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The tiny Book of Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux, Queen of France. (via)
posted by Slithy_Tove at 11:37 PM PST - 7 comments

Using found objects, a flatbed scanner, and an Iris printer, Maggie Taylor creates images that are described as haunting, surreal, whimsical, and beautiful.
posted by docpops at 9:08 PM PST - 15 comments

Diet and behavior.
posted by Gyan at 8:55 PM PST - 30 comments

Ethicsgate continues: Today, the bipartisan Government Accountability Office declared that the Bush administration broke the law by paying Armstrong Williams to write favorable columns about the No Child Left Behind Act, funneling public funds to a PR firm to sift through news stories and gauge media perception of Bush policies, and financing phony TV news reports giving the President's education policies "an A-plus," creating what the GAO called "covert propaganda." [Williams et. al. previously discussed here.]
posted by digaman at 7:54 PM PST - 59 comments

Stealth Evangelism? on the National Mall in DC --sponsored by Pepsi, too. People attending The DC Festival will not see any clue -- not even a simple cross -- to suggest the real nature of the gathering: broadcasting the message of Jesus Christ.
Bio of the organizer, Luis Palau, here, including this: “We began to realize that the traditional ‘crusade’ model - uniformed choir, the suits on the platform, and old, traditional hymns - wasn’t the way to go for us,” Palau says. “We want to attract the un-churched, and we want them to encounter God, and bring them all to Christ and to understand and to connect.”
posted by amberglow at 7:35 PM PST - 73 comments

Philco's line of Predicta televisions are quite possibly the most distinctive sets ever designed in North America. New versions of old classics. via TWoP.
posted by macadamiaranch at 7:23 PM PST - 25 comments

Aside from saving money on admission to Disney World and other theme parks, Florida residents can now use deadly force! A series of ads being runned in British papers warns potential tourists of Florida's new Shoot-First law (or the "Stand Your Ground" law for the 'backers out there). Paid for by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. [Previously on mefi]
posted by icontemplate at 6:58 PM PST - 53 comments

Is God nothing more than an attempt to explain order and good fortune by those who do not understand the mathematics of chance, the principles of self-organizing systems, or the psychology of the human mind? Daniel Gilbert, a professor of Psychology and head of the Social Cognition and Emotion Laboratory at Harvard, discusses his latest research and soon to be published study about the vagaries of religious experience.
posted by pmbuko at 5:07 PM PST - 66 comments

Next month, I'll be paying to see a black and white movie for the first time since 1974's "Young Frankenstein". This time the subject this time is slightly more serious: Edward R. Murrow vs Senator Joseph McCarthy. Listen to Walter Cronkite recount the historical (and historic) events of 50 years gone by. The jury is still out, but after just his second film we can venture that George Clooney might have the makings of a pretty good director (as well as one who can raise the level of debate regarding whether fear should be used to take away civil liberties). A recent Salon interview with Clooney and (of course) you've got to see the trailers (Windows Media and QuickTime).
posted by spock at 4:55 PM PST - 41 comments

Typetester, for web designers. via
posted by btwillig at 1:18 PM PST - 23 comments

Charles Burns' Goon Squad e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. [More Burns links inside.]
posted by safetyfork at 10:33 AM PST - 13 comments

Born Cold. A short from toddanimation.com about why it's bad to build snowmen near nuclear waste dumps.
posted by casarkos at 10:17 AM PST - 8 comments

Clever experiment on how to grill cheese sandwiches using a clothes iron.
posted by mrkredo at 10:17 AM PST - 44 comments

"It is with full knowledge of the law that I'm now telling you that if you do not attempt to make restitution I will attempt to kill Ted Turner, and if he is unreachable in his ivory tower, then I only need kill one CNN employee and it will be on your hands."
This is the story of Sean Dix.
posted by Silune at 9:17 AM PST - 62 comments

BibliOdyssey is a new and spectacular compendium of the printed image. From detailed posts on Rare Books of the Japanese Diet Library to a look at some strange illustrations for The Master and the Margarita, the site has a broad range and an eclectic composition authorized by the quality of the posts. Other highlights include Micrographia, a mysterious Astronomické České, the prints of Jacques Callot, and images from Sydney Parkinson's journal of his explorations of New Zealand and Australia. Be sure to look through the archives.
posted by OmieWise at 8:06 AM PST - 13 comments

The Most Officialest SkiFree Home Page is the page of the original SkiFree game that shipped with Windows 3.1, by Chris Pirih. There's even a 32 bit Windows XP version! (zip, exe, 37k!) Also, make sure to check out the SkiFree fan fiction. Have fun, and watch out for the monster at the end!
posted by anomie at 7:56 AM PST - 19 comments

Find the Brownie No, not Where's Waldo amidst disaster, but that could be fun too. [via]
posted by jeffburdges at 7:32 AM PST - 21 comments

Web 2.0 overload - "eHub is a constantly updated list of web applications, services, resources, blogs or sites with a focus on next generation web (web 2.0), social software, blogging, Ajax, Ruby on Rails, location mapping, open source, folksonomy, design and digital media sharing." Tons of links to mashup apps like PervWatch, Podomatic, ThinkFree, etc, etc, etc...(note: a lot of these sites are in beta)
posted by tpl1212 at 6:20 AM PST - 41 comments

TGIF: Email!! [mpeg, Crude Humour (Maybe NSFW)]
posted by Colloquial Collision at 5:55 AM PST - 15 comments

Branded Entertainment. Where the insinuation of products in to entertainment reaches new levels of taste and decency. Flashbacks to 'The Truman Show' are symptomatic of this phenomena. The cause, as judged by market research, is the misuse and abuse of DVR players to block advertising messages. However, there could be a new artform in this; some consumers would like to see a new kind of advertising to augment Brand and Myths [more inside].
posted by gsb at 4:02 AM PST - 32 comments

Toy Noise reminds me of Windows Noises... And then there's this: iiiiiiii. Happy Friday.
posted by hypersloth at 3:39 AM PST - 11 comments

Ski San Francisco. Ski wax company trucks a bunch of snow into SF, dumps it on Fillmore St., skiers and snowboarders get air while others take pictures.
posted by planetkyoto at 2:51 AM PST - 23 comments

Judith Miller Released from Jail and will testify before the grand jury tomorrow after getting a waiver from her source, Scooter Libby. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has assured Ms. Miller's attorney that "he intended to limit his grand jury interrogation so that it would not implicate other sources of hers." (More from Editor & Publisher and New York Times; statements by Miller and the Times publisher and executive editor.)
posted by kirkaracha at 9:59 PM PST - 41 comments

Simputer : High tech meets extreme poverty
posted by troutfishing at 9:10 PM PST - 22 comments

Eyewitness accounts of the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-1812. The fault is still active, and one day it will let rip again.
posted by dilettante at 7:23 PM PST - 28 comments

A $100 Laptop for Every Kid. With a plan to distribute up to 15 million rugged, innovative, and very low cost laptop computers by the end of 2007, MIT Media Labs may be calling Steve Ballmer's year old bluff, in ways commercial vendors haven't. [more inside]
posted by paulsc at 6:41 PM PST - 139 comments

Woogle creates image messages from Google Image search. Use some of your favourite phrases, but to start you off, "love is blind" [NSFW!]. Also, try Toogle for images made out of their search-terms. [via]
posted by quiet at 5:10 PM PST - 68 comments

"Ghost signs" or "fading ads", are a window to an earlier time. "There may have even been successive ads painted on a particular wall -especially if it was in a prime location- so that the several layers of paint in their various states of decay now extend quite a mysterious message!" Toronto, Texas, Ogden. . . .Ogden? Meet one of the last of the "wall dogs". Browse a book. Somebody please buy me one of these. <Previously>
posted by spock at 4:50 PM PST - 18 comments

Dermal Displays
Building on a Robert A. Frietas theory (4th paragraph down) from his book, Nanomedicines, Vol 1: Basic Capabilities, a 6 cm x 5 cm programmable display embedded into your skin made up of 3 billion display pixel nanorobots could be used to monitor and direct medical nanobots within your body.
Nanogirl has recently completed work on a three minute animation of the concept, available in both QT (8.1 megs) or WMV (10.4 megs).
posted by fenriq at 4:29 PM PST - 8 comments

What's the Matter with What's the Matter with Kansas (pdf) Has the white working class abandoned the Democratic Party? No. . . . Has the white working class become more conservative? No. . . . Do working class “moral values” trump economics? No. . . . Are religious voters distracted from economic issues? No. An analysis by Larry Bartels, a professor at Princeton of "What's the Matter with Kansas" (previously discussed here). Lots of good survey data about this issue.
posted by caddis at 3:54 PM PST - 66 comments

Even though I've been using Google as a start page for the past five years, this exhaustive list of Google search tips still had loads of stuff I didn't know about.
posted by mathowie at 3:38 PM PST - 18 comments

It's Friday [Video, AppleFilter]
posted by Pretty_Generic at 3:28 PM PST - 33 comments

Jurisimprudence. The Big Book of Fandom & Internet Law, brought to us by the kind folks at fandom_wank has been conveniently indexed on del.icio.us.
posted by Karmakaze at 2:42 PM PST - 4 comments

Big freeze an alternative to cremation A town in Sweden plans to become the first place in the world where corpses will be disposed of by freeze-drying, as an environmentally friendly alternative to cremation or burial. Jönköping, in southern Sweden, is to turn its crematorium into a so-called promatorium next year. Sorry - registration is required to access Sydney Morning Herald so more of the article will be included: "the pioneering method ... involves freezing the body, dipping it in liquid nitrogen and gently vibrating it to shatter it into powder. This is put into a small box made of potato or corn starch and placed in a shallow grave, where it will disintegrate in six to 12 months. People are to be encouraged to plant a tree on the grave. It would feed off the compost formed from the body, to emphasise the organic cycle of life." After seeing the destruction Katrina wreaked on the above ground graves in Louisiana, one might seriously consider an environmentally friendly alternative.
posted by Cranberry at 1:59 PM PST - 46 comments

Numbers Theory on LOST OK I admit it - I took the bait on the LOST numbers theory only to find this genius made the whole thing up in ten minutes. Does anyone have a Neiman Marcus chocolate chip cookie recipe?
posted by Macboy at 1:41 PM PST - 87 comments

It's almost Friday, so time for a little flash fun. Meet Snowball, a Bunny Ninja Assassin in his first three outings: Bunny Kill 1, Bunny Kill 2, and finally Bunny Kill 3 Vol. I.

Warning, contains swords, guns, light sabres and extreme violence against cartoon bunnies.
posted by bap98189 at 1:39 PM PST - 16 comments

In the recent trend of mashing up traditional Japanese culture/instrumentation with American Hip-Hop (much like the recent, critically-acclaimed Anime series Samurai Champloo), this incredible video (warning: windows media) demonstrates America's potential to positively influence the world. Also, it's freakin' cool.
posted by basicchannel at 12:54 PM PST - 18 comments

Strattera could make you commit suicide. Earlier today it was announced that Paxil could cause cause birth defects (scroll down). Now Strattera (an ADHD drug) is on the list of "wonder drugs" that could have serious consequences. Is it really worth it to visit Dr. Feelgood just to find out later that it really did more damage than good?
posted by Guerilla at 11:19 AM PST - 103 comments

“In 2002… [Harvard student Amit Paley]…came across a restricted archive labeled 'Secret Court Files, 1920.' The mystery he uncovered involved a tragic scandal in which Harvard University secretly put a dozen students on trial for homosexuality and then systematically and persistently tried to ruin their lives. ^[1]

“The pages that file contained, first reported [by Paley] in a[n]…edition of the Harvard Crimson's weekend magazine, describe Harvard's desperate attempts 80 years ago to hide from public view a secret gay subculture on campus.” ^[2]

“The article prompted an apology from University President Lawrence H. Summers to the men and their families; led to a campus-wide discussion about homophobia; and was even cited in Lawrence v. Texas, the historic Supreme Court case that struck down anti-sodomy laws.” ^[3]

Prolific biographer William Wright’s newly-published book, ‘Harvard's Secret Court: The Savage 1920 Purge of Campus Homosexuals' digs deep into the shameful events of the early 20th century at one of the United States' leading universities.
posted by ericb at 9:43 AM PST - 29 comments

Adherents.com is "a growing collection of over 43,870 adherent statistics and religious geography citations". In plain English, this amazing site contains all the data one could ever want on religion, from the basic (nationally predominant religions by country, largest religious groups in the United States, top 50 countries with the highest proportion of atheists) to the esoteric (a guide to religion in films, authors who have converted to a new religion, religious affiliation of U.S. presidents, famous adherents of various religions (e.g. famous Mennonites)). There's even religious information for geeks, including obsessive articles on the religion of George Lucas, the religious affiliation of comic book characters, and religious affiliation of famous fantasy and science fiction authors (related: Amish in science fiction and Mormonism in science fiction). One could spend days sifting through this site.
posted by jdroth at 9:31 AM PST - 46 comments

If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst forth at once in the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One... I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. ---> part one and Part two of Operation Crossroads, one of many atomic testing operations conducted during WWII, documented extensively on film and preserved in excellent condition here at the Archive. For further viewing: Operation Ivy, the testing of the first hydrogen fusion bomb. Operation Cue (1955 version), testing bomb damage done to housing and infrastructure. Special Delivery, a look at the preparation and technology, especially planes, used for the testing. Duck and Cover, a classic safety film from 1951 detailing the best schoolyard response to a nuclear attack. Caution! Interesting, disturbing, and at least an hour's worth of viewing!
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 9:13 AM PST - 15 comments

Inside metros. Cities with interesting stations [with links]. Some have works of art. Some are works of art. I notice Sydney, Australia is not on the list - no surprise there.
posted by tellurian at 7:34 AM PST - 37 comments

This is not good news. U.S. health officials have issued a warning about possible birth defects in infants born to women who take the antidepressant Paxil during the first trimester of pregnancy.
posted by lilboo at 7:02 AM PST - 38 comments

This is by no means a manifesto. We don’t pretend to be the first band to spin a variation of the shareware distribution model. We love record labels and record stores. We buy lots of CDs and are committed to supporting independent music. We’re not a bunch of fake Marxists. We’re just trying to be smart capitalists so we can sustain our lives as musicians. This is an experiment. We’ll let you know how it goes. Harvey Danger offers their third album, "Little By Little" as a free download in hopes of getting their music out to more people, and perhaps selling more records.
posted by Remy at 6:27 AM PST - 24 comments

Constance Baker Motley, civil rights lawyer and federal judge, is dead at age 84. (NYT; bugmenot). She was a brilliant lawyer in the NAACP's Legal Defense and Educational Fund when it was led by Thurgood Marshall, winning anti-segregationist legal victories against Alabama Governor George Wallace and many others, and defending the civil rights movement. A New Yorker, she was a state senator and borough president of Manhattan. In 1966, Lyndon Johnson appointed her to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and she became the first black woman federal judge in the United States. Speeches, writings and clippings.
posted by By The Grace of God at 5:47 AM PST - 9 comments

The Secret History of Able Danger The WP may have have the goods on Able Danger. The Pentagon and Intel officials are mum on the data mining project because it could have been illegal.
posted by raaka at 4:32 AM PST - 16 comments

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

Meanwhile on his syndicated radio show, former drug czar Bill Bennett speculated on how roe v. wade could actually fight crime, "if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." Color me speechless.
posted by tsarfan at 1:09 AM PST - 117 comments

National Geek Day. Neil "Sandman" Gaiman & Joss "Buffy" Whedon both have movies coming out this weekend; in honor of the nerd confluence of events, Time magazine conducted a joint interview with the two.
posted by jonson at 11:44 PM PST - 26 comments

Publishers must die, claims Greg Costikyan, industry insider. But can he win out in the end, or is his princess in another castle? It seems that Mr. Costikyan is putting his money where his mouth is. I'm pulling the trigger. At this point, I have no funding, other than a little money myself; nothing ready to launch, either. But I do have a partner, the offered support of some other companies, a clear sense of what I need to accomplish in the next few months, and a draft (not a final one) of a business plan and financials. This is, of course, terrifying. Mr. Costikyan mentioned previously here and here. [via] [personal opinion inside]
posted by shmegegge at 11:36 PM PST - 26 comments

It is a highly addictive drug, but governments everywhere encourage its use... though they are not so keen on no-name brands. Richard Dawkins details the dangers of the most insidious opiate.
posted by missbossy at 10:10 PM PST - 131 comments

Coming soon to a theater near you. If The Shining were made today. [via waxy]
posted by keswick at 9:27 PM PST - 88 comments

Bobby Martin, 17 years old, is a noseguard and special teams member for Colonel White High School in Dayton, Ohio. He also happens to be three feet tall, having been born with no legs. He was recently removed from a game during halftime because he wasn't wearing shoes, thighpads, or kneepads. Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed shortly thereafter.
posted by cerebus19 at 9:13 PM PST - 37 comments

Are your dating patterns unconsciously helping to maintain the American Imperialo-Capitalist status quo? Fight back with Random Date Liberation!
posted by larva at 6:53 PM PST - 15 comments

Rollyo allows you to roll your own search engine out of Yahoo by narrowing to relevant sites for a given topic. Searches are optionally public and tagged so experts in a given field can offer searches to everyone. For example, physicist Brian Greene offers a search of sites on string theory, politician and pundit Arianna Huffington offers a search of political sites, and John Battelle, author of The Search, offers a search of news about search engines. But these are just some semi-famous people. Anyone can make a focused search about anything.
posted by scottreynen at 4:40 PM PST - 17 comments

Who will send this -er- Apology letter to us- um left belowers if all the predispensationalist and milleniest fundies are raptured? via the awesome growabrain
posted by svenvog at 4:13 PM PST - 35 comments

I want one so very, very badly.
posted by shockingbluamp at 3:49 PM PST - 78 comments

Because some people believe that HIV does not cause AIDS, some mothers have decided not only to refuse AIDS testing, but to give birth and breastfeed their child while taking no anti-HIV medicines. Unfortunately this, along with trusting non-licensed medical practitioners and distrusting the medical establishment, has apparently caused the death of a 3 year old girl.
posted by Kickstart70 at 3:41 PM PST - 65 comments

Hiroshige.
posted by sgt.serenity at 1:35 PM PST - 52 comments

Visions of Science
posted by Gyan at 12:53 PM PST - 8 comments

Ice Cap on the Verge...... This is a very disturbing development. Is it any wonder we are experiencing such horrific natural calamities. First Katrina, then Rita, and now it looks like we are kissing goodbye to the Polar Ice Cap??? Is there anyone left in this country, besides the president, that still thinks Global Warming needs further Study???
posted by MetaJohn at 12:42 PM PST - 69 comments

