (billions of dollars in predictive economics, a masterstroke -- or perhaps a mistake -- for the leaders of the Simcity-run island). Good for the huge numbers of foreigners lured with research money and benefits, but what about their kids?
posted by Tlogmer at 1:06 AM PST - 3 comments

Re-emergent American Eugenics Movement looks to unfinished business - The Tennessee primary win of an avowed Eugenicist Republican Congressional candidate underscores the longstanding association of the Republican Party with a resurgent American Eugenics Movement deeply linked to Nazi racial ideology and championed by the Manhattan Institute and the Nazi-associated Pioneer Fund
posted by troutfishing at 10:48 PM PST - 54 comments

Puzzles.com (Flash)
posted by Gyan at 10:01 PM PST - 3 comments

Kittens.
posted by reklaw at 8:01 PM PST - 17 comments

Check that random selection of classic screenplays. I'd like to thank that other girl.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 4:10 PM PST - 6 comments

Michelle Malkin and the Big Hustle Matt Stoller does a good job explaining the right-wing noise machine backing up author Michelle Malkin, whose new book promotes the virtue of Japanese internment camps and racial profiling. Eric Muller, UNC law school professor also does a pretty good job ripping up her arguments. As Stoller says: "Right-wing institutional support, with places to house people to create ideas, outlets to distribute and promote them, and the tactics and relationships to turn these ideas into the mainstream, is breathtaking".
posted by owillis at 3:43 PM PST - 64 comments

The Battle for Najaf -- a first-hand account by the only Western reporter in Najaf as major fighting broke out this week.
posted by gwint at 3:12 PM PST - 7 comments

Coalition of the Willy. [via abuddha's memes]
Just as the eyes may be averted from full frontal public displays of male nudity, is it possible that the unconscious association to phallic symbols like "weapons of mass destruction" may effectively lead the eyes to be "averted", thus frustrating any search.
(NOTE: This essay isn't really 'logical,' but it's a fun ride anyway, pun intended)
posted by moonbird at 2:21 PM PST - 8 comments

Atlantis has been found, and it's... Ireland? So says Swedish geographer Ulf Erlingsson, who thinks the sinking of the island in Plato's story may have referred to the inundation of Dogger Bank, which connected Britain and Denmark. Sorry Spain. [Via MonkeyFilter.]
posted by homunculus at 1:32 PM PST - 13 comments

I've just finished reading a copy of Larson's Devil in the White City sent to me by a relative who heard of my love for Isaac's Storm. Devil is a biography of two men who were central to the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. One, Daniel H. Burnham would become one of the most influential architects and city planners of the early 20th century. Burnham organized a crew of the architectural, engineering and artistic elite including landscape artist Frederick Law Olmstead (famous for Central Park and Biltmore) in an effort to better the Paris world's fair of 1889. The Chicago exposition would be profoundly influential for American culture introducing Arabic Dance (the tune for "There's a place in France/where the naked ladies dance" was created in Chicago), the Ferris Wheel, Shredded Wheat, and helping to settle the Battle of the Currents between Edison and Tesla. The fair drew a large variety of larger than life figures including Archduke Ferdinand, Elizabeth B. Anthony, Buffalo Bill Cody and the mostly forgotten master of self promotion Citizen Train.

Devil is also a biography of the man given credit for America's first recognized serial murders, the self-named H. H. Holmes. At the start of the fair, Holmes changed his modus operandi from marrying and killing women as part of insurance and real estate scams, to running a hotel from which an unknown number of his female tenants never checked out. Although information on Holmes's activities is scanty, he serves as a mirror of the utopia of civic safety created by Burnham. Larson makes the argument that the contrasts between optimisim and pessimism, well-intentioned virtue and depravity, urban utopia with a few blocks from slums, would set the tone for the 20th century.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 11:44 AM PST - 13 comments

It's official. The Hubble Space Telescope is blind, and probably won't be resuscitated.
posted by crunchland at 8:44 AM PST - 31 comments

If you don't expect the Olympics to keep it real, you may appreciate the Nemean Games.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 8:41 AM PST - 6 comments

the mile of the century Fifty years ago today, Roger Bannister, the first man to break the 4-minute mile, and John Landy, who beat his record a month-and-a-half later, squared off in Vancouver BC to determine who was the fastest runner in the history of the world, in what is arguably the most dramatic sporting event of the 20th Century. The record for the mile has gone down astonishingly through the years, but are there limits on how low it can go? (View video of the historic Bannister vs. Landy matchup here.
posted by F4B2 at 8:38 AM PST - 11 comments

Voyage to our hollow earth. "Steve Currey's Expedition Company has chartered the Russian Nuclear IceBreaker YAMAL, to take 100 adventurers to the North Pole for an expedition to conduct scientific observations that could resolve once and for all whether the Hollow Earth theories have any validity!"
posted by srboisvert at 7:47 AM PST - 13 comments

The virtue of idleness is lost upon our modern society with its Puritan work ethic. Perhaps a little idleness is good for the soul and the mind. Some would say Ben Franklin is spinning in his grave, but he also enjoyed his idle hours as much as any man, at least according to the recent biography, "Ben Franklin: An American Life" by Walter Isaacson.
posted by caddis at 7:36 AM PST - 12 comments