Politics, Theory & Photography. Jim Johnson teaches political theory at the University of Rochester, and has started a new blog that seeks to explore the intersection between political theory and photography. Johnson also has a long paper on the subject [pdf]. [via]
posted by monju_bosatsu at 12:30 PM PST - 4 comments

O DeLay [newsfilter]
posted by furtive at 10:32 AM PST - 237 comments

Tennis, anyone...?
posted by forallmankind at 10:17 AM PST - 42 comments

The world's oldest family companies start with a 1,400 year old Japanese family business that has always built Buddhist temples. On the corporation side, only one of the great chartered companies survives, Canada's Hudson Bay Company, founded in 1670, and now a large retailer, though there may be much older corporations. There is even a club with an interesting web site, Les Hénokien, for companies that are over 300 years old. If companies aren't your thing, there is always the world's oldest restaurant in Spain.
posted by blahblahblah at 7:54 AM PST - 23 comments

THE ULTIMATE SELF LINK: MY BRAIN. Use this excellent little MRI program to open .hdr 3d-scan files. Endless, disturbing fun.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 7:30 AM PST - 22 comments

Selected images from Saturday's anti-war rally in San Francisco. More from Zombietime. Warning: contains snarky captions.
posted by jenleigh at 7:20 AM PST - 119 comments

I have no idea.
posted by tellurian at 7:04 AM PST - 38 comments

Faces of Science, a collection of portraits of scientists is on display at the New York Academy of Sciences through Oct. 14. (Click the 'View Gallery' link underneath the bookcover). Mariana Cook, who took the portraits, has also had them displayed in The Guardian, and at the BioAgenda Institute (where they scroll by to the left of the screen). [Also be sure to check out the previous webgalleries at the NYAS. The Art of Science Fiction, and Hothouse Contemporary Floras are both good examples of their cool shows, as is One of a Kind.]
posted by OmieWise at 6:32 AM PST - 4 comments

Rondo Alla Iron Maiden (Program Notes, mp3s). As the name suggests, this new work for string quartet is a classical rondo in the style of the British heavy metal band Iron Maiden. Composer Kurt Mortensen might rather you pay more attention to some of his other works, like this charming folk-tinged trio, but I had to go straight for the silly stuff.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:18 AM PST - 16 comments

Mickey Jones, ubiquitous yet frequently forgotten or ignored character actor (warning: WMV trailer) and drummer is the Zelig of both the '60s folk and rock scene (very recently seen in No Direction Home) and television and film, linking Don't Look Back (1996) to Don't Look Back (1967).
posted by Hat Maui at 3:06 AM PST - 18 comments

Ontological connection. [Warning: annoying]
posted by panoptican at 12:51 AM PST - 12 comments

When can federal bankruptcy judges rule on state probate matters? In Marshall vs Marshall, the Supreme Court will consider this rather unsexy, technical issue during its next session.
posted by mischief at 7:23 PM PST - 13 comments

This fall, Professor Tom Cruise will favor us with a four-part lecture series on The Modern Science of Mental Health. Personally, I'm looking forward to "Diagnosis and Treatment of So-Called Clinical Depression with the Hubbard Mark Super VII Quantum Electropsychometer", which may well be on its way to becoming the most downloaded video ever, after Triumph and that Star Wars kid. [via]
posted by mowglisambo at 7:08 PM PST - 75 comments

Remember "saintly" Atlanta hostage Ashley Smith? Well, it turns out that it was a lot more than her "faith" and a copy of a Christian self-help book that got her through that particular ordeal...
posted by dersins at 6:31 PM PST - 52 comments

The Company Cookbook. Have you ever attended a company potluck? Did you vote on recipes and create a cookbook to send as promo to unsuspecting clients? Warning: If you select to read this post, you take "pot luck" - what was available, not knowing for sure what you might receive. (But be sure that, with this cookbook, it will include shredded cheese). And as a bonus, things you shouldn't bring to the company potluck.
posted by tidecat at 6:27 PM PST - 13 comments

Giant squid photographed.
posted by footnote at 5:44 PM PST - 81 comments

"Operation Offset" is what the Republicans are calling their budget cut plan to pay for Hurricane Katrina. Will there be tax cuts for the rich? Nope. The great majority of the proposed cuts target the elderly and the poor, heavily targeting Medicare. They eliminate all federal funding for energy conservation, the "Energy Star" program, energy efficient vehicles, hydrogen vehicles, high-speed rail, light rail, PBS, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, AmeriCorps, the "Even Start" program, the Presidential Election Campaign Fund, security/anti-drug funding for innercity schools, and all federal loans to grad students. Also facing cuts are the Global AIDS Initiative, the EPA, the Center for Disease Control, pensions and healthcare plans for retired federal workers, job programs and revitalization funds for poor neighborhoods, the school lunch program, community health centers, and health care for soldiers.
posted by insomnia_lj at 4:37 PM PST - 119 comments

Who drives 4WDs (SUVs)? "In their attitudes, city drivers of large 4WDs are morally more conservative and less community orientated than other drivers. They are more likely to dislike homosexuals; among male drivers of 4WDs in the city, 51 per cent believe that homosexuality is immoral compared to 43 per cent of men overall. They also have lower regard for Indigenous culture and are less sympathetic to public and charitable support for disadvantaged people." [.pdf link]
posted by wilful at 3:56 PM PST - 131 comments

If you've ever wanted to know what portion of the US a specific zip code covers, this Google Maps hack is for you.
posted by jonson at 2:58 PM PST - 11 comments

LiveJournal puts in a feature which lets you browse journals by schools. Schools from the United Arab Emirates to the Philippines to Siberia are browsable by location. The different perspectives make for interesting reading.
posted by Count Ziggurat at 2:52 PM PST - 15 comments

Some members of the staff at a major L.A. hospital gave a Saudi patient a liver transplant despite his being far down the waiting list, and then falsified the records to pretend they had actually given it to the person who was next in line. That person never got a liver. Foreign patients have to pay full price for transplants; U.S. citizens get a number of discounts, so the hospitals make less money.
posted by Vallenwood at 2:51 PM PST - 25 comments

"We can run our car over any road that a man can take a team of horses and a wagon, providing we can get traction."

In 1903, to settle a $50 bet, Horatio Nelson Jackson became the first person to drive (and push) a car (a used Winton touring car, which had no roof or windshield) across the United States, accompanied by mechanic Sewall Crocker and Bud the bulldog. There were no gas stations, and there was less than 150 miles of paved road in the country. They blew a tire 15 miles into the trip and replaced it with their only spare.

Jackson's trip inspired others. In 1909, Alice Ramsey, accompanied by three female passengers, became the first woman to drive (and pull, and push) a car across the country. In 1915, Anita King, "The Paramount Girl," became the first woman to drive across the country solo. "Her only companions will be a rifle and a six shooter." And in 2003, Peter Kesling repeated Jackson's trip, in a 1903 Winton.
posted by kirkaracha at 2:40 PM PST - 18 comments

Petroleum Industry Christmas Wishlist Conservative pundits are quick to point out that no "new refineries have been built since 1976", and even quicker to blame "environmentalists". But the facts just don't support that. Refiners have chosen the environment that they do business in, and in some cases have willingly contributed to it. (Plenty of data here.) Here's why:

• The government has allowed the industry to merge, consolidate, and restrict refining capacity, thus impacting pricing, supply, and demand.
• The quest for profits has caused the need to run extremely lean supplies (ie. no stockpiles of crude - it arrives when you need it, not before) and has resulted in susceptability to wild volatility in prices, but has allowed refiners to operate at very high efficiency but with no margin of excess capacity for temporary shortages, disasters, etc.
• Oil refiners trimmed back capacity after the Oil Crash of the early 1980s and have been unwilling to reinvest in new technologies unless environmental restrictions and local fuel cleanliness mandates are reduced.

As one would expect, Bush's solutions nicely match up with the wishlists of OPEC and US refiners, who in the past few decades have largely undone the breakup of Standard Oil (via) via mergers and joint ventures. Representative Joe Barton, (R-TX), Chairperson of the Energy and Commerce Committee, incidentally up for reelection and well funded, by "the industry" through various Political Action Committees, has released a draft of the predictably named (to be found here when released) Gasoline for America's Security Act of 2005 (committee discusion and webcast are scheduled for 9/28 at 8 am.) Given that new refineries are years away, there is still no solution for current prices or the (90%?) increase in prices since January of 2001.
posted by rzklkng at 2:02 PM PST - 22 comments

This past Saturday was host to anti-war demonstrations in cities throughout the United States and even internationally. In Washington, DC a march, which was accompanied by a later benefit concert, drew over 100,000 people (estimates vary). Rallies in San Francisco, London and Los Angeles drew thousands more. Though there was some mainstream coverage, it was largely overshadowed by hurricane news. [more inside]
posted by nTeleKy at 1:51 PM PST - 57 comments

"I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalls the doctor saying. The real total was six, Beron said. Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the turning over of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice. State health department officials in charge of body recovery put the official death count at the Dome at 10, but Beron said the other four bodies were found in the street near the Dome, not inside it. Both sources said no one had been killed inside. At the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, just four bodies were recovered, despites reports of corpses piled inside the building. Only one of the dead appeared to have been slain, said health and law enforcement officials.
Widely reported attacks false or unsubstantiated
posted by y2karl at 1:17 PM PST - 46 comments

On Beauty and Being Just, by Elaine Scarry, and an interview with her in Salon. It's up to you.
posted by semmi at 12:41 PM PST - 11 comments

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor Paypal problems?!? stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. So apparently our goverment is now a power seller on Ebay. At least they're not selling tanks or anything. Just stuff like this. If you're lucky, you won't have to wait until the inevitable auction to buy the official 37-cent MUPPET STAMPS!! which officially go on sale tomorrow. Typical of our government - Camilla the Chicken is in; Floyd, Dr. Teeth, Scooter are out. In a perfect world, letter bombs would have a Crazy Harry stamp, and we could pair a stamp of the politician of our choice with Rizzo the Rat.
posted by ericbop at 12:27 PM PST - 22 comments

"Should comic book characters age? A Boy Wonder doesn't stay a boy for long if a book is set in real time. That makes it so that any Robin can have an active career for, what, ten years? And that's if you buy that a fighting mad ten-year old can really kick anybody's ass." Some insightful comicbook commentary by Erik Larsen, creator of Savage Dragon.
posted by grabbingsand at 11:06 AM PST - 33 comments

Tony's Blair's keynote speech to the Labour Party conference today [wmv]. Text summary from Channel 4 news.
posted by nthdegx at 10:26 AM PST - 19 comments

Beyond DeLay: The 13 Most Corrupt Members of Congress. CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) has released a report detailing the dirty business of many members of Congress.
posted by caddis at 8:44 AM PST - 56 comments

Clayton James Cubitt's Blog
posted by cusack at 8:21 AM PST - 36 comments

The Irish Republican Army ceases, for all means and purposes, to be an army. And Ian Paisley, predictably, is unhappy about that.
posted by runningdogofcapitalism at 8:18 AM PST - 25 comments

FEMA to reimburse churches. Washington Post story: "After weeks of prodding by Republican lawmakers and the American Red Cross, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said yesterday that it will use taxpayer money to reimburse churches and other religious organizations that have opened their doors to provide shelter, food and supplies to survivors of hurricanes Katrina and Rita."
posted by kokogiak at 7:22 AM PST - 71 comments

e=mc^2*100 It has been a hundred years since the date that Einstein's famous equation was first published, the last of his four annus mirabilis papers of 1905. In celebration, you can hear Einstein explain his formula (or listen to any of 10 other famous physicists do the same), or read an interesting site in celebration of his life and works, or, if physics isn't your thing, peruse his views on religion, or his exchange with Freud about war, or take a look at hundreds of his original manuscripts.
posted by blahblahblah at 6:31 AM PST - 19 comments

Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side' RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today. According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems.
posted by Postroad at 6:22 AM PST - 105 comments

This explains EVERYTHING. Originally appearing in Whole Earth Review many years ago, Cipola wrote an inspired and extremely funny game theoretic analysis of the nature of stupidity that explains the mysteries of the universe and the current administration. Or something.
posted by INFOHAZARD at 12:29 AM PST - 26 comments

Industrial and architectural photography. With both black and white and colour. I wish I could read German.
posted by tellurian at 9:04 PM PST - 13 comments

Cassini Flies by Tethys and Hyperion, and the photos so far have been awesome and weird. I especially want to point out this fascinating view, which, if you look at it closely, reveals what appears to be a string of small impact craters, in a straight line over older terrain. What kind of meteor impact could have produced such an excellent formation of craters? Hyperion photos are coming. (Kokogiak's got backup in case the JRUNS strike.)
posted by brownpau at 8:04 PM PST - 29 comments

Once again, it's "Banned Books Week" in which we celebrate those books which have been challenged to be removed from public and school libraries. Although the Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that banning books from public access was unconstitutional, the effort remains. We can at least take comfort in knowing that, although opinions may vary, Americans don't actually burn books they hate.

Oops.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 7:57 PM PST - 42 comments

A Native American Scoops Lewis and Clark. Moncacht-apé, a Yazoo Indian, traveled up the Missouri and to the Pacific 100 years before Lewis and Clark. He told his story to the Frenchman Le Page du Pratz, who recorded it as part of his 1758 Histoire de la Lousiane (new translations here). Thomas Jefferson owned the book, as did Meriwether Lewis. But a walk to the Pacific Ocean was no big deal for the Mississippi native--after all he had walked to Niagara Falls a few years earlier.
posted by LarryC at 6:41 PM PST - 21 comments

I think I'll go eat...
posted by dilettante at 6:16 PM PST - 16 comments

daily show slash fiction
posted by Pretty_Generic at 6:01 PM PST - 49 comments

Thank goodness he landed on his feet!
Former FEMA director Michael Brown is being retained by the agency as a "consultant."
posted by jpburns at 4:12 PM PST - 59 comments

Meanwhile - an interactive comic by Jason Shiga. (Via)
posted by Silune at 3:50 PM PST - 16 comments

Japanese Shunga & Other Erotica (NSFW) : "In these examples of Japanese shunga we see a great variety of lovemaking techniques, situations, positions and possibilities. Whether heterosexual or homosexual, the diversity of sexual behaviors expressed within this artform offer a glimpse of the sexual freedoms available in previous eras and cultures."
posted by ddf at 3:42 PM PST - 32 comments

Everybody Hates Chris : Everybody Hates the Pilot (Google Video: 21:03) is the funniest thing this Nebraska slice of white bread has seen in a while. (Show's home page here.) Let's just say it isn't exactly The Cosby Show. (Anybody notice that Google Video is using Flash™ now?)
posted by spock at 2:55 PM PST - 44 comments

The tomb of Odysseus may have been found on the island of Kefalonia, near the island now known as Ithaca, which means that Poros may have been the Ithaca described in The Odyssey.
posted by cerebus19 at 2:33 PM PST - 31 comments

The Island of Misfit Games features treasures such as Tower of Babylon, "a baffling high speed game composed of 120 hand painted (3 segments on each piece) tongue depressors.", Quackshot, "the most violent children's game ever created," and Grade Up to Elite Cow, a "game about bull semen." When I was a kid, my favorite was "Voice of the Mummy," which featured a little record player embedded in the board.
posted by grumblebee at 2:24 PM PST - 5 comments

RPS-15 (and, if you can handle it, RPS-25) for when traditional "Rock, Paper, Scissors" is just not enough.
posted by Robot Johnny at 1:54 PM PST - 25 comments

On this day 22 years ago, Stanislav Petrov saved the world.
posted by basicchannel at 1:44 PM PST - 50 comments

"Why did you bring a white man here?" one of them demands from Duguf, my interpreter. While I continue to videotape, Duguf taps me on the shoulder and nods toward the truck. We make haste just as fingers begin to point and voices grow louder and angrier. Kevin Sites, previously discussed here, here, and here, submits his first report for Yahoo.
posted by billysumday at 1:33 PM PST - 3 comments

On the Chilean island of Robinson Crusoe, a small GPR-enabled robot named Arturito (google translated page) has apparently just found "The biggest treasure in history..." (estimated at $10 Billion).
posted by numlok at 1:14 PM PST - 25 comments

Losing Gilligan and Maxwell Smart just a few weeks apart is sad. What great memories of a very funny show and a funny man.
posted by terrier319 at 12:50 PM PST - 66 comments

Electronic Biologia Centrali-Americana is a collaboration between the Smithsonian, Missouri Botanical and Kew Gardens, the British Natural History Museum and various other institutions which has enabled the digitizing of 58 volumes of natural history about central America produced between 1880 and 1920. It includes descriptions of more than 50,000 species with images of more than 18,000 birds, more birds, snakes, turtles, centipedes, spiders, more spiders, plants, mollusks, more plants, butterflies, orthoptera insects, more butterflies and their family's (moth-like) families, mammals and even some historic maps of the region. There is a parallel project attempting to provide access to much more scientific data and specimens between these institutions. Note: 'next' button at top +/- bottom of these large thumb pages; large high resolution jpegs work (in most cases) but zoom and .pdfiles are not yet enabled. I've only just scratched the surface.
posted by peacay at 11:54 AM PST - 9 comments

We are going to inquire simply, rigorously after the voice of Jesus, after what he really said.
Robert Walter Funk, who died September 3, was the founder of the Jesus Seminar and one of the most influential New Testament scholars of his generation. The Jesus of Nazareth discovered by the Jesus Seminar was a wisdom teacher whose parables proclaimed the arrival of God's kingdom. He was not, in the judgment of the Seminar, the messiah of the end-times (.pdf file, go to page 5 and 6). Also: Funk's 21 theses.
posted by matteo at 11:44 AM PST - 34 comments

My name's Friday... I just thought this was very amusing. "4:20," as explained by narcs.
posted by NedKoppel at 11:37 AM PST - 55 comments

Classics in the History of Psychology
posted by Gyan at 11:31 AM PST - 3 comments

Sheehan arrested for... protesting. Will the ACLU please, PLEASE take this case up to the highest courts in the land. Enough with the police intimidation and ritual abuse of power.
posted by trinarian at 11:15 AM PST - 136 comments

Christo's The Gates meets Robert Smithson's Floating Island. Literally.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 10:53 AM PST - 23 comments

Do you like claret? Wine reviewer writes haiku. (More fun than Parker.)
posted by Vidiot at 10:52 AM PST - 9 comments

Tales From the Vault. Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is proud to present its Canadian pulp art and fiction collection, straight from the special collections vault. The collection featured in this virtual exhibit, Tales from the Vault!: Canadian Pulp Fiction, 1940-1952, is one of the very few known pulp magazine holdings in Canada, and is available for consultation at LAC. Includes a cover gallery and complete magazines.
posted by srboisvert at 10:01 AM PST - 4 comments

The Bad Superintendent. How the Roslyn (N.Y.) school district became an ATM machine.
posted by xowie at 9:54 AM PST - 39 comments

The U.S. Military is buying bioweapones production systems, with a focus on Anthrax. The Sunshine Project, a German group opposed to biological weapons development, uncovered U.S. Army contracts for equipment to produce the anthrax bacillus anthracis Sterne in 1,500 litre quantities, and other unspecified biolgical agents in 3,000 litre batches. All equipment was to be stationed at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. It seems unlikely that the U.S. is living up to its commitments to the Biological Weapons Convention.

As a reminder, the post 9/11 anthrax attack upon the U.S. used weponized anthrax produced in the U.S. [1] [2], most likely at Fort Detrick. The attack is generally believed to have been committed by conservative elements in American society, partly due to the choice of targets and the existence of a simultaneous harmless attacks. Lt. Col. Dr. Philip Zack is believed to have been involved in smuggling the Anthrax out of Fort Detrick, if not in the actual attacks as well [3] [4].
posted by jeffburdges at 9:03 AM PST - 31 comments

A bill, quietly up for debate before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and backed by the Whitehouse, proposes to improve the performance of the Executive branch of the US Government by requiring that all Governmental agencies be given a 10 year shelf life at the end of which time they must be reinstated by a Presidentially appointed "Sunset Committee" or fade into the history books.
posted by Pollomacho at 6:24 AM PST - 45 comments

Who are the Sephardim? provides a short history of Sephardic Jews. The Ladino language website has a more complete introduction to Ladino, the Judeo-Spanish language. Included are a brief descriptive grammar, stanzas from Joseph the Wise, a long Ladino poem, and a translation of The Story of Gerineldo, a folktale. There are very good primary sources at the Medieval Sourcebook, and a Yahoo Ladino discussion group. This essay about the interactions between Moorish and Jewish cultures and their collective effect on European culture seems quite good (and is in Spanish). See also this Spanish-language article about exploring Ladino. There are more good Spanish-language resources on Sephardic history here.
posted by OmieWise at 6:19 AM PST - 16 comments

Hurricane Katrina survivors who want to apply online for Federal Emergency Management Agency assistance need Microsoft's Windows operating system and Internet Explorer Version 6.
posted by basilwhite at 6:11 AM PST - 109 comments

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is a great source for all kinds of information on our feathered friends. The bird identification section is particular useful. There are also NestCams.
posted by sciurus at 5:54 AM PST - 6 comments

Google's Crystal Ball::NYTimes. Quite interesting...Via TechDirt:

Google has created a predictive market system, basically a way for its employees to bet on the likelihood of possible events. Such markets have long been used to predict world events, like election results. Intrade, part of the Trade Exchange Network, allows people to bet on elections, stock market indexes and even the weather, for example.

I wonder how accurate the aggregated content of blogs would be to measure the likelihood of prospective real world events? The economist they consulted, Hal R. Varian, has some interesting links on his web page as well. I think that the internet better get their anti-spam technology up to par before we have people "gaming" the future through blogspam. For an explanation of Futures Markets (charts), see this page at the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
posted by rzklkng at 5:51 AM PST - 5 comments

Lego Puma Warthog.
posted by nthdegx at 5:41 AM PST - 9 comments

Mandarin: 1998-2005, R.I.P. (warning: 21 MB QT Movie) A farewell slide show with musical accompaniment by/to a great Denton, Texas band: Mandarin. Many of the images are of Denton and the surrounding area, tour photos and various other bric a brac captured beautifully by Peter Salisbury, the bass player who compiled the slideshow. They were my friends and Denton was my home for many years. Their music will be missed by many.
posted by grandcrewno2 at 5:22 AM PST - 12 comments

Camouflage Comics [requires Flash] - an exploration of the issues of censorship, dictatorship, human rights and the legacy of the Argentinian "Dirty War", the 1976-1983 military junta's repression and extermination of dissidents (when 10,000 to 30,000 Argentinians were tortured and "disappeared"). Produced at the Jan van Eyck Academy of Fine Arts in Maastricht, the project presents striking comics and illustrations made between 2002 and 2005 by contemporary Argentinian artists, as well as text essays on the production of comics and cartoons during the dictatorship era.
posted by funambulist at 4:58 AM PST - 2 comments

Bush administration threatens veto against Geneva Convention. After hearing about the latest torture scandal in Iraq, Republican Armed Services Committee Senators John McCain, John W. Warner, and Lindsey Graham are seeking an amendment to a defense bill which would require the military to abide by the Geneva Convention... but the Bush administration is reportedly opposed to any such legislation, and have threatened to veto it. To make matters worse, many prominent Congressional Republicans are also opposed to abiding by the Geneva Convention, to the point that overturning such a veto is far from assured.
posted by insomnia_lj at 4:32 AM PST - 63 comments

So you're a hippo expert are you? You've seen the excellent hippo flash and hippo fight video at pbs. You're bored by the surprisingly tame hippo courtship video. You may even know that cannibalism may be responsbile for anthrax in hippos. But did you know about the species of leech that breeds exclusively in their rectum? Yeah, I thought not. More here on page 28 [pdf].
posted by hindmost at 9:56 PM PST - 22 comments

Interesting high-speed (super slow motion) video clips — including balloon videos (try water balloon thrown at face); videos of cans, bottles, and glass (try glass pane breaking); fun with food products (try egg drop and the amazing jello cube drop); and many, many, many others. (Please note: these are all smallish WMV files.)
posted by jdroth at 9:52 PM PST - 14 comments

Norman Wildberger's New Trigonometry Dr Norman Wildberger has rewritten the arcane rules of trigonometry and eliminated sines, cosines and tangents from the trigonometric toolkit. The First chapter of his new book, Divine Proportions, is online (.pdf).
posted by Kwantsar at 9:34 PM PST - 21 comments

Own 100,000,000 little pieces of Iraq. Or just one very special 500 dinar note from this guy.

*Hand on Heart* I have made many great friends (Mimi, Khalid, Naif, Colby... and about 900 others here at eBay alone) through doing this and hopefully we can realize some fruit from our collective efforts in the future :-)
posted by leapingsheep at 6:59 PM PST - 14 comments

Darkseed is a Japanese hip hop crew (not the be confused with the other Darkseed) I accidentally stumbled upon while surfing the interweb. Aside from their unique songs (I'm partial to LOLIFUSE 13's IDM-esque "fly me to the morning" remix, though not so much their trance-flavored "WE ALL LOVE DARKSEED" sexual frontier remix), I found it fascinating that this collective whose ranks include the likes of MC/DJ/Producers bombtrack, LOL the EX, fujimotor, and HOUNDDOGGYDOGG have their own comics, haikus, and even spinoff projects!
posted by analogue at 5:48 PM PST - 4 comments

Complaints, but to what end? Aren't they just shouting into the ether (I couldn't find any complaints with business replies)? There are some gems though. Owned and run by Sagacity who have several other .coms lined up. On the Rip-off report they do get replies.
posted by tellurian at 5:31 PM PST - 6 comments

ScoreHer.com - Dating advice for men from women. With a name like that how can you not prick up your ears? With promises like: "I'll post an article in the next few weeks on how to convert a friendship on fourth down and make it to her end zone," how can you not bookmark it? And with features like Women Only Want Tall Men vs. Men Only Want Big Boobs, a "what she says/what she means" Chicktionary, and 5 Cardinal Rules for Internet Dating, how can the men and women of MeFi not immediately turn this thread into 101 separate flamewars about romance, love, dating & genitalia? Here's a momentary distraction to divert the guys' attention long enough for the women to take the high ground: on the off-chance that it's not just link spam, squadmember Jennifer P., 29, is tall, blonde, smart, turned on by guys in briefs, and looking.
posted by scarabic at 5:29 PM PST - 50 comments

Now that every MeFite and their dog have contributed to the Red Cross for Hurricane Relief, here's a semi-reluctant criticism of the Big Red from the head of (IMUDO*) another worthy organization.
*In My Usually Disregarded Opinion
Before anybody goes nuclear, Operation USA has absolutely NO connection to the infamous Operation Blessing.
posted by wendell at 5:28 PM PST - 20 comments

Real News. Compelling Stories. Always Positive.
posted by delmoi at 3:43 PM PST - 28 comments

If you live in the Midwest, or just like to travel, you may want to consider visiting the Dale Chihuly exibit in Kalamazoo, MI, his only major North American exhibition for the rest of the year. Mainly known for his glass work, he also does paintings and drawings. Previous discussion of Chihuly's work here.
posted by handshake at 2:50 PM PST - 18 comments

From the American people to Iraq...six hundred dollars. Sept 9: “IraqPartnership.org demonstrates the proud American tradition of private citizens working in partnership with government,” said USAID Administrator Andrew S. Natsios. "At the President's direction USAID will work even harder to engage the private sector to help Iraqis create an environment where democracy and economic opportunity can take root and grow." Example: "Help provide Iraqi school children with desks, blackboards, and supplies. Need: $10,000" Sept 18: " A USAID spokesperson says that there is little advertising for this new initiative and expects most potential donors will happen upon the website as the result of a specific search for ways to support Iraqi redevelopment. As of last Friday, iraqpartnership.org has generated contributions of only $39." Sept 25: "USaid's Heather Layman denied it was disappointed with the meagre sum raised after a fortnight. 'Every little helps,' she said."
posted by iviken at 2:30 PM PST - 37 comments

Killer military dolphins on the loose! From the farce department: The Observer reports that "Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico."

36 dolphins trained under the US Navy's Cetacean Intelligence Mission escaped from their training pools in post-Katrina flooding. Prior to Katrina, the Navy always denied traning dolphins to fire guns and blowdarts underwater. Conspiracy theorists, however, claimed the military was training dolphins to attack enemy divers with blowguns. Apparently, the tin-foil hat brigade was right on this one, as the Navy confirmed they were training dolphins "for offensive warfare".

And in related news, Dolphins Evolve Opposable Thumbs.
posted by huskerdont at 1:30 PM PST - 35 comments

Project Facade: (Warning Graphic Images) An artistic response to the Gillies Archive. The Gillies archive is a collection of documents on plastic surgery conducted on British soldiers in WWI. The web site has a list of facial reconstruction case studies. Sir Harold Delf Gillies pioneered the pedicle tube technique for facial reconstrucion.
posted by obedo at 12:44 PM PST - 6 comments

Puppy eats kitchen knife, survives. Which isn't that surprising. Dogs eat the most amazing things.
posted by whl at 12:20 PM PST - 17 comments

WFMU's Beware Of The Blog offers 21 variations on the most famous novelty record ever, the creation of recording engineer and goofball Jerry Samuels. Along with the madcappery the original album (now a highly valued collector's item) features nifty audio trickery and other delights. (also, my man matteo tells me that I Balordis Italian version is a baffling mistranslation but it still sounds as nutty as the original. I make no guarantees on any of the other foreign language versions). Get 'em while their hot. This nut's off to hunt the squirrels.
posted by jonmc at 11:17 AM PST - 17 comments

And the Lord God said, “Let there be light,” and lo, there was light. But then the Lord God said, “Wait, what if I make it a sort of rosy, sunset-at-the-beach, filtered half-light, so that everything else I design will look younger?" Another take on intelligent design.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 10:26 AM PST - 22 comments

"Three Biotech Stocks to Buy Now." From Wall Street to K Street, the Bush Administration is full of friendly faces.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 9:53 AM PST - 18 comments

just get yourself high [lo siento para el Player Real]
posted by Pretty_Generic at 9:18 AM PST - 18 comments

Life changes fast.
Life changes in the instant.
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
After Life, by Joan Didion. (bugmenot for NYTimes)
posted by matteo at 7:07 AM PST - 23 comments

iPod Nano - 1000 songs scratches (via Slashdot)
posted by FieldingGoodney at 7:01 AM PST - 70 comments

Extraordinary Machine so it turns out everything we thought of Fiona Apple's long-awaited, soon-to-be-released album was wrong. Interview and live performance on WNYC (13Mb Mp3)
posted by Lanark at 2:00 AM PST - 29 comments

A former Apple customer service representative shows what he feels led to his dismissal. His previous hypothesis was that the performance led the company to find his occasionally customer-trashing blog. While it seems that more and more people have been fired from companies for blogging, is it likely that the blog had nothing to do with it? Seventy percent of companies have no policy on them, but surely a company as secretive as Apple is not among them. So was it the blog, or are all intracompany talent shows just an invitation for tragedy?
posted by motherfather at 5:13 PM PST - 68 comments

You affect the world by what you browse! It's another quote site, named metaphilter.
posted by persia at 4:12 PM PST - 23 comments

Live next week in a Harrisburg, PA federal courtroom: the ACLU and a coterie of concerned parents fight the ongoing defenestration of empiricism.
posted by killdevil at 4:07 PM PST - 40 comments

Project Censored places "Distorted Election Coverage" at number 3 on their list of ignored news stories of the last year. In more recent ignored news a Diebold insider speaks out (which security guru Bruce Schneier considers "sensationalist" but "good information") - just as Diebold shares plunge and top executives flee. In July Diebold's voting machines were rejected by the state of California after "possibly the most extensive testing ever on a voting system" revealed a high incidence of crashes and paper jams. Not to mention the undocumented backdoor in Diebold's GEMS vote tabulator. Meanwhile, in Ohio, two officials of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections have been indicted by a grand jury on charges that they "did not permit a random selection of precincts for the recount and it did not let witnesses oversee the opening of the sealed ballot cases and the first recount of the votes." And John Conyers is urging Americans to oppose a proposed national ID voting requirement, which he calls a "21st Century poll tax". Is this what democracy looks like?
posted by dinsdale at 2:48 PM PST - 25 comments

Send a Spam-a-Gram to a lucky corporate whore! Tired of receiving mounds of unsolicited letters and offers in the mail? Want to fight back? Want to get rid of that old tire in your garage that the garbage man won't take? Then read on...
posted by Mr Bluesky at 1:29 PM PST - 27 comments

Katrina Victims Win Against Gun-grabbing NO Superintendent of Police. The United States District Court for the Eastern District in Louisiana today sided with the National Rifle Association (NRA) and issued a restraining order to bar further gun confiscations from peaceable and law-abiding victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 12:25 PM PST - 97 comments

Blackwater: Coming Home To Roost Blackwater and other mercenary companys run rampant in Iraq, making up the second largest military group in Iraq, outnumbering all other military forces combined. Now they are in New Orleans with no restrictions on use of firearms, seizure of property, taking of life. They are now bidding on security contracts with the U.S. Border Patrol. They could be coming to your city next, to your office building to maintain security. Has all of this 'Homeland Security' finally gone too far?
posted by mk1gti at 9:49 AM PST - 57 comments

Autumn de Wilde's Rock and Roll Portfolio.
posted by srboisvert at 3:13 AM PST - 8 comments

Watching Rita: How does it feel to be broadcasting live in a hurricane? KPLC in Lake Charles, Louisiana is finding out. Broadcasting from the fifth floor of St. Patrick's Hospital, the station is really getting the luck of the Irish in broadcasting on the air and online with primitive technology. (direct link)
posted by calwatch at 12:41 AM PST - 6 comments

Winning Souls to Christ in The World of Warcraft. There is a trend of Christian gaming enthusiasts who have flocked to Blizzard’s popular World of Warcraft game to proselytize, by violence if necessary, as evidenced by one guild leader who has engaged in “conversion duels on multiple servers where he challenges other players to duel with him. If he wins, they accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.”
posted by The Jesse Helms at 9:41 PM PST - 31 comments

Happy little puzzles using a chess knight's moves to change the white squares into other colors await those who click.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 9:26 PM PST - 20 comments

One officer and two non-commissioned officers (NCOs) of the 82nd Airborne who witnessed abuse, speaking on condition of anonymity, described in multiple interviews with Human Rights Watch how their battalion in 2003-2004 routinely used physical and mental torture as a means of intelligence gathering and for stress relief. One soldier raised his concerns within the army chain of command for 17 months before the Army agreed to undertake an investigation, but only after he had contacted members of Congress and considered goingpublic with the story. According to their accounts, the torture and other mistreatment of Iraqis in detention was systematic and was known at varying levels of command. Military Intelligence personnel, they said, directed and encouraged army personnel to subject prisoners to forced, repetitive exercise, sometimes to the point of unconsciousness, sleep deprivation for days on end, and exposure to extremes of heat and cold as part of the interrogation process. At least one interrogator beat detainees in front of other soldiers. Soldiers also incorporated daily beatings of detainees in preparation for interrogations. Civilians believed to be from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) conducted interrogations out of sight, but not earshot, of soldiers, who heard what they believed were abusive interrogations.