Bin Ladin's Former 'Bodyguard' Interviewed on Al-Qa'ida Strategies. An interview taken by the Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper in London with one of Bin Ladin's former bodyguards brings out many interesting things, such as him admitting that Al Qaida is no longer an entity, but an ideology. Another strong point of the interview is his summary of Al Qaida tactics: Al-Qa'ida pursues a method or principle that calls for "centralization of decision and decentralization of execution.".
posted by Masi at 4:26 AM PST - 13 comments

Canada's first manned space launch is to be sponsored by an online casino. The Canadian Da Vinci team who is vying for the X-prize gets a surprising boost by an online casino known for their creative marketing strategies. In exchange for the sponsorship, the casino asks that the astronaut-to-be play a game while in mid-flight. Jokes aside, this looks like the perfect partnering of marketing and private space exploration.
posted by phyrewerx at 11:59 PM PST - 8 comments

Another person gets fired for their blog. This is a strange story, the blog is here, and her former employer is here. According to the story, she was fired due to a complaint from a local, but it sounds like another factor was the blog outdoing the main site in Google searches. Of course it's only half the story, but this seems weirder than any previous occurrence.
posted by mathowie at 7:52 PM PST - 36 comments

Followup: Wired runs an article called "Fark Sells Out, France Surrenders". Drew Curtis writes a response (note the sycophantic totalfarkers and more annoyed normal-farkers) -- but, as the article says, "when pressed on the issue, Curtis refused to deny that Fark accepts payment for placement of links". Was this really a case of one sales rep getting "a little overenthusiastic"? Is Drew ever actually going to deny selling Fark out, or will he just keep writing non-responses detailing his plans for selling it out even more in the future?
posted by reklaw at 6:48 PM PST - 43 comments

Baghdad Journal An eyewitness artist's report from the Iraqi capital. Amazing watercolors.
posted by ColdChef at 4:46 PM PST - 8 comments

Because you never know when you might need to purchase some historic(al) hair
posted by magullo at 3:42 PM PST - 5 comments

Real and France's Virgin claim that they deserve to be able to sell their music on Apple's iPod. To prove they're serious, Virgin Mega has filed a complaint against Apple to do so. Perhaps I'm missing something here, but last I checked it wasn't anybody's responsibility to open up their product or service to purposely allow the competition in. That is, of course, unless the government steps in. Are Real and Virgin Mega just being whiny little brats, angered that they're not invited to the party? What are legitimate reasons for the legal system to get involved and to rule in favor of such plaintiffs? While the obvious Microsoft may come to mind, are there other examples you can think of? As for me, I'd like to hand out copies of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead" to both Real and Virgin Mega...
posted by tgrundke at 3:21 PM PST - 41 comments

The Freeloader Registry. When an employer pays low wages and doesn't provide health care benefits, its employees often end up getting free care through state and federal programs. How much does this cost you, and which companies benefit from the practice? A new Massachusetts state law will provide detailed information about top corporate welchers. (This follows recent discussion of the topic in the context of Wal-Mart.) Via Good Jobs First.
posted by alms at 2:52 PM PST - 21 comments

A new meaning for the expression: to google? In a stunning revelation, Internet search engine king Google reported it had neglected to register 28.8 million shares and stock options issued to employees and consultants between September 2001 and June 2004 in violation of state and federal securities laws. The regulatory fiasco was revealed in the company's S-1 filing with the SEC on Tuesday, and it has imperiled Google's much-ballyhooed IPO.
posted by psmealey at 2:36 PM PST - 10 comments

Is phonebooking illegal? No. Well...yes. Assault is assault. Just don't get caught.
posted by chunking express at 2:10 PM PST - 25 comments

Babyface: A Times Square Odyssey "This interactive web piece about the Babyfaces of Times Square takes place in the past, when the center city was a clash of classes rather than today's funeral of a theme park controlled by middle class undertakers." This is definitely not safe for work (drugs, porn, men in bathroom stalls), but if you want to remember the seedier side of NYC, this is one way to do it.
posted by WolfDaddy at 12:56 PM PST - 6 comments

Rick James dead. Big red breaking news box at CNN.com, also here. :(
posted by adampsyche at 12:28 PM PST - 64 comments

The Shore, a short-story by Richard Ford.
posted by semmi at 11:55 AM PST - 4 comments

I just ordered mine. [via Kevin Rose]
posted by tranquileye at 10:35 AM PST - 46 comments

The HIV virus has jumped from primates to people on at least seven separate occasions in recent history, not twice as is commonly thought. And people in Cameroon are showing up with symptoms of HIV, but are testing negative for both the virus and its primate equivalent SIV, the virus from which HIV is thought to have evolved. That suggests that new strains of an HIV-like virus are circulating in wild animals and infecting people who eat them, sparking fears that such strains could fuel an already disastrous global HIV pandemic.
posted by dejah420 at 10:17 AM PST - 15 comments

On July 6th, 1988 Dennis Dechaine of Bowdinham, Maine came home from work (transporting frozen chickens from a slaughterhouse) and planned to work on constructing a greenhouse. However, that project hit a glitch and sometime that afternoon he decided instead to take some amphetamines and go exploring in the woods near his home. When he emerged from the woods, lost and looking for his truck, about 8:30 pm that night he was questioned by the police who were looking for a missing 12 year old girl named Sarah Cherry. Two days later, Sarah's body was found and Dennis Dechainewas charged with the girl's murder. He was convicted in March of 1989 to life in prison without parole and an entire generation of Maine girls were told to 'remember Sarah Cherry' as a caution to not talk to strangers.
The question before us now, is, of course, did he do it?
posted by anastasiav at 9:59 AM PST - 19 comments