Human Rights Watch: Leadership Failure - Firsthand Accounts of Torture of Iraqi Detainees by the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. See also 3 in 82nd Airborne Say Abuse in Iraqi Prisons Was Routine
posted by y2karl at 8:53 PM PST - 35 comments

The death of Roe v. Wade from a thousand cuts "Two weeks ago Paul Pressler, the architect of the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, described how the Religious Right intended to deal with Roe v. Wade. After expressing his elation with the selection of John Roberts as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court he said, "Roe v. Wade won't be revoked, it will die the death of a thousand cuts and qualifications and regulations until it gradually disappears."
- Dr. Bruce Prescott, from the eyewall of America's religious wars (Executive Director of "Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists"), notes the culmination of long-laid plans.
posted by troutfishing at 8:21 PM PST - 116 comments

Ghosts: Soldiers spooked by New Orleans ghosts. Film at eleven.
posted by johnj at 7:23 PM PST - 32 comments

Amusing, stylized violent cgi cartoon of a series of assassins trying to take on the lone biker of the apocalypse. Embedded windows media video.
posted by jonson at 4:59 PM PST - 22 comments

Tibor "Ted" Rubin, survivor of a Nazi concentration camp and United States Army hero in World War II, received the Medal of Honor today from President Bush, 55 years after earning it. Rubin, a Hungarian Jew, was never submitted for a medal during the war due to anti-Semitism.
posted by cerebus19 at 4:56 PM PST - 35 comments

These are the cures. These are the illnesses. Guaranteed to cure what ails you. A look at the fantastic science of medicine, and the fantastic art of bodies afflicted.
posted by klangklangston at 4:50 PM PST - 4 comments

Barbarism or good ole American capitalism? If you want to see the true face of war, go to the amateur porn Web site NowThatsFuckedUp.com. For almost a year, American soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan have been taking photographs of dead bodies, many of them horribly mutilated or blown to pieces, and sending them to Web site administrator Chris Wilson. In return for letting him post these images, Wilson gives the soldiers free access to his site. American soldiers have been using the pictures of disfigured Iraqi corpses as currency to buy pornography.
posted by halekon at 3:15 PM PST - 136 comments

A Sub by any other name.... Professor Vaux has put together a little survey of American as she is spoke. The survey covers a myriad of areas and the results wind up on some really interesting maps. It's on going, so feel free to take the challenge
posted by IndigoJones at 2:41 PM PST - 15 comments

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

Although you may sneer at the National Enquirer, it actually has a track record for factual accuracy, which even the CJR acknowledges. Hey, enquiring minds want to know…
posted by slogger at 2:36 PM PST - 109 comments

Draft legislation was published today that proposes that fifteen parcels in the National Park System be sold off for "purposes of commercial and residential development." Many of the parcels are in Alaska, but one is Theodore Roosevelt Island park, developed to honor one of our country's most recognizable environmentalists. It seems the Onion gives us the news from the future once again...Way to go, DCist for breaking the story!
posted by chinese_fashion at 1:57 PM PST - 14 comments

Ok fun Friday despite all the tragedy going on in the world ....
posted by terrier319 at 1:57 PM PST - 6 comments

Hurricane Beta Coming Soon... Ever wondered how hurricanes are named? Here's a good explanation.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 11:58 AM PST - 21 comments

Skype can now be stored on a flashdrive and taken from PC to PC. And this tiny BotTorrent client (82Kb) can also be carried around on a flashdrive.
posted by bobbyelliott at 11:09 AM PST - 17 comments

A slice of contemporary reality.
posted by semmi at 10:31 AM PST - 10 comments

Nevermind the Pollocks . Splattery Friday flash fun.
posted by Gamblor at 8:51 AM PST - 18 comments

Secularism: The Turkish Experience. Here is a transcript (pdf file). It talks about the Turkish system and it contrasts the social system of the Ottoman empire, the "millet" system, with the modern one, called "laiklik" which is based on the French model.
posted by ishmael at 8:40 AM PST - 17 comments

Boesky, Waksal, . . . Frist? There have been articles as of late questioning the timing of Sen. Bill Frist's sale of his entire portfolio of HCA stock (a Frist family company) at a peak stock price just prior to a release of bad earnings news. He is now under investigation. Will Frist go the way of Ivan and Sam or even Martha?
posted by caddis at 7:32 AM PST - 46 comments

A whole bunch of great game design essays.
posted by Tlogmer at 7:26 AM PST - 13 comments

Atome. More Friday Flash fun. Put the particles together to make an atom.
posted by zardoz at 7:14 AM PST - 15 comments

"Somewhere in the Bible it is said: "If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off." I used to think the remedy somewhat radical. But to-day, being imbued with the wisdom of the prohibitionist, I have to acknowledge that, if the Bible in general, and that passage in it in particular, has a fault, it lies in its ultra-conservativeness. What? Merely cut off my own right hand if it offend me? What business have my neighbors to keep their right hands if I am not able to make mine behave itself ? Off with the lot of them! Let there be no right hands; then I am certain that mine won't land me in trouble."
So wrote Percy Andreae in 1915 when arguing against Prohibition. That excerpt is at the OSU Prohibition History site, along with such delights as Prohibition Party Cartoons (check out this adorable camel: "Vote as if your vote would be the last straw"). At the LOC, along with this page of Prohibition information, and this panoramic shot of the 1915 Anti-Saloon League of America, there is also this reminder of the link between temperance and women's suffrage. If you don't want to join The Temperance Crusade in song, or admit that (I Never Knew I Had A Wonderful Wife Until The Town Went Dry), you can listen to these mp3's at the LOC: The Drunkard's dream, The Drunkard's child, and, of course, Goodbye, booze. Prohibition and moonshining; the rise of bootlegging gangs; more primary sources at the National Archives. And no post on prohibition or temperance would be complete without Carrie Nation's Hammer.
posted by OmieWise at 6:35 AM PST - 46 comments

Nagraj v. Shakoora The Magician from Raj Comics. UFF!
posted by tellurian at 6:32 AM PST - 12 comments

Spaced Penguin Friday Fun (shockwave) repeat from 4 years ago today...wow.
posted by adamvasco at 5:58 AM PST - 17 comments

The fifty most cited books. At the time the list was compiled in the 1980s, the most cited book in the humanities and social sciences was Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions, followed by James Joyce's Ulysses. Noam Chomsky makes the top 20 with two works on linguistics. And, for those who prefer natural science, you should know the most cited scientific paper of all time is Protein Determination by Oliver H. Lowry. Alternately, you could just skip academia and go for the top 40 most important books according to World Literature Today, the 100 most loved according to the BBC, or you could just decide which books matter most to you. So what makes a book important, and which books qualify?
posted by blahblahblah at 11:41 PM PST - 35 comments

Talking Heads. Not until I stumbled upon this site did I figure out what it was the the Internet was missing. I've wanted to have Sanjay on my desktop for so long. And now that I have the ability to vote for which "journalist" I think is the hottest, I can finally feel as if I am participating in these news programs. That is Democracy, after all.
posted by panoptican at 10:48 PM PST - 33 comments

Noted in the live stream from this TV station This is the "Local2 News" live tv stream (which has been pointed to in three previous MeFi threads about other news stories. Currently they've from time to time been showing storm track predictive models (which they say are their own development). I'd rather have pointers to more models than the TV station's occasional glimpses, but, this is the most varied set of storm track predictions I've seen. Anyone know where they're getting them?
posted by hank at 6:15 PM PST - 24 comments

Hi-res satellite photos of Earth Four pages worth, desktop wallpaper sized.
posted by jonson at 4:55 PM PST - 29 comments

The Cabinet National Library. A charming piece of dry, conceptual humor. A little banal, perhaps. There is also a hidden agenda.
posted by undule at 3:25 PM PST - 11 comments

A history of modern military rations from canning to MREs. Also, reproductions of American, Russian, Italian, British, and Japanese WWII rations.
posted by milovoo at 2:30 PM PST - 47 comments

4 8 15 16 23 42 - Lost in Theory? Could Genetic Mirror Theory and other Natuarlly Occuring Phenomenon, by Marsille Roussau have something to do with the TV show Lost and those wacky numbers?
posted by Macboy at 12:40 PM PST - 113 comments

Scientific Sleuth Cracks Code to $54,000 Treasure The treasure was the 12th and last set out in Treasure's Trove , a children's book published last fall. People shared information on many forums. The solution to the Beetle puzzle is in this forum. Missed out? All is not lost. Apparently, a new 14th puzzle has been announced. Maybe we can solve it together.
posted by notmtwain at 12:22 PM PST - 12 comments

"If we can get kids to hang a picture of a priest in their room, we've done something huge for vocations." The associate director of youth and young adult ministry for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis is using a Matrix-style poster to drum up enrollment in the priesthood...and exponentially increase bad Photoshop pranks, if I know the internets at all. Oh well. At least it's not as bad as using video games to recruit soldiers! (Hat tip to NSFW-SG!)
posted by bitter-girl.com at 12:20 PM PST - 92 comments

According to the BBC, hobbits may not be real.
posted by 31d1 at 11:54 AM PST - 20 comments

Chinese food around the world. Ethnic Chinese immigrants worldwide took their cuisine with them. New Yorkers are familiar with Cuban-Chinese restaurants, owned by ethnic Chinese from Cuba who served steam tables of ropa vieja and chuletas right next to the pork fried rice and wonton soup. In Jamaica & Trinidad, Chinese immigrants pioneered jerk chicken lo mein and bok choy & callaloo stirfries.

Or how in Peru, Chinese Peruvians developed their country's restaurant industry and created a national dish, lomo saltado along the way.

But then there's the Indian-Chinese food popularized by the descendants of ethnic Hakkas who moved to Mumbai in the 18th century. Personally, I'm partial to some lollipop chicken or gobi manchurian with a nice, cold Kingfisher.
posted by huskerdont at 11:45 AM PST - 57 comments

Moonbase Visions. You've read about and discussed NASA's plan to use new post-shuttle launch vehicles to return to the moon. But what, exactly, is the US planning to do on the moon? What would a semi-permanent moonbase look like? And why return at all? NASA's announced answers to these questions remain vague. But last year eleven sets of responses to these questions were offered to NASA in the development proposals submitted to NASA by eleven Aerospace concerns, each of which suggested different designs, missions, and philosophies for NASA's return to the moon. Some common themes:

Military: "Provide nationally assured access to orbital locations for the placement of observation systems" and "assured access to space for development of force projection systems and movements of logistics." (pdf link, p. 5) Commercial: "Commercialize space products and services" (pdf link, p.6) Public Relations: Keeping the public inspired with "regularly placed program milestones." (pdf link, p.7)

It's interesting to compare the details of these proposals. But taken together, they raise a broader question: does NASA's fear that the public will lose interest in this commercializing, militarizing, moon venture reflect an awareness that that the vision has finally been lost?
posted by washburn at 10:31 AM PST - 62 comments

Despite our predominantly post-modern society in Canada, there are still pockets of ignorance and intolerance. The City of Surrey a very suburban suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia, is pretty much the capital of Canada when it comes to this. A high school (ages 13-18) was rehearsing to perform "The Laramie Project" - a play about the murder of an American student Matthew Shephard (who was gay) and tolerance when the Surrey School Board pulled the plug on it. The play had recently been performed in a high school in a smaller, but less rednecky suburb, Mission. This is the same school board that tried to ban two excellent books teaching children tolerance for their friends that may have two dads or two mums. The ban was overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada. Perhaps a play of this nature is appropriate for high school students? Whaddya think?
posted by SSinVan at 10:28 AM PST - 65 comments

Reporters Without Borders releases a free handbook for would-be bloggers and cyber-dissidents in censor-happy lands. It features tips on blogging anonymously, ways to get around censorship and to ensure your e-mail privacy, and hosts an Internet-censor World Championship list (which lists China, Vietnam, and Tunisia, among others) as well. Download the guide here. (PDF)
posted by riffraff at 10:11 AM PST - 8 comments

A large pink rabbit will visit Italy for 20 years. Yet another controversial work of art by Gelitin from Vienna. (via Guardian)
posted by myopicman at 10:07 AM PST - 40 comments

National Geographic Migration Study Rouses Indigenous Concern. What do indigenous DNA donors have to gain from their involvement in the Genographic Project? As a First Worlder, I signed up, I swabbed, my genes are being shuttled through the Genographic study as we speak. Can't wait to see the results. And I'm not particularly paranoid, obviously, that the results will be used to harm anyone. But this article did make me curious as to exactly how the study could possibly benefit indigenous peoples. Will it be yet another strike against their origin stories? Will it be like a coke bottle dropping from the sky? Will it, instead, inspire non-indigenous peoples to treat their indigenous cousins with more respect?
posted by CrunchyGods at 9:03 AM PST - 46 comments

Liberal Democracy.
This is the taste of freedom.
posted by Meatbomb at 8:23 AM PST - 79 comments

INSURRECTION Why were American military sent almost instantly when Rita threatens Texas but we were told that they could not be sent to Louisiana till requested? What is the history behind Posse Comitatus? Does the president have the authority just on his say so to send troops into a "sovereign" state? Nice summary of history here.
posted by Postroad at 8:08 AM PST - 51 comments

Hu's Gallery in the Sky :: interesting and amazing cameraphone photos.
posted by anastasiav at 8:00 AM PST - 14 comments

Wasting away in Ritaville
Might as well start the deluge of Rita posts with this one. Rita is the most intense storm to threaten the US since Gilbert in 1988 and it threatens Galveston Bay directly. In direct path of the storm are oil refineries processing over two million barrels of oil a day which is 26 percent of the US refining capacity. In addition the area expected to be hit (pdf) by a potential twenty-two foot storm surge has a higher population than New Orleans.

This storm has caused an unprecedented evacuation of the southern parts of Houston. Interstate 45 has been opened in both directions to north-bound traffic for the first time ever. Tales of twelve to sixteen hour drives to outlying cities are common.

One of the blogs I read daily posted this morning that it is likely he will lose his house in twelve-plus feet of water. I left Houston last night and am staying with friends in Austin now, well out of the way of the storm. Other tales are sure to come.

Will the lessons of Katrina help Houston to recover from the storm? Will the response from FEMA be better because of the heat from Katrina or will the Republican voting area and Tom DeLay's district factor into the relief effort?
posted by DragonBoy at 7:40 AM PST - 135 comments

Interactions between migrating birds and offshore oil and gas platforms in the northern Gulf of Mexico (PDF, 5.9MB). A scientific but engrossing look at bird migration over the Gulf of Mexico, describing, in part, death by starvation of migrants who have metabolized all their bodily fat, “overshoots” that inadvertently travel past their intended destinations and find themselves unexpectedly over water at first light, and a suggestion that peregrine falcons not only recovered from near extinction due to the presence of oil platforms in the Gulf, but that they may eventually establish a breeding population on the Gulf platform archipelago. Summary. Full report (PDF, 5.9 MB).
posted by Mo Nickels at 6:13 AM PST - 9 comments

Innocent in London. An account from someone who was stopped, searched and arrested by the Police in a London Tube station. [via del.icio.us/philgyford]
posted by gsb at 2:42 AM PST - 102 comments

The 16mm Shrine writes about movies. "The fact that there’s any talent in Brazil not devoted to kidnapping schemes and making curare poison out of small frogs, let alone the kind it takes to make an epic like Meirelles’ breakout film, City of God, is astounding ... [With The Constant Gardener,] I hoped Meirelles might be able to inject some excitement into material that probably had an initial interest level hovering somewhere between televised Canadian parliamentary proceedings and rough notes for a thesis project on religious atavism in Norway. ... Weisz is an activist, which means she’s easy and doesn’t shave her legs, and gets very upset if you notice. She also becomes immediately attached to the African children surrounding her in that particular stage of starvation and illness that makes their eyes big and their stomachs small enough that they still look small and pitiful, but not yet weird enough that they could pass for shark-toothed baby Grays from The X-Files. She gets involved in a conspiracy and soon ends up dead, leaving Fiennes to pick up the pieces and grow a backbone."
posted by Marquis at 1:43 AM PST - 24 comments

Recent research claims that even smoking a few cigarettes a day is dangerous according to Tobacco Control . This is bad news for millions of smokers who have cut-back their daily consumption of cigarettes. It is also contrary to previous research which claimed that light smoking had little impact on health.
posted by bobbyelliott at 1:29 AM PST - 56 comments

Paul Murdoch Architects were recently announced as winners of the Flight 93 memorial. The design was called "Crescent of Embrace". The jury asked that the design team “Consider the interpretation and impact of words within the context of this event. The 'Crescent' should be referred to as the 'circle' or 'arc' or other words that are not tied to specific religious iconography." Remarks from the families can be found here. [I haven't posted the other links for obvious reasons]. I don't think we've heard the end of this.
posted by tellurian at 1:17 AM PST - 21 comments

What do you get when you mix a fiendishly difficult and addictive puzzle game with the feel of a hack & slash RPG set in a cartoonish, slightly tongue-in-cheek fantasy world? That would be Deadly Rooms of Death (DROD for short). The game is freakin' huge, with 25 levels filled with unique rooms, and it also happens to be free.
posted by speicus at 1:09 AM PST - 7 comments

Drawings by Porous Walker. {NSFW & audio}
posted by dobbs at 12:48 AM PST - 9 comments

Don't blame me, I voted for Chang! Jeb Bush to the Florida legislature: "Chang is a mystical warrior. Chang is somebody who believes in conservative principles, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism, believes in moral values that underpin a free society. "I rely on Chang with great regularity in my public life. He has been by my side and sometimes I let him down. But Chang, this mystical warrior, has never let me down." WTF? But is it really that weird coming from a family with a long history with the Skull and Bones Society
posted by afflatus at 12:31 AM PST - 47 comments

Vinyl Sharity There's a lot of exotic*, odd†, thrilling‡, and strangely catchy° music out there on the net. Through Weirdo Music and Record Brother, I've begun to touch the tip... And while there's a fairly proscribed etiquette regarding the sharity sites (limited time for downloads, out-of-print only, desisting when asked), I find that Free Albums and Strange Reaction have put me off of buying new RIAA albums more than Napster or Kazaa ever did. (Well, there is Regnyouth, but the downloading is such a pain in the ass for most of it that I only ever really bother with things that I own on a format that I can't convert like cassette, or that I listen to once and delete, like Interpol). But where do you go for weirdo music? Anything you've found in digging through these sites that's struck your fancy? (And if you have sharities to, well, share: You Send It, Rapidshare and MegaUpload are pretty much the gold standard.) *From Bellybongo †From WM ‡From Basic Hip °From Comfort Stand
posted by klangklangston at 10:39 PM PST - 5 comments

Google Earth Threatens Democracy - Again! Sequel to an earlier article at The Register, here are some Google Earth shots of things which some would rather keep non-public, such as the recently uncensored White House roof or Russian nuke silos(page 1), or which stealth aircraft are parked at which air bases(page 3). Find more and send them in for their next dispatch.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 9:06 PM PST - 12 comments

Still Broke? Things getting worse? Well you should follow your own advice! Continued from.
posted by lalochezia at 8:25 PM PST - 41 comments

Lifted from the fabulous Tween: "Start with botany, mix in a little nanotechnology and genetic engineering, add a dash of sci-fi daydreams and maybe you’d end up with something like the creatures in 1st Avenue Machine’s new music video for Alias." [quicktime]. Click on projects for other examples of 1stavemachine's work.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 8:17 PM PST - 9 comments

JetBlue flight 292 , with 145 people on board, is currently circling LAX, burning fuel while it prepares for an emergency landing with its nose gear twisted 90 degrees.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 5:33 PM PST - 177 comments

Oh my. This could get very ugly.
posted by guidonDeBascogne at 5:29 PM PST - 177 comments

Collection of slow motion videos and zero gravity videos, and super hi speed trick shot pool videos, etc... Some in WMV, some in QT.
posted by jonson at 4:28 PM PST - 13 comments

Bringing new meaning to the term 'wingman' : Study demonstrates kin selection among wild turkeys
posted by expialidocious at 4:14 PM PST - 4 comments

Football's live streams live football matches on the internet
posted by halo7879 at 3:25 PM PST - 17 comments

Why is everybody mad about the cups?

Last month there were those who were mad about “made-in-Israel-paper cups” at the King Khaled National Guard Hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Now it’s a quote from novelist Armistead Maupin inscribed on Starbucks coffee cups at Baylor University that have made others mad!

Concerned Women for America charged that Starbucks is promoting a homosexual agenda with some paper cups containing Maupin’s quote:

"My only regret about being gay is that I repressed it for so long. I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don't make that mistake yourself. Life's too damn short."

CWA demanded that the cups containing the quote be removed from campus. Baylor Dining Services complied with the request.

(What exactly is the “homosexual agenda”?)
posted by ericb at 12:32 PM PST - 94 comments

New Orleans wasn't the first American city destroyed by flooding. In 1938, Orange County was devastated by over 15 feet of floodwater after two weeks of rain. 2000 were homeless in Anaheim alone after the Santa Ana river overflowed its banks. Most of those made homeless were Mexican immigrants and the flood was quickly forgotten.

An eyewitness description.
posted by huskerdont at 11:09 AM PST - 24 comments

Photos Beyond the Wall "We take you out of the visiting room and place you "inside" the romantic or exotic location of your choice!" Photographs taken in prisons can be photoshopped to magical lands far far away.
posted by keli at 11:00 AM PST - 17 comments

Boobs 4 Bourbon St. Brit, Justin Ross, wanting to help out with the Katrina recovery came up with a novel idea to raise money. Use what NOLA is known for best. Boobies. So far a treasure chest of $14K has been raised [via here's my byline]
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 10:08 AM PST - 51 comments

I just finished up reading The Turk by Tom Standage (briefly mentioned in passing here) a biography of the chess-playing automaton that toured Europe and later the Americas during the pivotal transition from the 18th to the 19th century. The Automaton was invented as an exercise in national pride by Wolfgang von Kempelen, who considered it a trifle compared to his experiments with mechanical speech synthesis. As a celebrity, the automaton had historic encounters with Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon, Beethoven, Philidor and Charles Babbage, and fictional encounters with the monarchs Catherine the Great, George III and Frederick II. Standage credits it with influencing the development of the Difference Engine, the power loom, Poe's mystery stories, and Barnum's manipulation of the press. The myths surrounding have even caught James Randi, who seems to have been unaware of a colleague's reconstruction based on notes from the last owner.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 9:57 AM PST - 7 comments

THE COLOUR PURPLE [is a] Cadbury Limited trademark...
The color Blue is a Trademark of The Dow Chemical Company
The color YELLOW™ is a trademark of Mr.LongArm, Inc.
[T]he color PINK, and other trademarks identified with a ® in these documents are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Owens-Corning Fiberglas Technology Inc.
The color canary yellow is a trademark of 3M.
The color orange is a trademark of Dandy Products, Inc.
The color green is A trademark of Sullair Corporation.
posted by grouse at 9:21 AM PST - 42 comments

Philadelphia Priest scandal unfolds The Philadelphia Archdiocese concealed sexual abuse by priests for four decades, but no criminal charges can be brought against the church or its priests because of the constraints of state law, according to grand jury findings released Wednesday. With 63 confirmed and as many as 170 suspected - all accused of multiple acts, Priests in the city of brotherly love are making a mockery of the city's moniker. It's being reported that Both Cardinal Bevilacqua and Cardinal Kroll not only ignored the abuse but were complicit in preventing the abuse from being reported to the police.
posted by j.p. Hung at 9:16 AM PST - 61 comments

1. Take Pictures.
2. ????
3. Profit!
posted by monju_bosatsu at 8:59 AM PST - 12 comments

"You have selected Regicide..." How to get a human on the phone for dozens of IVR systems. And a bonus page for Amazon, e-Bay, and PayPal.
posted by frykitty at 8:16 AM PST - 43 comments

War has been declared, the legislative body has been abolished, and the elected leader changed his title to "supreme leader" Do not question the "School Spirit".
posted by delmoi at 7:44 AM PST - 25 comments

"In histories of the crusading movement the Second Crusade generally figures briefly as a fiasco..." From the stupendous six volume A History of the Crusades online at the University of Wisconsin.
At Fordham's Internet Medieval Sourcebook, one can see maps of all the early Crusades (as well as taking a Medieval Geography Quiz). Here is a "clickable" map of The First Crusade. Also at Fordham is a fabulous account of the capture of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1187. At the Hanover Historical Texts Project read primary sources, mostly letters, about the Crusades, including this nice letter from Count Stephen to his wife Adele: "Next we conquered for the Lord all Romania." Manchester University has an extensive portal for information about the Crusades; and the Xenophon Group at the Military History Database has a great site giving overviews of all nine Crusades.
Finally, since everyone loves a picture, from the Bibliotheque nationale de France, here are some pictures from illuminated manuscripts. These ones of the sieges of Acre and Tunis are quite nice. Check out the archers!
posted by OmieWise at 6:23 AM PST - 51 comments

Placeopedia combines Wikipedia and Google Maps.
posted by Tlogmer at 5:32 AM PST - 11 comments

National Geographic has a special issue on Africa out this month. There's also their Africa resource site.
posted by Gyan at 12:35 AM PST - 17 comments

***The following statements are graphic, truthful, and discuss UNRATIONAL behavior*** The people on T.V., (99% being Black) were DEMANDING help. They were not asking nicely but demanding as if society owed these people something. Well the honest truth is WE DON'T.... We are inviting the lowest of the low to Houston. And like idiots we are serving the people who will soon steal our cars, rape, murder, and destroy our city while stealing from our pockets on a daily basis through the welfare checks they take. I would call them NIGGERS, but the actual definition of a nigger is one who is ignorant, these people were not ignorant... I got one of the variations of this in my e-mail from someone I know who is fairly reasonable and fairly pro-Bush. And I started thinking about the "NOLA folks spending their aid money on lap dances" (or what have you) type stories and I started wondering where the racism goes from blur to clarity (the respective blogs taken as whole). The halfwit dupes like Jillian Bandes who absorb or regurgitate these ideas (unconsciously or otherwise) vs. the overt sort of racism and the monsters that spread it. They can appear strangely wholesome in a bizzaro Olsen twin sort of way. But they are serious in a way that makes the "Bush doesn't like black people" thing seem quaint (in the old-fashioned but not necessarily authentic, sense of the word). But I can't tell which is more insidious, which is more dangerous.
posted by Smedleyman at 11:11 PM PST - 107 comments

Ball Bounce. A game where the object is to get the ball to the other side.
posted by caddis at 10:00 PM PST - 46 comments

Ashton Kutcher's voicemails. Remember when Paris Hilton's Sidekick was hacked? Well, now some merry pranksters are claiming they've got Ashton Kutcher's voicemails. (NSFW - Some naughty voicemails. It's also very dumb.)
posted by papakwanz at 7:44 PM PST - 19 comments

Interview with Stella : a comedy troupe of three guys in suits. Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter, and David Wain have already hit Comedy Central and tonight, they premiere their show on Canada's Comedy Network. An older interview can be found here, from the newspaper that Michael Showalter reads while he's taking a poo.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 7:12 PM PST - 45 comments

Holy Transformation! Watch as Gotham City's favorite librarian Barbara Gordon becomes Batgirl with a only few flashy accessories and a skirt that doubles as a cape! Check out more tv good'n's here.
posted by rokabiri at 4:48 PM PST - 22 comments

Tennessee: 'Close Down Your Ex-Gay Ministry!' --remember Zach, the 16-year-old sent to Love in Action so that he could be cured of being gay? The state has finally ordered the places shut down. Original post on him here: Pray out the Gay!
Unfortunately, this is the state's reasoning: ... The state inspected two facilities in Memphis on Aug. 19 and determined Love In Action International Inc. was providing housing, meals and personal care for mentally ill patients without a license, according to a subsequent letter to the organization from the Department of Mental Health. ... (and more at Cherryblossom)
posted by amberglow at 4:20 PM PST - 65 comments

Cool gallery of tiny, tiny people doing detailed farming work on pieces of fruit. Horrible flash interface, frequent use of French.
posted by jonson at 4:01 PM PST - 32 comments

Tons of British Food for Katrina Victims to be Incinerated (link to Mirror article)
More red tape embarrassment for the Katrina relief effort. This time, tons of food donated by the UK is set to be incinerated rather than delivered to hungry evacuees. The FDA recalled the food rations, which had been loaded onto trucks and sent out for distribution, because they had been "condemned as unfit for human consumption". Never mind the glaring fact that these are the same food rations being eaten by British soldiers in Iraq right now.
posted by fenriq at 3:39 PM PST - 82 comments

Undersea images from veteran NG photographer David Doubilet. This is my favorite shot. (Related: photos of breaching rays by Michael Albert; underwater photography on blueoceanart.com -- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).
posted by of strange foe at 3:31 PM PST - 24 comments

Region 4 Vs The World "Well I for one have had enough. I have a voice and it’s time that it was heard." Frustrated film fan in Australia reports on their dvd scene.
posted by feelinglistless at 2:57 PM PST - 31 comments

NFT (not for tourists) has relaunched their web site. Their city guide books are excellent and they offer free city guides in PDF format (editorializing inside).
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 2:39 PM PST - 25 comments

Telly looks at Birmingham [Realplayer] One of TV's most famous detectives and Hollywood actors, Telly Savalas, takes a look at England's second city - part of the Baim Collection
posted by Navek Rednam at 1:55 PM PST - 8 comments

Want to watch porn for a living? The FBI might have a job for you. Yes, AG Gonzales is launching a crackdown on porn -- the "consenting adults" kind. After all, it worked so well for Ed Meese's legacy. The memo specifically mentions "sadistic and masochistic behavior" -- isn't it ironic that that DoJ could soon be bringing charges against people who take pictures of acts which the Attorney General has stated were perfectly legal when carried out in Guantanamo Bay?
posted by clevershark at 1:02 PM PST - 80 comments

Alive in Truth is an all-volunteer, grassroots effort to record oral and written history (along with photographs) about the lives of displaced New Orleanians, in their own words. Alive in Truth began on September 4, 2005 outside the Austin Convention Center, which served as a shelter for 6,000 New Orleans residents. Most of these were evacuated from the Superdome, the Convention Center, the I-10 Overpass, or their own roofs.
posted by ericb at 12:17 PM PST - 3 comments

Tactile Photographs. I created this series of tactile photographic prints as part of a project about the deafblind community in Boston, called "Senses". The works are produced through a CNC laser etching process that removes the top portion of the wood. The darker the image is a any particular point, the more wood is removed by the laser at that point. The result is a photographic relief that can be touched as well as seen.
posted by mabelstreet at 11:32 AM PST - 12 comments

The hypocrisy of governments shows in the video game industry in way too many ways. From silly scared actions to obvious flip/flopping. Of course, the most famous game for political action has had a lot of discussion and action(1 2 3) which erupted into something that proves Illinois is a "red state". Or, go to Australia and take it one step further. But the governments do not ignore the enormous income, and thus give incentives.
posted by cleverusername at 11:00 AM PST - 38 comments

Taking a leaf out of Ann Coulter's book. Jillian Brandes, a writer for the UNC-Chapel Hill student paper "The Daily Tar Hill" wrote an opinion column that included the sentence, I want all Arabs to be stripped naked and cavity-searched if they get within 100 yards of an airport. She was then fired from the paper. But don't worry about her future. "Within a day, she was being interviewed by radio stations throughout the country. Her case was gobbled up by the conservative media and featured on a major professional journalism Web site Thursday."
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 10:54 AM PST - 71 comments

Oh... My... God. I can't tell if this is a hoax, but it would seem genuine enough if it weren't so surreal. I mean... advertising. On homeless sign boards. I'm going to go hold my head under the bathwater until I stop struggling, now.
posted by shmegegge at 10:12 AM PST - 71 comments

A Cultural Geography of the United States and Canada. Many, many great maps from Valparaiso University. The section on religion, in particular, contains a great deal of interesting data.
posted by Gamblor at 9:54 AM PST - 25 comments

Googlenet. What if Google wanted to give Wi-Fi access to everyone in America? And what if it had technology capable of targeting advertising to a user’s precise location? The gatekeeper of the world’s information could become one of the globe’s biggest Internet providers and one of its most powerful ad sellers, basically supplanting telecoms in one fell swoop. What was speculation this last month, now seems to be getting closer. However, it looks like it's raising hackles, similar to the ugly memories of google web accelerator beta which was cancelled just a few days after release
posted by Mave_80 at 8:58 AM PST - 41 comments

Liquid Sculpture: (beautiful high-speed and fine-art photography of drops and splashes) owes a debt of thanks to Harold Edgerton, inventor of high-speed stroboscopic photography. A class on high-speed photography at the Edgerton Exploration Center starts in 4 days in Aurora, NE.
posted by spock at 8:51 AM PST - 16 comments

Selling the American Indian: The controversial work of Edward S. Curtis
posted by .kobayashi. at 8:44 AM PST - 21 comments

Explosion Over the N-Word When Kanye West blasted President Bush’s treatment of poor black people in New Orleans after Katrina hit, the rapper unintentionally set off a hurricane of words in Florida. The Independent Florida Alligator, the student newspaper, ran a cartoon last week that criticized West’s statements by showing him holding a large playing card marked “The Race Card,” and having Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, exclaim with scorn at West: “Nigga Please!”
posted by Postroad at 8:14 AM PST - 135 comments

Words of wisdom from a wombat. (flash) From the Foundation for a Global Community. Also, an Extraordinary Moment.
posted by loquacious at 8:02 AM PST - 10 comments

Got off the phone with my dad a little after midnight. He said, "It looks like this is finally the big one we've been talking about all these years..." Will the town made famous by Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, Jimmy Buffet, Mel Fisher, and, er, Pat Croce be the next metropolitan casualty?
posted by soyjoy at 7:17 AM PST - 55 comments

The Aquatic Ape Theory (often referred to as the AAT or AAH) says humans went through an aquatic or semi-aquatic stage in our evolution and that this accounts for many features seen in human anatomy and physiology. Using the principle of convergent evolution, it says that life in an aquatic environment explains these features, and that a transition from ape to hominid in a non-aquatic environment cannot. See also: BBC (excellent), Wikipedia, Google.
posted by grumblebee at 7:07 AM PST - 48 comments

Newsreels [Windows Media] from the Flood of 1953 in the Netherlands.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:37 AM PST - 7 comments

Weight lifting in prisons & correctional recreation. With interesting legal commentary and videos.
posted by saysthis at 5:45 AM PST - 24 comments

What the co-inventor of the Pill didn't know about menstruation can endanger women's health: "The passion and urgency that animated the birth-control debates of the sixties are now a memory. John Rock still matters, though, for the simple reason that in the course of reconciling his church and his work he made an error. It was not a deliberate error. It became manifest only after his death, and through scientific advances he could not have anticipated. But because that mistake shaped the way he thought about the Pill--about what it was, and how it worked, and most of all what it meant--and because John Rock was one of those responsible for the way the Pill came into the world, his error has colored the way people have thought about contraception ever since."
posted by heatherann at 5:23 AM PST - 54 comments

While the Democrats seem a spent force in the United States, fighting to hold its political relevance in a political system dominated by the Right, here in Australia, our own Centre Left party is facing a similar battle. The Australian Labor Party (ALP) is being attacked not by Prime Minister John Howard but by one of their own, former leader Mark Latham. In his new book The Latham Diaries, released today, Latham ferociously attacks the party that paid his way through University and gave him his first job. His major claim is that current leader of the ALP, Kim Beazley, waged a six year smear campaign against him and that this disloyalty, as well as an antagnostic press, resulted in the devestating defeat of the ALP at the 1996 general election.

To say that this book, which seems to be based on one man's vitriol rather than solid, well researched facts, has created a storm in a teacup would be to understate the media circus that has erupted since News Limited, Rupert Murdoch's publishing empire, began to publish exerpts from the book a week before it's launch. In this media circus, we have seen court battles, internal media-institution bickering, and article after article after article. Meanwhile, the ALP has closed ranks and rallied around it's embattled leader, though some Labor MPs have suggested that Latham's claims may hold more water than many would give him credit for. Others, such as Beazley's own daughters, have simply dismissed the claims as "bitter and hateful rantings" at their webblog.

But what is the real effect of the Diaries? What was Latham's intent in releasing them? Was it merely to make money? Are they simply the ramblings of a bitter loser? Or in his own, twisted (and probably ill-concieved) way, was he aiming to achieve the change of culture in the ALP he believes needs to occur? And, perhaps sweetest of all things to ponder over, has Latham used the media he hated so much to acheive all of this?
posted by Effigy2000 at 4:34 AM PST - 17 comments

Goodnight, mr. Wiesenthal
posted by matteo at 4:22 AM PST - 67 comments

Opera is free. If Opera isn't the best browser, then it's a very close second. They hope to make money through ad revenue generated by search engines instead of banners.
posted by raaka at 3:00 AM PST - 77 comments

Bye.
posted by delmoi at 1:54 AM PST - 49 comments

The world's biggest thief? A warrant has been issued against former Iraqi Interim Defense Minister Hazim Shaalan for defrauding Iraq of over $1 billion. In January, I posted to MeFi about Shaalan's possible involvement in a $300 million fraud scheme and the murder of two American arms merchants. What is more troubling, however, is that the U.S. government may have turned a blind eye to this massive defrauding of the Iraqi people. Prior to his role as Defense Minister, Shaalan ran a real estate agency in Britain and had no prior military qualifications. For this reason, Juan Cole believes it likely that Shaalan was a CIA agent, while Ahmed Chalabi accused Sha'alan of spying for Saddam. Meanwhile, the insurgents accused Shaalan of conspiring with the Bush administration to scrap Iraq's heavy weaponry. What does seem clear is that he apparently tried to buy broken Soviet-era armored vehicles and 28-year-old, second-hand Polish helicopters too old to fly at a premium, while pocketing lucrative kickbacks. Which begs the question -- if the U.S. government really wanted a strong, independent Iraqi military, then why doesn't it give Iraq the heavy arms they'll need to defend themselves?
posted by insomnia_lj at 1:53 AM PST - 17 comments

Where did all the bananas go? Bananas are awesome. Popular Science has an article about how they are going extinct. Apparently in the early 1900's the main variety of banana died out and was replaced by what we know today. According to this article, it's happening again.

o/~ Work all night on a drink of rum
Daylight come and me wan' go home
Stack banana till de mornin' come
Daylight come and me wan' go home o/~

posted by crocos at 12:34 AM PST - 49 comments

Never mind jumping the shark, has Tom Green lost it? As if Freddy Got Fingered wasn't sad enough, the former Mr. Drew Barrymore is picking blogfights with bloggers!? Isn't it embarrassing enough to be a quasi-celeb with a blog, let alone use it to rally your fans into send hate-mail and threats to a little-known blogger? Or is this just another childish attempt to embarrass his parents?
posted by tsarfan at 10:23 PM PST - 52 comments