Mail Room Veterans for Bush
Not exactly your Swift Boat Veterans, but staunch defenders of all things holy and honorable and patriotic just the same. Submitted for your Friday fun.
posted by nofundy at 9:46 AM PST - 1 comment

Attention Alpha Complex troubleshooters of blue clearance or higher, good news! The open source version of Paranoia has gone gold. Just in time for GenCon. The happiness control officer will be around soon, to check on your compliance. Have a nice day!
posted by milovoo at 9:35 AM PST - 19 comments

Flash guru Yugo Nakamura relaunches his site.
posted by gwint at 9:31 AM PST - 3 comments

Lawyer files class action lawsuit after being flamed by message board users on Yahoo. Message Board users over-react, and then Slashdot gets hold of the story. Let the emailing, telephoning and name calling begin. (via slashdot)
posted by seanyboy at 3:03 AM PST - 24 comments

The guys who brought you the timeline of terror alerts have been at it again. This time they made a chart comparing Bush's approval rating and the terror alerts. It's getting harder to believe this isn't s big slight of hand going on. Follow the ! icons and the thin red line.
posted by Dome-O-Rama at 2:49 AM PST - 15 comments

Old school radiohead. Ah grade 9! An early start on Friday Flash Fun. The only version available is Flash. I've linked to the menu.
posted by aclevername at 12:19 AM PST - 9 comments

Fahrenheit 200,000,000 [Flash.] Celebrating the 59th anniversary of Hiroshima by making fission fun again!
posted by homunculus at 11:32 PM PST - 15 comments

The number 666 has been drawn by the Pennsylvania Lottery 12 times. Well, legally that is. On April 24, 1980, Pittsburgh personality Nick Perry, host of local TV shows and the live lottery drawing, fixed the lottery drawings. Perry has since passed away, but the story lived on in a (badly made) film adaptation. [more inside]
posted by ALongDecember at 10:41 PM PST - 8 comments

Wade Davis , on "Death and life in the Ethnosphere - The Naked Geography Of Hope" : "In Haiti, a Vodoun priestess responds to the rhythm of drums and, taken by the spirit, handles burning embers with impunity. In the Amazon, a Waorani hunter detects the scent of animal urine at forty paces and identifies the species that deposited it....On an escarpment in the high Arctic, Inuit elders fuse myth with landscape, interpreting the past in the shadow of clouds cast upon ice.....Just to know that such cultures exist is to remember that the human imagination is vast, fluid, infinite in its capacity for social and spiritual invention." The death of the Ethnosphere was Margaret Meade's great concern up to her death, says Harvard ethnobotanist Wade Davis of Serpent and the Rainbow fame and student of Richard Evans Schultes, founder of Ethnobotany : "The surprising results obtained from treating psychoactive plants allowed their users to communicate more directly with the unseen world which they believed to exist." Davis coined the concept of the "Ethnosphere" and has worked for it's preservation through Cultural Survival
posted by troutfishing at 8:50 PM PST - 16 comments

"The application for stay of execution of sentence of death presented to Justice Kennedy and by him referred to the Court is denied." Hours later, James Hubbard is injected with lethal chemicals and dies in Atmore, Alabama. Hubbard, convicted of a 1977 murder, was 74 years old, demented, and retarded. File this one under "it's not cruel and unusual if you don't know what's happening to you."
posted by PrinceValium at 8:25 PM PST - 53 comments

Oh Rob! What it was like to be in the studio audience of The Dick Van Dyke Show. Nice essay from Mark Evanier.
posted by braun_richard at 7:01 PM PST - 8 comments

Metal Quiz
posted by mr.marx at 2:34 PM PST - 21 comments

In 1967 the television program Bonanza enjoyed a three-year run as the most-watched television show in the United States. Bonanza had not started well; its first two seasons returning disapointing ratings but kept alive by the bequest of (then) NBC-parent RCA. RCA had a vested interest in keeping the color series alive in order to push sales of their color technology.

That same year Bill and Joyce Anderson created The Ponderosa Ranch tourist attraction near Incline Village, Nevada on the site allegedly shown by the burning map in the opening credits. The property annually attracts nearly 350,000 tourists to Lake Tahoe's north shore to enjoy the surroundings of a period recreation including mock gunfights, cowboy rope tricks and an honest 1860's-style saloon. (more inside)
posted by Ogre Lawless at 11:53 AM PST - 12 comments

An OpEd piece by Bruce Springsteen, announcing the tour of Vote for Change, the umbrella of a new group including the Dave Matthews Band, Pearl Jam, R.E.M., the Dixie Chicks, Jurassic 5, James Taylor and Jackson Browne. (NYT)
posted by semmi at 9:51 AM PST - 67 comments

The worst CD in the world. Here's something to while away the office hours, compiling the worst CD in the world from tracks that you own.

"What's your least favourite track by your favourite band? It's a difficult question, because often we're reluctant to admit that our favourite bands have written bad songs. We program ourselves to take sides: we'll often convince ourselves that a good song by a band we don't generally like is worse than a bad song by a band we normally love.

I'm interested to know if there's any common stuff in people's most hated songs list, and conversely if something you own and hate happens to be someone else's favourite. And if there's something you really can't stand - why did you buy it? Why do you still have it?"

So it's fifteen tracks in your own record collection that you hate the most. And the site is something to do with some time mefi poster nylon, so all the more reason to join in the fun

I'm kicking off my CD with starship.
posted by ciderwoman at 9:44 AM PST - 147 comments

The recent Australia/US free trade deal ,among many other things, extended copyright from fifty years after an authors death to seventy years. As a result stuff like this happening. via Making Light
posted by thatwhichfalls at 9:37 AM PST - 12 comments

West Sunset - Photos of Lost Angeles. [some of you may not like that it's a flash site]
posted by dobbs at 8:29 AM PST - 11 comments

John Kerry's Official Naval Records Time to put to rest the nonsense coming out of the hate groups. And when you hear about the Swift Boat group who have put out an ad and now a book denouncing Kerry, then turn to this URL to find out about that group of patriots http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Swift_Boat_Veterans_for_Truth
posted by Postroad at 8:20 AM PST - 97 comments

A few months after his first (donated) statue, "Drinker", was kidnapped, London's guerrilla artist Banksy reveals a new statue, a £22,000 solid bronze prostitute with leather boots and a thong, dedicated "to thugs, to thieves, to bullies, to liars, to the corrupt, the arrogant and the stupid."
posted by shoepal at 8:17 AM PST - 25 comments

Forbidden Love: The Romance That Masqueraded as a Bio In early 2003, a Jordanian woman named Norma Khouri published a book entitled Forbidden Love (or Honor Lost in North America). This book was a memoir about how Norma Khouri's best friend, Dalia, was killed by her own father after she fell in love with a Christian military officer, and Norma's subsequent escape from Jordan. Forbidden Love was a bio that read like a sensational romance, and it sold 250,000 copies around the world and made Norma Khouri a celebrity in her adoptive country of Australia. However, it turns out that the book really was just a romance. Dalia never existed. Norma Khouri left Jordan at the age of 3 and grew to adulthood living in Chicago. So, one very disturbed woman has exploited Western prejudices about Arab cultures, fooled the general public, plunged her publisher into an enormous legal and financial embarrassment, and impugned the very real and serious problem of honour killings. And she got away with it for a full year and a half.
posted by orange swan at 7:08 AM PST - 14 comments

Cuba Classics: A Celebration of Vintage American Automobiles. An homage to Cuba's astonishing wealth of antique cars, revealing the time-worn splendor of classic American automobiles spanning eight decades.
posted by ZippityBuddha at 6:49 AM PST - 6 comments

The real center of power in the War on Terror: Katherine Harris . Officials in Indiana and Washington, D.C., said they are dumbfounded by a statement U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris made about a terrorist plot to blow up a power grid in Indiana. For those of you not familiar with Harris, she's certainly been no stranger to controversy over the years, and is not lacking for a significant fan base.
posted by psmealey at 6:15 AM PST - 23 comments

Well, it doesn't look like the Requiem for a Dream site ever got posted here. So, um, here it is.
Flash. You know, they were going to get Aronofsky to do Batman? Fell through when the executives woke up with a hangover, I assume.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 4:35 AM PST - 60 comments

...and some fun quirky news about Finnish conscripts.
posted by etc at 3:10 AM PST - 4 comments

Bored? Flame Wars got you down? Got extra Hardware? This guy has an idea what you can do with some of those old hard drives. Or maybe you would fancy a 3 D Display? And these guys have my favorite summer project of all. (Props to Boing Boing)
posted by jopreacher at 2:19 AM PST - 7 comments

At last, some fun quirky news about Israeli soldiers.
posted by Tlogmer at 2:04 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Doom 3: It may possibly be the most pirated game in history.
posted by Keyser Soze at 2:03 AM PST - 67 comments

The new batmobile in action
posted by Orange Goblin at 12:27 AM PST - 15 comments

Lather, rinse, repeat. "The forums are ablaze with vitriolic rage. Haters pan the device for being less powerful than a Cray X1 while zealots counter that it is both smaller and lighter than a Buick Regal. The virtual slap-fight goes on and on, until obscure technical nuances like,'Will it play multiplexed Ogg Vorbis streams?' become matters of life and death." Perhaps 1 Infinite Loop has an archetypical drama. [more q daily newsfilter]
posted by weston at 12:00 AM PST - 9 comments

California has banned large SUVs.
posted by NortonDC at 10:21 PM PST - 28 comments

A record label with a long and very proud history. An on-line store for all your evil needs. The only problem is that both are totally made up. And we all thought the IMDB guy had way too much time on his hands.
posted by whoshotwho at 10:04 PM PST - 8 comments

"I'll IMDB you."
posted by xowie at 6:37 PM PST - 32 comments

The Astrolabe: an instrument with a past and a future. You can even download your own Electric Astrolabe. (via finches' wings)
posted by Ufez Jones at 6:01 PM PST - 4 comments

dream machine The dream machine is a creation of Brion Gysin, a Canadian-English expatriate colleague of William S. Burroughs and Paul Bowles. Timothy Leary called this device "the most sophisticated neuro-phenomenological device ever designed." A dream machine is being exhibited this week in San Francisco. If you can't make it there, you can perhaps build your own.
posted by F4B2 at 5:46 PM PST - 20 comments