Free, good science fiction for download, some you might have seen, some new, all are worth the time. If you have only a few minutes, Michael Swanick's Science Fiction Table of the Elements features 108 short short stories. If you have a little more time, Kelly Link, called by Neil Gaiman "the best short story writer currently out there" has released her much-praised collection Stranger Things Happen. For longer reads, Charlie Stross has made available his cyberpunk novel Accelerando and his Lovecraftish Colder War. The creepier Peter Watts has posted the New York Times Notable Book Starfish, and its sequels as well [previously]. If you haven't had enough, you should check out the Baen Free Library, with books by everyone from Andre Norton to Larry Niven, as well as a large amount of right-of-center combat-oriented stuff by David Weber and friends. Also, the Science Fiction Channel has made available many well-known classic short stories as well as a lot of contemporary Hugo and World Fantasy Award winners [previously]. Finally, you probably already know that Cory Doctorow has four novels available under creative commons. Happy reading!
posted by blahblahblah at 9:34 PM PST - 59 comments

A Healthy Heart [possibly slightly NSFW intro] A slick Flash interface with 3D navigation controls, zoomable graphics, video segments, interactive models. From Anatomical Travelogue.
posted by tellurian at 9:27 PM PST - 8 comments

Trendwatching reports on "emerging consumer trends and related new business ideas." It is packed with ideas and links for new online business concepts that are currently emerging. The language is marketingpersonbuzzspeak, but the ideas (with supporting website examples) are fascinating.
posted by stbalbach at 8:19 PM PST - 28 comments

Lisa Randall's Theory of Communication about Science
posted by Gyan at 7:24 PM PST - 26 comments

Bring dead LCD pixels back to life! Did you know you can often fix dead LCD pixels by forcing them to rapidly cycle through red, green, and blue? Neither did I, but the video linked here worked on one of my older screens after a few hours of looped playback. YMMV, but what have you got to lose?
posted by pmbuko at 4:06 PM PST - 32 comments

UK politician chooses his blog over his party: Paul Leake, a Liberal Democrat councillor in Durham, was asked by his local party to remove any "controversial" posts from his weblog and to give them the right to vet future posts. Denis Jackson, another Liberal Democrat on Durham City Council, said that the Labour councillors were using the blog to find "lurid headlines". Leake refused, and stepped down from the party. He'll now serve his constituents as an independent. [Via The Political Weblog Project]
posted by tapeguy at 3:41 PM PST - 3 comments

UK soldiers 'storm' Basra prison: 2 british soldiers, presumably special forces shot at police, were arrested. then the brit army (this in basra) wanted them. police refused, a RIOT broke out, one brit tracked vehicle burned, 3 personnel injured. 100+ prisoners escaped when the British broke a wall down in the jail Okay, I'm pretty sure this could have been handled differently...
posted by Elim at 3:31 PM PST - 76 comments

speech bubbles - fun times with guerilla art, Ji Lee printed 50,000 speech bubbles and plastered movie posters, advertisements and whatever with them in NYC, then came back and photographed what people added (via)
posted by sourbrew at 3:29 PM PST - 41 comments

Because everybody needs a beautiful mouse.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 3:28 PM PST - 18 comments

Still Separate, Still Unequal: America's Educational Apartheid, by Jonathon Kozol, from the September issue of Harper's. Even if you're familiar with a big-city public-school system , it's an eye-opener. (Also, if (like I might be on a worse day) you're miffed by yet another Harper's cover story FPP, what do you think about the posting site's Fair Use application? I've never seen that before. No more inside.)
posted by mrgrimm at 2:51 PM PST - 29 comments

Neomuet films. Look old; are new.
posted by scody at 2:46 PM PST - 5 comments

Throughout his childhood, David Myers was told that his skin color was a disease called melanism. He was lucky, his mother said, because the skin discoloration was all over his body, instead of just splotches of brown like most people had. So despite his dark skin, Myers grew up in white, middle-class neighborhoods in Ohio and New York believing he was white.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 1:06 PM PST - 54 comments

NASA today announced their plans for a return moon trip by 2018. No doubt this thread could go a million different ways, but what interests me the most about the plan is its simplicity. NASA may have learned its lesson from the overly ambitious and complex Shuttle program and appears to be aiming for much greater simplicity this time around. Part of the beauty of this plan is utilizing those parts of the Shuttle system which have been proven to work well: SSMEs (Space Shuttle Main Engines) and SRBs (Solid Rocket Boosters). Propulsion is often the thorniest part of any space launch, and it seems like combining the known variables of those systems with Apollo-era design may just work. If we are re-focusing NASA on exploration, the 21st Century Lewis & Clarke, and the agency can execute, I'll be pretty excited about moving on to Mars.
posted by tgrundke at 11:54 AM PST - 156 comments

Plague in World of Warcraft.
posted by srboisvert at 10:23 AM PST - 58 comments

Moonwalking birds. This is an awesome video of a Manakin bird doing the Michael Jackson thing.
posted by dov3 at 9:39 AM PST - 20 comments

Dogs in bee costumes
posted by jonson at 8:59 AM PST - 46 comments

Foil the paparazzi Georgia Tech researchers come up with a system that senses nearby digital imaging devices, and fires a beam of light at 'em, foiling attempts to take pictures of 'ya. More high-tech (but less entertaining) than having Sean Penn smash the paparazzi cameras.
posted by RonZ at 8:05 AM PST - 28 comments

Disaster relief? Call in the Marines President Bush suggested a larger disaster relief role for the armed forces in his national address last week, and Congress has indicated it will take up the issue this autumn. Though the topic has emerged at other troubled times - most recently 9/11 - Congress has always avoided amending Posse Comitatus, the law that has kept active-duty soldiers out of civilian law-enforcement affairs since Reconstruction.
posted by Postroad at 7:48 AM PST - 43 comments

Petrol prices hurting your wallet? Try stealing it instead! A Sydney man has been accused of siphoning 1,000 litres (265 gallons) of fuel from a service station into a large home-made tank in his van. Police allege the 36-year-old man used a Toyota Town Ace van to take petrol from a service station's underground tanks. Another 44,000 litres of fuel (or there about) is yet to be accounted for though.

Police allegedly found fittings and equipment inside the van that could be used to steal petrol from service stations, including a home made tank.

Hard times huh? Sorry there's no photo to go with this. The guy's van is an awesome sight though. Best I've got is streaming video via ABC News (Windows HQ or LQ).
posted by sjvilla79 at 7:15 AM PST - 25 comments

Today is "Talk Like a Pirate" Day. Yarr! Do yer part, landlubbers, by translating yer favorite webpage into pirate-speak. Yarr!
posted by starkeffect at 3:07 AM PST - 96 comments

Won't somebody please think of the children? Oh, don't fool yourselves! Americans under the age of 12 now spend or influence the spending of $565 billion a year - up from $2.2 billion in 1968, and kid-spending has roughly doubled every ten years for the past three decades, tripling in the 1990s. Which means someone is always thinking of the children. The American Association of Pediatrics (pdf) cites this bludgeoning of kidvertising as creating in children "a fever for shopping and spending, swollen expectations about material needs, decreasing immunity to the assaults of advertisers, self-concepts defined by brands of clothing, and a rash of of debt by the time they leave college". [more...]
posted by taz at 1:46 AM PST - 54 comments

What has happened to Iraq's missing $1bn? "The money missing from all ministries under the interim Iraqi government appointed by the US in June 2004 may turn out to be close[r] to $2bn... Many Iraqi soldiers and police have died because they were not properly equipped. In Baghdad they often ride in civilian pick-up trucks vulnerable to gunfire, rocket- propelled grenades or roadside bombs. For months even men defusing bombs had no protection against blasts because they worked without bullet-proof vests. These were often promised but never turned up."
posted by Rothko at 11:15 PM PST - 20 comments

Jets meet-up suggest that George Bush really does not like black people. A post over at Grabthar's Hammer analyses a recent photo-op of the President with the New York Jets, and figures out that the probability of the black players having been kept out of the immediate vicinity of Dubya (as you can see is the case in the photos supplied on the post) was 0.4%.
posted by noizyboy at 9:36 PM PST - 37 comments

Okay, I admit it. I have a DVD player, and I even have a TV ... that I watch! I didn't find myself buying many DVDs though, until I discovered that I could waste my money buying TV shows on DVD, finding the ones I like usually through word of (mostly analog, sometimes digital) mouth. When deciding whether or not to Netflix and/or buy Smallville, I came across DVD Verdict, and I found the site's conceit--to present each review of a particular DVD as one would present evidence in a trial, then deliver a verdict--to be charming rather than annoying. Chalk it up to generally good and entertaining writing, and very in-depth DVD reviews. Oh, the site's authors like Smallville. But then their motto is "truth, justice, and the digital way"...when it's not "making the jump from heroin to digital smoother since 1999".
posted by WolfDaddy at 9:20 PM PST - 16 comments

Hey God, are you there? It's me flamingbore. An Indirect Line to God, for the Godless.
posted by FlamingBore at 6:59 PM PST - 33 comments

Consensus View
New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki's book The Wisdom of Crowds "explores a deceptively simple idea that has profound implications: large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant—better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future." Now this idea has been put into practice with Consensus View, a site where you can enter your predictions on stocks, commodities, and currencies, and view the group consensus. (from wsj.com)
posted by reverendX at 5:52 PM PST - 46 comments

Left Behind: Bush's Holy War on Nature. Chip Ward enumerates the bizarro-world logic and Orwellian language of current American environmental policy. Even as Katrina's aftermath is focusing attention on links between global warming and more severe hurricanes, and studies of arctic sea-ice suggest that we may be 'past the point of no return' of climate change, the Department of "Justice" seems intent on blaming the flood of New Orleans on environmental groups. This War on Terra may not end in our lifetimes (despite the number of lives it will end...)
posted by dinsdale at 5:36 PM PST - 33 comments

QuickTime panoramas from the annual Sziget pop festival. I love getting these things and spinning them around at full speed but it can be a bit disconcerting with the The Boom Family Snuff Puppets surrounding you. And hey! spot the guy caught lighting up a doobie at the Yann Tiersen concert.
posted by tellurian at 5:17 PM PST - 2 comments

"If time has to end, it can be described, instant by instant," Mr. Palomar thinks, "and each instant, when described, expands so that its end can no longer be seen." He decides that he will set himself to describing every instant of his life, and until he has described them all he will no longer think of being dead. At that moment he dies.
In memoriam of Italo Calvino, who died exactly 20 years ago.
"Calvino's novels" by his friend Gore Vidal. Calvino's obituary by Vidal, il maestro William Weaver's essay on Calvino's cities, Jeanette Winterson on Calvino's dream of being invisible, and Stefano Franchi's philosophical study on Palomar's doctrine of the void. More inside.
posted by matteo at 3:45 PM PST - 18 comments

For a while now, Warren Ellis has been doing web community stunts, such as the 12 hour forum, Scream talking, The Friday Stunt & probably a few things I missed, to which you can post links to remind everyone.

Recently he started The Engine.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:13 AM PST - 14 comments

George Bush Doesn't Care about Black People: The Remix? Kanye West's anti-Bush ad lib on a telethon for the victims of Hurricane Katrina has already attracted considerable controversy, but now Legendary K.O. of the Houston rap group, the K-Otix, has decided to immortalize Kanye West's soundbite by incorporating it into a mash-up with Kanye's song Golddigger. The K-Otix rewrote Golddigger's lyrics to serve as an indictment of Bush and his sluggish response to Katrina, while simultaneously promoting Houston Hurricane Aid to help displaced residents of New Orleans. Other rappers including Mos Def have already recorded songs in response to the disaster, while other performers such as Jay-Z and Usher have rallied to Kanye West's defense.
posted by jonp72 at 11:22 PM PST - 172 comments

Smaller than a DVD player - small enough to sit comfortably under the hood of any truck or car - it could be big enough to solve the world's greenhouse gas emission problems, at least for the near future. In fact, it could make the Kyoto protocol obsolete.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 9:49 PM PST - 72 comments

Taking NYC by Storm: The Moscow Cats Theatre. Also with dogs and clowns, apparently.
posted by Dr. Zira at 9:45 PM PST - 15 comments

Vera Hall was a black woman born near Livingston, Alabama at the turn of the century. She grew up in a supportive family and community, but in difficult, poor rural living conditions. At a young age, Hall became a respected and devout member of the church, and remained so for the rest of her years. But after leaving home, she also fell in with more worldly crowd, for whom blues, craps, and alcohol were the entertainments of choice. The tension between these two spheres-- that of spirituals and the church, on one hand, and that of blues and the juke-joint, on the other-- is a theme that recurred throughout her life and infused her music. She drew upon both perspectives to cope with and overcome her life's perennial difficulties; sadly, it was dotted with tragedy: she lost both parents, a sister, a husband, a daughter, and two grandchildren-- all before she herself passed away in 1964 at the age of 58.

The Vera Hall Project [+}
posted by y2karl at 9:31 PM PST - 5 comments

John Byrne v. Wikipedia John Byrne, comic writer and alleged curmedgeon, and his legions of fans did not like Byrne's entry on Wikipedia. Ultimately, he and his supporters " managed to raise such a stink that the head of the Wiki project himself stepped in and edited Byrne’s entry down to what Byrne wants."
posted by Joey Michaels at 8:48 PM PST - 79 comments

Eyemaze releases third GROW. Click each of the ten items to add them to the world and watch them evolve (or not) each round. Click them in the right order to win.
posted by pmbuko at 8:46 PM PST - 17 comments

This jewel case makes its own music. One Bit Music is a project by composer and artist Tristan Perich. Merging his interests in physical computing and electronic music, Perich programs and packages electronics in a standard CD jewel case. The device plays minimal glitch/dance music when headphones are plugged in. You may remember him from such classics as the push button telephone to cellphone conversion.
posted by caddis at 6:57 PM PST - 13 comments

Farewell o verse
along the road.
So sad to see
you're out of mode.
posted by billb at 4:28 PM PST - 19 comments

Bill Clinton kicks back, stretches his legs, sips on a diet coke and answers questions. He free to say whatever he wants now, so he chats on about everything from AIDS in China to global warming to Roswell (Yes, that Roswell) at the recent CPSA Investor's Forum in Hong Kong. Part 1, Part 2.
posted by gimonca at 4:25 PM PST - 64 comments

Today, Canadians are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the life and death our greatest hero - Terry Fox. I was only 10 years old when Terry dipped his artificial leg in the Atlantic ocean and began his run across Canada with the aim of raising just $1 for each Canadian. Sadly, he had to end his run after only the halfway point when the Cancer spread to his lungs. Terry passed away less than a year later. Terry Fox runs worldwide have raised exponential amounts more than Terry could have ever imagined. He makes me proud to be Canadian, and I still get choked up thinking about him.
posted by SSinVan at 3:49 PM PST - 31 comments

What is the difference between refugees and expelled persons? Refugees leave home and land for fear of what would happen to them, or they were driven out. Expellees are told to leave their home country, often immediately. Their added and deep trauma is broken trust
"Modern Wars and the Civilian Experience as shown in my experience in World War II", by Greta Zybon
posted by PenguinBukkake at 3:43 PM PST - 2 comments

Doctors suing patients Are you angry and upset because of what a doctor did or did not do during a medical procedure? Did you express your anger online? Now doctors are suing patients for expressing their anger online.
posted by halekon at 1:07 PM PST - 31 comments

Firms with White House ties get Katrina contracts Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root and Bechtel have been awarded no-bid contracts in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. There's also this.
posted by wsg at 11:24 AM PST - 79 comments

Chinese Ice Sculptures from an annual contest; nice use of colored ice & colored lights to add another dimension to the sculptures.
posted by jonson at 10:43 AM PST - 5 comments

Virtual Rome [via]
posted by peacay at 10:20 AM PST - 8 comments

Yesterday morning in Florida, the landing gear on a student-piloted Cessna failed to lock into place. After the plane circled for an hour, the airport president drove a Jeep underneath the plane at 80 mph while his passenger took a stick and knocked the wheels into place. And that, as they say in the business, was caught on tape.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 6:01 AM PST - 47 comments

Freddie Hoffman is a geek. He's ridden one million miles on a bicycle, and he's still at it. More here (pdf).
posted by fixedgear at 5:33 AM PST - 31 comments

WeFunkRadio.com has 390 full shows available for download featuring the funk, underground hip-hop, and rare grooves that are so hard to find. BitTorrents are available for the two most recent shows and there's always the audio stream and podcasts coming at you fresh from Montréal's CKUT radio.
posted by furtive at 10:42 PM PST - 15 comments

To the Citizens of the United States of America: In light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. - John Cleese
posted by signal at 9:46 PM PST - 61 comments

The Story is Over. - At least, the story is over for The Indictor. Being rotated out, he's leaving his post at Outpost Crystal; drawing the curtains on one of the few consistent wellsprings for information from New Orleans.
posted by jcterminal at 8:51 PM PST - 25 comments

Steal this bus! Up for auction: The Ultimate Hippy Vacation. You will be required to sell Tie-dyed T-shirts for gas and food money. UPDATE!! Cody has contacted the mother ship. He said today the stars are in alignment, but the destination is still unknown. I believe I mentioned that my brother-in-law might be a little "touched in the head". Maybe it runs in the family.
posted by loquacious at 5:36 PM PST - 19 comments

Delete the Border Pictures and links about worldwide action taken against border controls.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 3:33 PM PST - 24 comments

Englands proposed kitchen knife ban. Since May, "A&E doctors [have been] calling for a ban on long pointed kitchen knives to reduce deaths from stabbing." That's right, kitchen knives. Apparently, a full 1/3 of all deaths in the UK are knife-related. "The doctors, as part of their research into ways to reduce violence, say they consulted with leading chefs who said long knives were not needed for cooking." But not everyone agrees: Peter Hamm, a spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which supports gun control, joked, "Can sharp stick control be far behind?"
posted by j.p. Hung at 2:29 PM PST - 96 comments

A racist moron gets punched in the head for wearing a racist shirt to his high school. The undershirt the white student wore had a confederate flag on the front with the words "Keep it flying." On the back, a cartoon depicted a group of hooded Klansmen standing outside a church, waving to two others who had just pulled away in a car reading "Just married." Two black men in nooses were being dragged behind. Yet, somehow, he declares he's not racist: "I'm not racist or anything," he said. "It's just, some people I hate, some people I don't get along with. And black people just happen to be the ones because they think they're better than everyone else." [via SLOG; Previous Fleming Island Clothing Issues]
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 1:46 PM PST - 150 comments

Artistic interpretations of literary figures drawn by comic book artists . Personal favorites: Joe Kubert's Edgar Allan Poe, Dave McKean's Salman Rushdie, Steve Pugh's Lady Macbeth, and Alex Toth's Charlie Chan.
posted by Gamblor at 1:42 PM PST - 16 comments

...After the raid, an Iraqi informer walked among detainees, pointing them out to U.S. troops. Despite being disguised with a bag over his head, the informer was recognized by his fellow villagers by his yellow sandals and his amputated thumb. His name was Sabah. ...The next day, his father and brother, carrying AK-47s, entered his room before dawn and took him behind the house. With trembling hands, the father fired twice... Sabah's brother then fired three times, once at his brother's head, killing him. Sitting with the father later, Shadid found himself unable to ask the question he knew that as a journalist he had to ask: Had he killed his son? "In a moment so tragic, so wretched, there still had to be decency. I didn't want to hear him say yes. I didn't want to humiliate him any further. In the end, I didn't have to." "'I have the heart of a father, and he's my son,' he told me, his eyes cast to the ground. 'Even the prophet Abraham didn't have to kill his son.' He stopped, steadying his voice. 'There was no other choice.'"