Nuclear Safety Lapses Won't Be Revealed -- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced the change in policy during its first public meeting on power plant safety since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It drew barbs from critics who said the secrecy would erode public confidence in the agency. Until now, the NRC has provided regular public updates on vulnerabilities its inspectors found at the country's 103 nuclear power reactors, such as broken fences or weaknesses in training programs. The NRC's release is here, which also states that they'll be exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests.
posted by amberglow at 4:59 PM PST - 13 comments

Letters from the Presidents.
posted by armage at 4:04 PM PST - 4 comments

For up-to-the-minute Abe Vigoda status updates, visit AbeVigoda.com.
posted by UKnowForKids at 2:30 PM PST - 33 comments

A cutely illustrated tale about working in a psychiatric hospital. Reminds me somewhat of the drawings of Drew and Natalie Dee.
posted by VanRoosta at 1:21 PM PST - 33 comments

Henri Cartier-Bresson is gone. As I was dithering about whether to introduce a double post , google served up this neat little link; and they even have stiff competition. Creepy or handy?
posted by of strange foe at 1:00 PM PST - 17 comments

Photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson dies.
Henri Cartier-Bresson was a huge influence in my life and career as a photographer. Proponent of The Decisive Moment (sample), The Decisive Moment (description). He also co-founded the Magnum Photos agency with Robert Capa and David Seymore. Check out the Retrospective.
posted by diVersify at 12:57 PM PST - 10 comments

Stuck on a horrible date? Cingular Wireless to the rescue!
posted by braun_richard at 11:31 AM PST - 32 comments

"Hi. My name is Tony Kushner, I'm a playwright ...Ladies and Gentlemen and Supporters of MoveOn: the first lady of the United States, Laura Welch Bush". About a year and a half ago Kushner, the Pulitzer-prize winning author of Angels in America, published the first act of a new play, Only We Who Guard The Mystery Shall Be Unhappy (full text). In it, Laura Bush reads Dostoyevsky to a classroom full of ghosts of dead Iraqi children. Now, (in Salon, I know, I know) the first lady metacriticizes Kushner's play. (more inside)posted by matteo at 10:11 AM PST - 11 comments

CIA wants Bush to stop blogging. Allium cepa.
posted by brownpau at 10:01 AM PST - 18 comments

"Where are the ships?" and 59 other WWII-era illustrated envelopes are now available for viewing through the Veteran's History Project. Another smaller set of gorgeous illustrated envelopes from the same era is available here, all depicting scenes from the life of G.I.s stationed in the Pacific.
posted by .kobayashi. at 9:55 AM PST - 6 comments

Making the case for a smoking gun: All the dots connected, and where'd all these dots come from anyway? inthesetimes.com does a great job of pulling from many diverse resources to debunk the "everyone thought he had WMD" arguement, and washingtontimes.com gives an excellent refresher on pre 9/11 Iraq strategy. "The Doctrine of pre-emption becomes inoperable without unimpeachable intelligence accepted by all as the coin of the realm."
posted by y6y6y6 at 8:59 AM PST - 35 comments

Lectures on the Long Now (mp3s) including talks by Brian Eno, George Dyson, Bruce Sterling and more. Brought to you by the folks at the Long Now Foundation.
posted by gwint at 8:48 AM PST - 8 comments

GW Bush not AWOL: Actually Secret Agent; Deep Throat; Expressionist Art Collector A shocking followup to the tragic Thatcher news earlier today.
posted by ook at 7:55 AM PST - 18 comments

Rev. Moon's submarines, sold to Kim Jong-Il, empower a nuke threat to the West Coast Comment from Atrios: "North Korea Has Dozen Subs Could threaten us with sea-launched missiles. Where'd Dear Leader get them? It looks like he got them from the guy who writes the paychecks of BillGertz, Tony Blankley, Wes Pruden, Andrew Sullivan, Jonah Goldberg..."
posted by Postroad at 7:44 AM PST - 29 comments

Bob Edwards will return to the airwaves in October, via satellite. XM, to be specific.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 7:37 AM PST - 23 comments

Margaret Thatcher dies, aged 79. [hoax]
posted by i_cola at 7:27 AM PST - 62 comments

Low Morale. A series of animations portraying one man's struggle to cope with the morale crushing experiences of work. Presented by monkeehub, where babies jam animations are made. [Flash, via Milk and Cookies.]
posted by homunculus at 1:49 AM PST - 13 comments

If you like Science Fiction, if you like Star Wars, Babylon 5, or the Green Lantern, then you've probably heard of E. E. "Doc" Smith Ph.D., the man credited with getting powdered sugar to stick to donuts and with creating several of the most influential tales to ever spring from the "pulps" of the 1940s. The grandfather of Space Opera his Lensmen books, while badly written and horribly dated, still create that sense of wonder that all SF junkies crave.
posted by Grod at 10:54 PM PST - 19 comments

How some female celebrities would look bald — Surprisingly attractive in some cases, terrifying in others. via memepool.
posted by Space Coyote at 9:51 PM PST - 32 comments

The Scriptorium's American Sheet Music. North Carolina's Duke University maintains a wonderful, sprawling archive of ephemera, as you, chers linkeurs, know well. But perhaps you didn't know of the vast collection of American sheet music, most attractively explored via these cover galleries (viz.), that awaits within.
posted by mwhybark at 9:45 PM PST - 6 comments

Fool's World Map: "This is a project visualizing the world map which many fools in the world imagine. If you can see this map comfortably, you are definitely a fool." The creator updates and reformats the malleable map based completely on capricious, erroneous geographical inconsistencies found within oblvious statements from his comment logs. Examples: (095. Upper right side of Germany became Australia due to a posting by another stupid American thinking "Australia is beside Germany.") and (001. Due to a Texan who thinks "Japan is accessible from Texas by car", Japan and Texas is land-attached."). He also has a page of user-submitted maps, where he encourages you to create your own global eyesore and send it to him.
posted by naxosaxur at 8:04 PM PST - 26 comments

The Book Art of Richard Minsky found by helcat who shared it in #mefi.
posted by Tacodog at 7:37 PM PST - 3 comments

Fireflies in Houston. As a kid growing up in Houston, I remember going out into the front yard every evening and seeing hundreds and hundreds of fireflies dancing through the air, one of the most magical memories of childhood. As I grew older, their numbers declined, slowly but surely (in fact, at one point as a kid, I thought I was partially responsible as I'd caught so many of 'em in Flintstones jelly jars). Now back in Houston as an adult, I haven't seen a one, and am wondering, where have all the fireflies gone? This site aims to tell you, and it's not just for Houstonians.
posted by WolfDaddy at 6:39 PM PST - 41 comments

humus { issue #0 { issue #1 { about :: all flash links
posted by dobbs at 6:14 PM PST - 5 comments

Last month, people voiced their disappointment with AllMusic's for-the-worse facelift, and a week later someone at holovaty.com wrote a Mozilla Firefox extension that "routs around the damage" and allows for cleaner browsing. Some are pondering the legal consequences.
posted by dhoyt at 5:41 PM PST - 29 comments

Brits maybe NOT so shy after all: Naked Speed Dating. (2nd link maybe NSFW - some nude cupids etc.)
posted by onlyconnect at 4:35 PM PST - 10 comments

I mean, who wants to transform themselves into an alien, you know? Joshua does. With disturbing results.

Q: And his ears?
A: I cut them off. It was not hard.

posted by kirkaracha at 4:23 PM PST - 27 comments

300 love letters to someone, to no one, to every one. [via fishbucket]
posted by skoosh at 4:21 PM PST - 7 comments

The Extreme Dick Cheney Makeover (Quicktime req'd)
posted by moonbird at 2:23 PM PST - 14 comments

Browsing at my local library, I just came across a display of the winners of this year's Canadian Awards for Excellence in Book Design. I was blown away by the design and content of The Gryphons of Paris, a limited edition collection of black-and-white photos of surpassing beauty. This led me to the web page of the photographer, Ronald Hurwitz, his city vignettes and remarkable portraits. A good reminder that not everything of value can be found on the internet.
posted by louigi at 1:13 PM PST - 11 comments

Starchitects. "There's a point where an architect crosses the line to the nether side of celebrity. The projects become less about exploring the unknowns inherent in a new commission and more about giving clients the sort of signature piece they're paying for."
posted by plexi at 11:40 AM PST - 30 comments

The Long Bike Ride is a cross-country charity ride (which is short of its goal, kick in a few bucks) by two guys that have never ridden a bike more than 15 miles in one sitting. They're already halfway done, having ridden 50-75 miles everyday for the past couple months, probably thanks to riding high-end ultralight recumbent bikes. Their tour updates are extensive and looking at the photos they look quite relaxed. Then I realized if you're getting your 50-75 miles done in about 4 hours, the rest of the time you can just party! party! party! Still, a pretty amazing feat to do this entire route, especially considering their lack of experience and training.
posted by mathowie at 11:36 AM PST - 17 comments

Mark Cuban, who obviously just has too much time on his hands, is teaming up with Icerocket in an attempt to thwart Google for search engine dominance.
posted by Ufez Jones at 11:09 AM PST - 22 comments

No Pity. No Shame. No Silence.

"I wondered for a moment what it would look like if just for one day, everyone who had survived sexual violence were visible as a survivor, if we could actually see the extent of it, if we could all know just how very not-alone we are. I wondered how angry and sad it would make me to know. I wondered how much power there might be in the truth."

LJ user, misia decided to out herself as a survivor of sexual violence, and offer a place where people could stand up and become visible as survivors as well. The results are a compelling and haunting read.
posted by FunkyHelix at 10:24 AM PST - 55 comments

A million little pieces. The University of Oslo -- Norway’s largest and oldest institution of higher education -- has put together a very interesting page with amazing images of the (5,000 years old) dying art of Mosaics. Among many master-pieces (heh, sorry, couldn't resist the bad pun) we can admire the Empress Theodora from S. Vitale in Ravenna, the starry sky in Galla Placidia, the Virgin Mary and the famous Jesus of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, St. Peter in Hossios Lucas. There's also the St. Anna of Chios, the harrowing of hell of St Mark's in Venice. Scroll down, at the end of the main page there's a lot of good external links. (more inside)
posted by matteo at 9:52 AM PST - 7 comments

Stickfighting Irish Gangs, Wrestling Fashions, The Punching Bags of Pugilism, How Old England Trains Her Red Coats, and much more, in The Journal of Manly Arts - European and Colonial Combatives, 1776 - 1914 .
posted by iconomy at 7:52 AM PST - 2 comments