What went wrong That's from the Salon review of Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War by Anthony Shadid [+]
posted by y2karl at 1:15 PM PST - 15 comments

The Map Realm If you're the kind of person that likes to stare at maps, this guy has taken it one step further, making maps of imaginarely locales with an amazing level of detail. I particularly like the hand drawn versions Found via the monkeys
posted by Keith Talent at 12:40 PM PST - 20 comments

Rat Scabies and the Holy Grail. Best known as the drummer for 1970s punk band The Damned, Rat Scabies grew up with a father interested in the mysteries of the French town of Rennes-le-Château, which may or may not contain the Holy Grail and in the enigmatic priest Berenger Sauniere. Conspiracy theories surrounding the town first popped up in the 1970s book Holy Blood, Holy Grail and gained a certain amount of infamy in recent years from The DaVinci Code. Upon striking up a friendship with his neighbor, journalist Christopher Dawes, Scabies discovered common interests in conspiracy theories and all things paranormal and a shared hatred of the DaVinci Code. Now the pair wrote a book about their alcohol-sodden quest for the Holy Grail that asks the question: What happens when an ex-punk rocker goes looking for the Holy Grail?
posted by huskerdont at 12:11 PM PST - 19 comments

How Much Abuse Can the new iPod Nano Take?
Ars Technica digs deep and finds out just how much abuse the Nano can take (Hint: alot) before the music stops. And then performs an autopsy on it.
Warning, do not click link if the abuse of electronic items makes you queasy or sad.
posted by fenriq at 12:07 PM PST - 26 comments

Alex Bernasconi's (Mostly Wildlife) Photography [via MeCha]
posted by Gyan at 11:48 AM PST - 4 comments

Power-dressing man leaves trail of destruction. An Australian man built up a 40,000-volt charge of static electricity in his clothes as he walked, leaving a trail of scorched carpet and molten plastic and forcing firefighters to evacuate a building.
posted by gottabefunky at 11:39 AM PST - 49 comments

More Friday fun.
posted by Specklet at 11:21 AM PST - 10 comments

San Francisco in Film Noir. Conversation with Nathaniel Rich, associate editor of the Paris Review and author of San Francisco Noir.
posted by matteo at 11:04 AM PST - 5 comments

You know how when someone dies in a terrorist attack, media always publishes their high school or vacation photos? youblewmeupyoubastard.com is there to help. "We'll store a photo of you, giving it large at the terrorists what done you in, and in the event of your body being blown to bits by a suicide bomber, we'll supply your disgusted image to all news services." [via]
posted by mathowie at 10:55 AM PST - 17 comments

The Spirit Wrestler Gallery in Vancouver has an extensive online gallery featuring Artist Biographies and inspiration for many of the pieces. It focuses on First Nations art, sculpture, and jewelry from the Inuit, Northwest Coast nations, Canadian Plains nations, and the Maori. Some of these communities have a new lease on life due to the income from this market, while others are dying out and skills are being forgotten. Some favourites: Dog Team: Jobie Crow from Umiujaq, Summer Solstice: Pitaloosie Saila from Cape Dorset, Raven Releasing Salmon Transformation Mask: Tom Hunt of the Kwak-waka'wakw. (scroll sideways)
posted by heatherann at 10:07 AM PST - 6 comments

Troy's Mixtape of Love. "This is the original tape Troy made to his girlfriend Melissa on their 6 month anniversary. She left him 3 days after." Includes an a capella rendition of "All My Life" by K-Ci and Jojo at 6:20. Scary remix. More remixes. (Via confabulators)
posted by ludwig_van at 9:59 AM PST - 52 comments

Poker and politics have often been intertwined. Former U.S. President Richard Nixon reportedly financed his first political campaign with money he won playing poker in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Harry Truman had his own presidential poker chips, and the "buck" which stopped at his desk is also from the game. Today David Mamet (House of Games) has some interesting poker advice for the Democrats, in the LA Times.
posted by bashos_frog at 9:32 AM PST - 23 comments

Word Pads: A strangely addicting word finding game. Hop to it.
posted by caddis at 8:33 AM PST - 34 comments

"You see, first of all, to be a Jewish writer is a heavy obligation. My close family was killed. My natural environment, my childhood, my sweetest memories were killed. And so it’s a kind of obligation that I feel; I’m dealing with a civilization that has been killed. How to represent it in the most honorable way–not to equalize it, not to exaggerate, but to find the right proportion to represent it, in human terms."

Also: see this interview with Appelfeld by Philip Roth (NYT); scroll a third of the way down on this page for a stunning interview from Ha'aretz where Appelfeld talks about the importance of Israel; see this extensive interview from Yad Vashem ( pdf, Google HTML); go here for a RealAudio interview with Appelfeld, as well as for excerpts from certain of his many books.
posted by OmieWise at 7:01 AM PST - 44 comments

Antkendo ... defeat the opposing samurai ant by clicking above, below and on your own samurai ant. Good luck, though. The other guy is preternaturally good. [note: flash]
posted by crunchland at 6:42 AM PST - 11 comments

Friday Flash Fun, and other games from the educational entertaining Maths is Fun. Just don't tell the kids they're learning.
posted by kyleg at 5:38 AM PST - 4 comments

Lights, camera, empathy! The Bush adminstration has gone to great lengths and great expense to create just the right image... from the "magic hour light" Mission Accomplished speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln to hiring a small floatilla of barges with floodlights to illuminate the Statue of Liberty, to sticking his head on Mount Rushmore. It seems a bit absurd, however, to spend a huge amount of money to bring in lighting crews and massive theatrical floodlights to bathe a building blue in the middle of a humanitarian crisis. They even took the time to reset the clocktower back to the correct time. Why didn't they just use the building's existing white lights instead? Did they need the lights to match the president's shirt? Note that his sleeves are rolled up and his collar is unbuttoned. It sure is hard work rebuilding New Orleans, isn't it?
posted by insomnia_lj at 3:11 AM PST - 126 comments

Fed up with paying exorbitant prices for fuel? Try Petrol Direct - fuel delivered straight to your door!
posted by bap98189 at 2:54 AM PST - 6 comments

some lunch boxes have a DEADLY SECRET
stolen from metaefficient
posted by LimePi at 1:59 AM PST - 13 comments

Microsoft Mail is designed to replace Hotmail - and looks a lot like "Outlook Online". It will have to compete with Gmail's simplicity and Yahoo's (beta) functionality. Are desktop clients doomed?
posted by bobbyelliott at 1:17 AM PST - 52 comments

Dom Mee, a former Royal Marine commando, is attempting to cross the Atlantic solo and unsupported in a 14-foot boat pulled by a kite. Blogging from 300 miles off the Canadian coast, he reports hurricane force winds and mountainous seas are making the trip “a tad bumpy”. And there’s sharks. The kite-surfing is awesome, though.
posted by MinPin at 12:29 AM PST - 11 comments

There lay Vera. Jacob Appelbaum posted about body recovery in New Orleans today, posting photos of what is apparently the destroyed remnants of the interim tomb of one Elvira "Vera" Smith at the "corner of Magazine Avenue and Jackson Street." Smith's daughter hopes her body will be brought to her former home of Victoria, Texas, for final burial. Smith's tomb was the single most indelible image of the New Orleans disaster, reprinted - and shot - countless times over the past two weeks.
Discuss. God help us all.
posted by mwhybark at 12:02 AM PST - 15 comments

You say you want a Revolution? This morning at the Tokyo Game Show, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata unveiled the unique controller for the company's upcoming video game console, code named Revolution. Legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto demonstrated the device to the press with a series of hands-on demos. While no full games have yet been shown on the system, the controller offers many possibilities for novel, accessible, and compelling game experiences.
posted by Fourmyle at 9:47 PM PST - 72 comments

Karl Rove. Karl Rove Will be in charge of the Gulf Coast reconstruction after Katrina.
posted by delmoi at 9:45 PM PST - 46 comments

Triskabiblios: The13Books is not a point'n'click game. Or is it? It may be an "alternate reality game" or it may be a PepsiBlue or it may be that some lonely loon has figured out how to attract attention to himself. Either way, it should prove to be an amusing bit of Friday Fun.
posted by five fresh fish at 8:18 PM PST - 5 comments

DJ Shadow likes high school bands.
High school bands like DJ Shadow. (2nd link requires Windows Media Player, via Soul Sides)
posted by myopicman at 8:09 PM PST - 20 comments

Katrina Ushers in Return of Big Government We have a larger govt now (people working for the govt) than we have ever had. We have now the Patriot Act, overseeing much of our activities. We have intelligence agencies doing lord knows what domestically, and security checks etc. Now we learn that Big govt is back? Where had it been before the storm?
posted by Postroad at 2:10 PM PST - 43 comments

A History of Concealment and Deception

With an hour-long slide show [PDF, 2.4MB] that blends satellite imagery with disquieting assumptions about Iran's nuclear energy program, Bush administration officials have been trying to convince allies that Tehran is on a fast track toward nuclear weapons.

[more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 1:12 PM PST - 86 comments

Bill Gates meets Napolean Dynamite. Microsoft has a history of doing little spoofs at their developer events (a couple years ago Gates and Ballmer did a send up of the GTI commercial and then there was The Matrix). While this one is a shaky camera capture (hopefully someone uploads the original), it's still pretty amusing and fun to watch Gates poke fun at himself. Of course, the unintended comedy videos involving Gates are often funnier.
posted by mathowie at 11:42 AM PST - 54 comments

An ingenious way to deal with protestors. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania is taking pledges for donations based on the number of protestors outside their clinic in Philadelphia between October 1 and November 30. They're going to put up a sign explaining the deal to the protestors, too, so they know that more protestors = more money for Planned Parenthood. (via Boing Boing)
posted by cerebus19 at 11:39 AM PST - 160 comments

Remember.org is a huge archive of the Shoah. It contains sections on the accounts of survivors and liberators (here is an account by Helen L. of her childhood in Auschwitz, here is Harry Herder's account of liberating Buchenwald, here is Jacques Lipetz account of WWII in Manila, here is part of a history of life in the Warsaw Ghetto), images from the camps and pictures of artwork produced by survivors (here is Mauthausen then and now, here is a picture of a prisoner at Dachau from this extensive archive of historical images, here are some drawings by Jan Komski, an Auschwitz survivor), and an extensive sections of excerpts of books written by survivors. Many of the images and accounts on this website are quite disturbing.
posted by OmieWise at 6:21 AM PST - 65 comments

6 views of the Islamic world What is at the the root of the clash between Islam and the West? And what do your answers say about your own beliefs? (via the Guardian)
posted by MadOwl at 6:07 AM PST - 72 comments

Ry Cooder once said Dark Was The Night--Cold Was The Ground was the most soulful, transcendent piece of American music recorded in the 20th Century. Unearthly and music of the spheres were common descriptions long before both became fact when it was included on a golden record was affixed to the star bound Voyager space probe. My first encounter with Dark Was The Night was while watching, and then listening to the soundtrack album of, Piero Paulo Pasolini’s The Gospel According To St. Matthew--or as it is known in Sicily kickin' Bootsville, Il Vangelo de Matteo--which is, in my humble opinion, the Greatest. Jesus. Movie. Evar. Ironically, coincidentally and serendipitously, it was an apt choice by Pasolini, as the hymn from which Blind Willie Johnson's wordless moan derives is a song about Christ’s passion—his suffering and crucifixion. (Continued with much more within)
posted by y2karl at 4:12 AM PST - 67 comments

Katrina: The Gathering is the latest great new collectible card game!

I almost don't know how to describe it. A brilliant, concise, very complete, and quite hilarious¹ summary of the the political fallout. It just keeps going and going and going. I think I want to play a game of it.
1 - My options are laugh or cry, so.
posted by blacklite at 10:32 PM PST - 37 comments

Think meat is murder? Grow it in a lab! Anyone for test-tube t-bone?
posted by dingobully at 10:28 PM PST - 53 comments

'A novel contained in a single sigh' On Sept. 15, 1945, Anton Webern stepped out to smoke a cigar. An American soldier, seeing the glow of the cigar, panicked and shot Webern three times. Webern, along with Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg, is credited with -- or blamed for -- ushering in an era of composition emphasizing strict, mathematical order over all elements of music, a reaction against the suicidal excess of Romanticism. On the anniversary of his death, BBC Radio 3 hosts Webern Day, during which Webern's complete works will be broadcast. The total time to perform his 31 works is about three hours. (Links grabbed mostly from ArtsJournal.)
posted by NemesisVex at 9:49 PM PST - 19 comments

Management aiming to clean house (NYT, acct. req'd) — Pope Joseph Ratzinger begins to fulfill his promise to rid the Catholic Church of freethinking undesirables who propagate an "unacceptable democratic model of the Church", starting with the rooting out of gay clergymen, who — by simple virtue of their sexuality — are assumed to be child molesters, never mind Ratzinger's complicity in widespread interference with investigations into and long-standing cover-ups of the Church's worst offenders.
posted by Rothko at 9:28 PM PST - 79 comments

Finally, someone does archives right. The entire New Yorker collection, all the way back, for less than 2.5¢ an issue
posted by rtimmel at 7:22 PM PST - 55 comments

A graphics director told him he didn't have an eye, and he never would. The graphics director suggested that he paint houses. Now he's NPPA News Photographer of the Year.
posted by gimonca at 5:55 PM PST - 19 comments

Last Chance for Iraq - Peter W. Galbraith, writing in the New York Review of Books, on the new Iraqi constitution. He compares it to a peace treaty between three warring parties. Previous threads: Bush's Islamic Republic. The Bungled Transition. How to Get Out of Iraq.

Underneath an Islamic veneer, Iraq's new constitution ratifies the division of Iraq into three disparate entities: Kurdistan in the north, an Iranian-influenced Islamic state in the south, and, in the center, a Sunni region that has no clear political identity, but that with luck and concerted diplomacy could be governed by a new generation of Sunni Arab leaders. The constitution provides a basis for resolving Iraq's most contentious issues: oil, territory, and the competition to be the dominant power in Baghdad. If these issues are not addressed, they could set off a widespread civil war. ... The constitution has many flaws, but it provides a peace plan that might work, and it is therefore the most positive political development in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein from power.
posted by russilwvong at 5:24 PM PST - 16 comments

First Brain-Powered Bionic Prosthesis
Jesse Sullivan is the first man (link to press release) to recieve a ground breaking new bionic arm (PDF fact sheet) that is controlled by his mind and a 64-bit microprocessor. His new arm, that even allows him to "feel" objects, is the result of a radical surgical process called nerve-transfer surgery that took nerves going to his arms and rerouted them to his chest.
Want to see it in action? 1, 2, 3 (embedded QT links) and some images of Jesse in action.
Previous MeFi bionic threads.
posted by fenriq at 4:46 PM PST - 39 comments

Debate Site Grapple in the Apple! Christopher Hitchens and George Galloway argue live, now, about the Iraq War. Sorry about the minimal FPP, but it's all about the boxing match debate.
posted by reality at 4:28 PM PST - 55 comments

This Gallery of Posters from Exploitation Movies is far too brief, but is still better than not having ANY exploitation movie posters. Apparently the gallery is just a teaser for an exhibit & a book.
posted by jonson at 3:57 PM PST - 9 comments

Nana, may Mr P go pee?
posted by mr.marx at 3:37 PM PST - 152 comments

In the Hot Zone Yahoo! have hired journalist Kevin Sites (previously discussed here and here) to 'cover every armed conflict in the world within one year... to provide a clear idea of the combatants, victims, causes, and costs of each of these struggles - and their global impact'. The NYT (reg required) quotes Lloyd Braun, Head of Yahoo! Media Group, saying that he hopes they can combat the "growing public distrust of network news... [with] a transparency I think the Internet user wants and the news audience is craving".
posted by pasd at 1:13 PM PST - 23 comments

New London Development Corporation Breaks Eminent Domain Moratorium Pledge, Starts Charging Rent. Previously discussed here and here, the Kelo case has just gotten more outrageous. Breaking its word and defying both Governor M. Jodi Rell and the Connecticut legislature, the New London Development Corporation (NLDC) has apparently now decided not to abide by a moratorium called for by both the governor and legislature.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 1:04 PM PST - 35 comments

Google Maps and Census Data. Navigate to a place via Google Maps. Click and you get Census demographic data such as population, median income and housing.
posted by caddis at 1:03 PM PST - 18 comments

Impeach Blanco Someone is, at last, calling for the impeachment of Kathleen Blanco. But they don't seem to be very serious about it since their Sign the Petition link isn't working.
posted by chai-rista at 12:05 PM PST - 68 comments

Your Mr. Fusion is ready. Sort of.
posted by loquacious at 12:03 PM PST - 13 comments

Chez Pim the gastronomic blog of a little thai woman.... and her very own write up in the observer. I sort of agree with one of the comments.... the shots of the food make me feel empty.
posted by sourbrew at 12:03 PM PST - 14 comments

Collected works of Enrico Caruso. Approximately seven hours of vintage, public domain recordings of Il Maestro, courtesy of the Internet Archive's 78 rpm collections. Amongst my favourites: Del Tempio Al Limita, a duet with Mario Ancona from Bizet's The Pearl Fishers, and Cantique de Noel. Sublime.
posted by carter at 11:43 AM PST - 17 comments

Judge rules Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional in public schools and pastafarians unite with their noodly appendages. The "under god" bit added to the pledge in 1954 to combat the red menace is seen as unconstitutional. I'm sure most of the country will take this news well, with a calming heart and calm head.
posted by mathowie at 11:43 AM PST - 79 comments

He's got ginormous size, monstrous handles, and a floor-dunk. He also has a tumor. Fortunately for basketball fans, the kindness of strangers is what's saving Sun Ming Ming. (not related to the rich Ming).
posted by HiveMind at 11:42 AM PST - 9 comments