Britain - Stamping Out Terrorism. One Peaceful Protestor At A Time. "The Home Office proposes "to make it an offence to protest outside homes in such a way that causes harassment, alarm or distress to residents" [PDF & HTML] This sounds reasonable enough, until you realise that the police can define "harassment, alarm or distress" however they wish. All protest in residential areas, in other words, could now be treated as a criminal offence. The government will also seek to "suggest remedies" for websites which "include material deemed to cause concern or needless anxiety to others"."
posted by Blue Stone at 2:33 AM PST - 29 comments

Photographer and pilot Matevž Lenarcic is travelling around the world in an ultralight motorglider. Here are some of the pictures he's been taking.
posted by Ljubljana at 2:26 AM PST - 9 comments

Terrorist Alert Level: Red Herring! The New York Times reported today that much of the information that led to the heightened alert in New York and Washington D.C. is actually three or four years old and that authorities have no evidence or recent communications indicating an upcoming terrorist attack. George Pataki and Michael Bloomberg, who are both speaking at the upcoming Republican convention, are making political hay off of people's fears of another 9/11. Some New Yorkers are worried about the enormous cost of the alert to the local economy, as bridge traffic snarls to a crawl.
Who needs foriegn terrorism when we can just make our own! Are we scared yet?!
posted by insomnia_lj at 12:36 AM PST - 147 comments

Farewell, eels.
posted by troutfishing at 10:19 PM PST - 35 comments

Fark.com sells their editorial, and the loyalty of their users. "After trying to figure out a deal they told me that I could just buy the editorial. The cost? Like $300 to $400 for a story... They said they didn’t have a problem not telling the audience that the content was paid for..."
posted by reklaw at 9:02 PM PST - 67 comments

New permeable pavement systems allow water to seep into and through the roadway surface, reducing run-off and recharging aquifers.
posted by stbalbach at 8:00 PM PST - 22 comments

Tim's badly drawn cat web site. [via monkeyfilter]
posted by jb at 5:13 PM PST - 19 comments

a letter to Thomas Kean, Chair of the 9/11 Commission from Sibel Edmonds: Unfortunately, I find your report seriously flawed in its failure to address serious intelligence issues that I am aware of, which have been confirmed, and which as a witness to the commission, I made you aware of. Thus, I must assume that other serious issues that I am not aware of were in the same manner omitted from your report. These omissions cast doubt on the validity of your report and therefore on its conclusions and recommendations. Considering what is at stake, our national security, we are entitled to demand answers to unanswered questions, and to ask for clarification of issues that were ignored and/or omitted from the report. A solid letter detailing many disturbing things reported to the Commission, yet not in the report. More on Edmonds here.
posted by amberglow at 4:16 PM PST - 19 comments

Scott Kurtz throws down the gauntlet. The mighty creator of PvP offers any newspaper the opportunity to include his fine and funny comic strip on their comics pages absolutely FREE OF CHARGE,, thus totally destroying the aging and now ineffective syndicated cartoon business model. Check out his theory on why the syndicates are goin' down, soon, and the background behind his decision to challenge them on their home turf.
posted by zoogleplex at 4:12 PM PST - 33 comments

Iraq's Child Prisoners It’s not certain exactly how many children are being held by coalition forces in Iraq, but a Sunday Herald investigation suggests there are up to 107. Their names are not known, nor is where they are being kept, how long they will be held or what has happened to them during their detention. Proof of the widespread arrest and detention of children in Iraq by US and UK forces is contained in an internal Unicef report written in June. The report has – surprisingly – not been made public. A key section on child protection, headed Children in Conflict with the Law or with Coalition Forces, reads: ''In July and August 2003, several meetings were conducted with CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) … and Ministry of Justice to address issues related to juvenile justice and the situation of children detained by the coalition forces … Unicef is working through a variety of channels to try and learn more about conditions for children who are imprisoned or detained, and to ensure that their rights are respected.'' Another section reads: ''Information on the number, age, gender and conditions of incarceration is limited. In Basra and Karbala children arrested for alleged activities targeting the occupying forces are reported to be routinely transferred to an internee facility in Um Qasr. The categorisation of these children as 'internees' is worrying since it implies indefinite holding without contact with family, expectation of trial or due process.''
posted by y2karl at 12:39 PM PST - 30 comments

I Think (Therefore) I'm Guilty? A convicted sex offender is barred from public parks and the zoo in Lafayette, Indiana after he revealed to his psychologist that he entertained thoughts of sexual contact with children, while visiting a park. Here's John Doe's history of arrests and charges for alleged sexual offences.
posted by Gyan at 12:23 PM PST - 58 comments

Having just returned to Paradise for a little visit, I am reminded just how cool this little place is (not that I needed much reminding *whimper*), and am looking for touristy things to do here without a car. While I was on my way up on the Pacific Surfliner train, a fellow rider told me about Santa Barbara Car Free. Awesome! Also props to CalTrans' alliance with Amtrak in California. The trains and service and overall quality of the passenger rail system is quite a bit different from what I've experienced thus far of the stuff handled by Amtrak alone.
posted by WolfDaddy at 12:02 PM PST - 12 comments

Subservient President. MoveOn's homage to BK's Chicken. (via waxy)
posted by Ufez Jones at 11:05 AM PST - 65 comments

Monday Flash Wonderment in the form of Peasant's Quest. From the guys who made that game Trogdor. I don't know about you guys, but I think this is the best thing to come from Homestar Runner. Ever. There goes all MANNER of productivity.
posted by psychotic_venom at 10:49 AM PST - 15 comments

When Wired News redesigned as nearly standards compliant xhtml in fall of 2002, it was cause for a great deal of celebration. Since then other prominent sites like ESPN and PGA have jumped on the standards bandwagon, as have countless personal sites. Today the SF Examiner launched a new site design which does validate as xhtml. More interesting to me are their category archives and date archives, which mimic a weblog's simple and useful layout. Heck, I even love the story pages which feature large leaded text (space between lines - the amount of "double spaceness") which is also blog-like, and makes for comfortable reading. As far as I know, SF Examiner is the first, but will this start a new wave of bandwidth-saving, well-designed newspaper redesigns? [via veen]
posted by mathowie at 10:36 AM PST - 11 comments

Pop . Six . Squish . Uh uh . Cicero . Lipschitz !
posted by shoepal at 10:33 AM PST - 12 comments

A Lesson Is Learned But the Damage is Irreversible
Not a preachy op-ed, but a relatively new webcomic. Watch out for the green flame, it turns things into reptiles. (via Death to the Extremist)
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 9:30 AM PST - 6 comments

I never would have imagined we'd see silent, full-powered, electric motocross bikes, but they actually exist. Looks like they went for gas motor-like performance over range, but they'd probably be a blast if you had a small track near your house.
posted by mathowie at 9:22 AM PST - 10 comments

More viral marketing? Move over, BK chicken. I love bees is teh rox0r.
posted by cohappy at 7:33 AM PST - 7 comments

Greece gets ready for the return of the Olympics by ridding the streets of its stray dogs. don't watch this if you're an animal lover. Or better yet, DO if you can handle it, because it's one of the saddest things i've seen in a long time. Though the government of Athens is denying it is responsible for this, someone is poisoning the city's thousands of stray dogs by putting it in food (naturally, a stray, hungry dog will eat it). The ensuing death does not come quickly. I've always wanted to visit Greece, especially being from a Mediterranean family (experience the roots, and all that) but suffice it to say it's moved to the bottom of the list of places to visit at this point. I've seen better treatment of animals in countries far less developed than Greece.
posted by cadence at 7:17 AM PST - 54 comments

Coffee makes it harder to think clearly, while alcohol makes the mind sharper. (At least if you're British.)
posted by soyjoy at 7:15 AM PST - 28 comments

Shibata Noriyoshi Photo Gallery.
posted by hama7 at 6:59 AM PST - 3 comments

Toronto's Neighborhoods. A brief primer.
posted by arse_hat at 12:24 AM PST - 31 comments

The only thing that masks the pain is sleep, but even that's hard to come by. I've occasionally checked in with 17 y.o. Markelle's blog for a year or two now. While I don't know her personally, I'd consider it unlikely that she's making this up. I'd guess it's more likely that her dad actually did commit suicide. "Best of the web?" Honestly, I don't know. Perhaps it's just a glimpse at a life that might benefit from your good thoughts.
posted by scarabic at 11:53 PM PST - 56 comments

The Night Game, by Robert Pinsky; Baseball and Writing, by Marianne Moore; Baseball Canto, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti; and more baseball poetry than you can shake a stick at.
posted by .kobayashi. at 10:24 PM PST - 4 comments

The Shapes of Space [note : pdf, sciam, poincaré conjecture]
posted by kliuless at 8:46 PM PST - 4 comments

Retired general: Bush foreign policy a 'national disaster' A former Air Force chief of staff and one-time "Veteran for Bush" said Saturday that America's foreign relations for the first three years of President Bush's term have been "a national disaster" but that the president's Democratic rival was "up to the task" of rebuilding.
posted by Postroad at 7:09 PM PST - 26 comments

An Anarchist in the Hudson Valley. A conversation with Peter Lamborn Wilson, better known as Hakim Bey (mentioned previously here,) the author of TAZ. [Via Cyborg Democracy.]
posted by homunculus at 5:37 PM PST - 27 comments

Google IPO: the Prospectus. Of particular interest in this 119-page (not including appendices) monster document are the Risk Factors (there are lots) and the Letter from the Founders, an "owner's manual" for Google shareholders: "Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one... If opportunities arise that might cause us to sacrifice short term results but are in the best long term interest of our shareholders, we will take those opportunities... We aspire to make Google an institution that makes the world a better place". Of course, if hardcore financial stuff is your bag, there's plenty of that, too.
posted by reklaw at 4:14 PM PST - 14 comments

Sounding Art: Paintings by a synethete. [?]
posted by moonbird at 4:00 PM PST - 5 comments

English Accents and Dialects. The British Library has compiled an online archive of northern speech dating back to the 19th century. The recordings range from from audio from Victorian cylinder dictaphones to 1950s football fans chanting.
posted by Masi at 6:20 AM PST - 10 comments

It's the final Orbital gig, about half-an-hour into this John Peel show. RealAudio. Maybe you want Real Alternative?
posted by Pretty_Generic at 6:06 AM PST - 26 comments

"All he has left now to remember the grandson he once carried on his back is a stack of workbooks -- trigonometry, politics, history. Mr. Zheng does not recognize enough Chinese characters to read them. But he keeps the books as memorials." The best human interest story of the year, and a look into the lives of China's rural poor.
posted by Tlogmer at 4:33 AM PST - 11 comments