Do the Right Thing
posted by Gyan at 11:14 AM PST - 61 comments

Novelist posits Shoah as reality TV show. In her new book titled ’Sulphuric Acid’ published in France, the successful Belgian author Amelie Nothomb describes a “concentration camp reality show”. It's the story of a reality show called “Concentration”. There are ’candidates’ which are arrested in roundups, tattooed and guarded before they are executed one by one following a vote by the spectators.
posted by matteo at 10:24 AM PST - 19 comments

The Yerkes Observatory owned and operated by the University of Chicago, and home to the world's largest refracting telescope, is in danger of being sold to a real estate developer. Find out what is being done to save this national treasure and how you can help.
posted by achmorrison at 10:15 AM PST - 9 comments

LibraryThing. Like Flickr for your books.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 10:08 AM PST - 31 comments

The Sentinel's Creed: "My dedication to this sacred duty is total and whole-hearted. In the responsibility bestowed on me never will I falter. And with dignity and perseverance my standard will remain perfection. Through the years of diligence and praise and the discomfort of the elements, I will walk my tour in humble reverence to the best of my ability. It is he who commands the respect I protect, his bravery that made us so proud. Surrounded by well meaning crowds by day, alone in the thoughtful peace of night, this soldier will in honored glory rest under my eternal vigilance."
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 9:56 AM PST - 16 comments

In 1998 the FAA was warned that Al Qaeda could "seek to hijack a commercial jet and slam it into a U.S. landmark," according to a recently-released update [PDF] to the 9/11 Commission's Staff Monograph on the Four Flights and Civil Aviation Security. (An earlier version with more material redacted was released on January 28, 2005.)
posted by kirkaracha at 9:20 AM PST - 42 comments

Feel the need for speed? Dodge Tomahawk motorcycle. 0-60MPH in 2.5 seconds and top speed 300+ MPH. Maverick from Top Gun woulda loved one of these. (Flash intro with rather loud music)
posted by RonZ at 9:17 AM PST - 48 comments

"We birthed the blues. We launched rock 'n' roll." The Atlanta Journal Constitution has compiled a rather comprehensive list of the top 100 songs from the American South. The range spans from Loretta Lynn at #11 to Yin Yang Twins at #89. Before you ask, "Freebird" is #59. And just so all bases are covered, they've added supplimental lists for Texas (which is not the South) and Louisiana (which is the South, but on an entirely different plane of musical existence). (Try to overcome the truly annoying Flash interface.)
posted by grabbingsand at 6:23 AM PST - 26 comments

Google Blog Search -- in beta, of course. Works by crawling blogs' RSS feeds. Should Technorati be nervous?
posted by mcwetboy at 5:51 AM PST - 36 comments

Benjamin Hackett is more than just your average right-wing blogger. Sure, he's interned for Sean Hannity and his latest opinion piece was a drawn-out character assasination of Cindy Sheehan, but he also writes some titillating/hilarious erotic fiction (text NSFW). May he carry on the great tradition.
posted by rbf1138 at 10:02 PM PST - 50 comments

Why does the iPod look so clean?
posted by Tlogmer at 9:17 PM PST - 53 comments

Poignant Passports. At the beginning of the 20th century Hawaii sugar plantation owners began to recruit laborers of European background. Perhaps as many as 2,000 Russians and Ukrainians came to Hawaii. After the February Revolution in Petrograd some of these Russians were repatriated. [more inside]
posted by tellurian at 8:19 PM PST - 2 comments

Google Earth threatens democracy The planet's military bases apparently cannot hide from Google's all seeing eye.
posted by thecollegefear at 7:16 PM PST - 29 comments

We Had to Kill Our Patients : while this may not hit the US press for some time, the UK's Mail on Sunday reports that doctors in New Orleans chose to euthanize patients who were dying in agony and had no chance of survival during the disaster of Hurricane Katrina.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 4:03 PM PST - 177 comments

Embedded with the Times-Picayune in New Orleans : The Columbia Journalism Review covers the heroic efforts of the Times-Picayune reporters.
posted by pandaharma at 1:54 PM PST - 9 comments

Who will speak for the chickens?
posted by mullingitover at 1:40 PM PST - 34 comments

I love any weblog that features an author with time, google skills, and some passion for a specific subject. Over on Yes But No But Yes, there's a regular feature called Where are They Now? featuring write-ups of what the cast of White Shadow ended up doing (Salami directed Sopranos episodes?!), what everyone from the original wonka movie does today (Mike TeeVee was in The Big Lebowski?!), and where the cast of Debbie Does Dallas ended up (one actor went from porn to the Spiderman movie).
posted by mathowie at 1:21 PM PST - 30 comments

NY Times will be going pay-only for access to columns by Paul Krugman, Thomas Friedman, and Maureen Dowd. On the 19th of Sept! And I assume the others like Herbert and Frank will drop behind the iron curtain as well. These are obviously some of the most blogged about and emailed content on the NYT site. Do you think it will be worth $49.95 year (it does come with 100 archive articles, which is admittedly pretty sweet)? Do you think that bloggers will stop linking to those columnists? Is this the end of free?
posted by zpousman at 12:14 PM PST - 85 comments

Beyond the Pale: The History of Jews in Russia. An extensive web exhibit (the expanded exhibit guide) with descriptions of Jewish life and many images from the Middle Ages to the present. Also available in Russian.
posted by OmieWise at 11:47 AM PST - 9 comments

Pouring a Perfect Pint Faster
Foam does not taste good, foamy beer is bad beer. The TurboTap makes pouring a perfect beer easy and fast by using fluid mechanics even if it does look a little like an unclipped you-know-what. And its not just faster, it saves beer and makes for better profit margins. See it in action (QT video at PopSci site, more on TurboTap's site) and prepare to be impressed.
posted by fenriq at 11:14 AM PST - 50 comments

Forensic Astronomy is the practice of using astronomy in legal cases to find the exact lighting conditions existing during a crime. It was used in a case in 1857 by a U.S. President. Lately, forensic astronomers are using their practice to find out all sorts of things. One astronomer has recently figured out just when exactly the Autumn Moon rose over the High Sierra. This Thursday, should you happen to find yourself at Glacier Point, you can see exactly what Ansel saw.
posted by bondcliff at 11:11 AM PST - 5 comments

Pakistan plans on building a fence along the Pakistan/Afghan Border to help curb the war on terror. I wonder if they will incorporate a money slot for terrorists without a fake passport?
posted by Guerilla at 11:05 AM PST - 8 comments

Words I was sure I would never hear
posted by x_3mta3 at 10:50 AM PST - 137 comments

Ignition sequence starts ... A spoken word documentary album of the flight of Apollo 11 to the moon. Dramatic - evocative - the right stuff. Provided by Hepcat Willy.
posted by carter at 10:07 AM PST - 9 comments

The Emperor's Bunker. "The Japanese, with sadness and irony, stressed that Hirohito couldn't even speak properly. This was partly to do with the fact that he didn't have to speak - people spoke in his name and he was isolated from real life". "The Sun", the third part in Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov's 'Men of Power' tetralogy after the gloom of Moloch (1999), about Hitler and Eva Braun, and the despairing tones of "Taurus" (2001), focused on the wheelchair-bound Lenin in his death throes, "The Sun" seems almost upbeat. This, after all, is a film about reconciliation. More inside.
posted by matteo at 9:54 AM PST - 21 comments

Bush's War on Condoms "... the Bush administration's policy of emphasizing abstinence-only prevention programs and cutting federal funding for condoms have contributed to an alleged condom shortage in Uganda." Meanwhile, people desperate to prevent HIV infection have begun using garbage bags as condom substitutes.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 9:39 AM PST - 49 comments

David Brooks makes an interesting point. Rebuild New Orleans to ensure that the cycle of generational poverty is broken. Does this seem like social engineering? There is a precedent for this, though. Can it--should it?--be done on a citywide scale? Should the government meddle this much in the day-to-day lives of people?
posted by John of Michigan at 9:38 AM PST - 30 comments

Pete, we need you.
posted by 13twelve at 9:24 AM PST - 24 comments

The robot comes calling... When web services attack! NotifyPhoneBasic will call any phone number in the US/Canada and read your message to that phone number. You can even set the caller id information.
posted by ph00dz at 9:06 AM PST - 45 comments

In July, Georgia federal judge William C. O’Kelley ordered Barrow County to remove a Ten Commandments plaque from its courthouse. The suit was filed by ACLU Georgia, which not only succeeded in getting the plaque removed, but also recovered $150,000 in attorneys’ fees and expenses. Ten Commandments-Georgia pledged to reimburse the county for its legal expenses. In order for the group to raise the last $52,000 it needs to meet that pledge, it has put the actual Ten Commandments plaque that was removed from the courthouse under the order of the court up for auction on eBay.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 8:51 AM PST - 40 comments

After The Flood Surprising stories from survivors in New Orleans. We give people who were in the storm more time than daily news coverage can to tell their stories and talk about what they're thinking. This leads to a number of ideas that haven't made it into the regular news coverage. The most recent episode of This American Life is now up on their website--This American Life is one of the best programs on public radio and this was one of their best episodes ever. It is well worth a listen.
posted by y2karl at 8:38 AM PST - 24 comments

The next Turner Prize winners? Art Craziest Nation is a mini-gallery of (in)famous pieces by modern artists, accurately reproduced with Lego by a duo called The Little Artists (John Cake and Darren Neave). The exhibition is at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool until next January. See the Lego version of Damien Hirst's Shark Tank, Tracey Emin's Bed, Jeff Koons' Balls, Andy Warhol's Money, Salvador Dali's Lobster Telephone, and many others. It's all in one single piece, with some of the artists themselves in Lego version - and others whose work is not exhibited, like Matthew Barney and Gilbert & George - hanging around sipping their Lego wine (ok, air) from Lego cups (or even throwing it at the Lego person standing next to them). Liverpool Football Club star Gerrard also featured in a tribute to the team's victory of this year's European Cup.
posted by funambulist at 7:11 AM PST - 10 comments

Memeorandum goes live "offers a set of pages, each page highlighting the best contributions from a different community of writers, recognizing new sources as soon as the community does, and in a form conveying ongoing conversations." There is also tech.memeorandum. Via Read/Write and Scoble...also, previously noted here as a previous version...
posted by tpl1212 at 5:58 AM PST - 5 comments

The Coldest War - Beautiful photos of the Siachen Glacier conflict in Northern Kashmir (2003), a slide show (real) with fascinating commentary, a 50-minute BBC programme (real) covering the same ground with equally stunning cinematography (albeit low res), and some background links.
posted by Acey at 4:43 AM PST - 9 comments

KABOOM!
posted by grouse at 2:50 AM PST - 44 comments

THE BURDIZZO® EMASCULATONE 9 comes in a variety of handy sizes, non-slip molded plastic handle, wide opening clamp.
posted by semmi at 10:59 PM PST - 78 comments

Liberal comedian sues blogger. Spread the word.
posted by jonson at 10:50 PM PST - 128 comments

Feats of Clay :An ice kiln. English Puzzle mugs. Zilliz geometrical tiles. And tons of cool ceramics related articles from Ceramics Today. [via]
posted by dhruva at 8:39 PM PST - 9 comments

Georgia wants to charge people to vote, having chosen to implement "a new voter ID law that requires many people without driver's licenses...to pay $20 or more for a state ID card." Adding insult to injury, the number of ID centers in Atlanta is currently ZERO.
(disclaimer: I don't know how to get a subscription-free link to NYT articles- sorry!)
posted by elisabeth r at 8:27 PM PST - 77 comments

Mexico: The Dark Side. A trip through cemeteries, a visit with mummies and celebrating the Day of the Dead. They visited Italy too - more mummies, plus bones and danse macabre. I was looking for something light hearted to post given all the tragedy as of late and this was what I found instead. [Some of this stuff is pretty disturbing, especially the Mexican mummies.]
posted by caddis at 7:53 PM PST - 5 comments

At this challenging time for President Bush, let us reminisce about the system that elected him. Will the next election be different? Do you want it to be? What are you going to do about it?
posted by Pretty_Generic at 7:25 PM PST - 60 comments

One story a day for 365 days. All stories of the future. Started August 1, 2005 and ending July 31, 2006.
posted by thebabelfish at 6:44 PM PST - 12 comments

As author Peter C. Newman writes in an explosive new book: "He bugs us still." : The Secret Mulroney Tapes: Unguarded Confessions of a Prime Minister is due for release this fall, and it's safe to say that it will likely be the most intimate and personal behind the scenes look at what a Canadian Prime Minister is actually thinking. That's because it's based on alleged secret tapings of private conversations between Brian Mulroney and Peter Newman, the man enlisted to write Mulroney's biography. Oh, and it's really juicy (for Canadian politics junkies at least). On Trudeau:"He didn't want anybody to succeed where he had failed. Trudeau's contribution was not to build Canada but to destroy it, and I had to come in and save it. Three times I've achieved unanimity. In 16 years, he couldn't do it once, the 'great statesman.'"
posted by loquax at 5:31 PM PST - 78 comments

Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft has arrived at asteroid Itokawa
posted by gimonca at 4:46 PM PST - 18 comments

Feel The Taint: Dave Hill is obsessed with Norwegian Black Metal, the exciting musical genre brought to international prominence in the early '90's thanks to a series of church burnings, murders, suicides, and other surefire attention-getting devices. Recently his desire to become part of the scene reached such a fever pitch that he couldn't help but reach out to a longtime member of the Norwegian Black Metal community.
posted by shotsy at 4:38 PM PST - 31 comments

"I have just shot the President. I shot him several times as I wished him to go as easily as possible. His death was a political necessity." Handwritten note from Charles Guiteau to William T. Sherman after Guiteau shot President James Garfield. And this note:

To the American People: I conceived the idea of removing the President four weeks ago. Not a soul knew of my purpose. I conceived the idea myself and kept it to myself. I read the newspapers carefully for and against the Administration, and gradually the conviction settled on me that the President's removal was a political necessity, because he proved a traitor to the men that made him, and thereby imperilled the life of the Republic...This is not murder. It is a political necessity...

From Georgetown University's Charles Guiteau Collection. [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 4:31 PM PST - 46 comments

Cat News [QuickTime]
posted by rxrfrx at 4:06 PM PST - 28 comments

Illin'-Noise! is the new remix of Sufjan Stevens' album Illinois by mc DJ; a torrent is available, as is cover art. It's not quite like Hippocamp Ruins Pet Sounds (previously on Mefi) -- it's not nearly as noisy, and not quite as good, although it's still worth checking out, particularly "Chi-Town" (from "Chicago"), "Zombies" (from "They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back From the Dead!! Ahhhh!") and "Jacksontown" (from "Jacksonville"). [prev.]
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 3:54 PM PST - 25 comments

Photowhispering... It's like Chinese Whispers, only you do it with photographs - someone starts with a photograph and sends it to the next person. They take a similar shot and pass it on again... But how similar does it end up? (This is totally unrelated to Photoshop Battles, but kinda similar to Photography Duels...)
posted by benzo8 at 2:23 PM PST - 6 comments

How Bush Blew It • Newsweek offers a fascinating peek behind the scenes of the Bush administration in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Behold a President who has to be given a custom DVD of news clips because he knows less about the situation than someone watching CNN! Watch as frightened aides debate which unlucky bastard has to tell the President to cut short his vacation! Witness intergovernmental squabbling aboard Air Force One!
posted by pardonyou? at 2:04 PM PST - 158 comments

The Ashes. Five days have given England it's first Ashes victory in 18 years. Both England and Australia have been strong this year. Both Mick Jagger and John Major should be happy. More history and A poem (initial post here). Congrats to the small isle on a great game.
posted by edgeways at 1:58 PM PST - 53 comments

Blackout hits downtown Los Angeles at 1 pm PDT; the LAPD has been put on mandatory overtime. The "we are fucked" meter ratches up a notch.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 1:53 PM PST - 83 comments

Horatio Hornblower, meet Gentle Fudge Staff and researchers at the Cornwall Record Office compiled a list of more than 1,000 unusual names found in censuses as well as in births, deaths and marriage records going back as far as the 16th century. "My all-time favorites are Abraham Thunderwolff and Freke Dorothy Fluck Lane," said Rene Jackaman, archive assistant at Cornwall County Record Office.
posted by diastematic at 1:50 PM PST - 13 comments

God Tower Where are you? Flash based game described by Jay is Games as the toughest game ever.
posted by Keith Talent at 12:23 PM PST - 69 comments

Michael Brown resigns from FEMA
posted by me3dia at 12:14 PM PST - 95 comments

A movie about the deaf, but not for the deaf Thought-provoking piece in the LAVoice: "Since I am deaf myself and require subtitles in order to watch films, we contacted the Nuart to make sure that the film was subtitled; I couldn't find anything on either the theater’s website or the distributor's website that indicated the film was subtitled. Much to our dismay, we were shocked to learn that the film - a movie about a deaf person - would not be subtitled ..."
posted by mantid at 11:36 AM PST - 12 comments

Pentagon Revises Nuclear Strike Plan - The Pentagon has drafted a revised doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons that envisions commanders requesting presidential approval to use them to preempt an attack by a nation or a terrorist group using weapons of mass destruction. The draft also includes the option of using nuclear arms to destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. [...] The first example for potential nuclear weapon use listed in the draft is against an enemy that is using "or intending to use WMD" against U.S. or allied, multinational military forces or civilian populations. Hmm, if we nuke them, then I guess we destroy the evidence that they were planning to use WMD against us....
posted by beth at 11:18 AM PST - 54 comments

Are scrub jays and ravens as smart as chimpanzees? Studies by Nathan J. Emery and Nicola S. Clayton suggest that crows, ravens, jays and other members of Corvidae may be chimpanzees mental equals. Evidence suggesting this includes tool making, the ability to use memories of past experiences and plan for the future, and relatively large brains.
posted by itchylick at 9:52 AM PST - 50 comments

Today in Delta BC, a city within the GVRD, a fire burns out of control. The largest raised peat bog (over 10,000 acres) in western North America, Burns Bog is sending smoke and ash across the area. Major blazes occurred in 1977, 1990, 1994 and 1996. The 1996 fire covered Greater Vancouver in smoke and ash for two days, destroying 170 hectares. Smaller fires have burned for months in underground methane. However, there are other risks to the "Lungs of Vancouver", including a proposed theme park.
posted by Kickstart70 at 9:38 AM PST - 34 comments

Inkwell. "As comic's creators and fans we spend a very large portion of our lives telling or reading the stories of extraordinary people doing extraordinary things under extraordinary circumstances and at the end of the day, triumphing over evil or adversity. Inkwell intends to take that simple idea and make it a reality."
posted by grabbingsand at 9:37 AM PST - 1 comment

The bizarro dot-com deals of the 90's are back, baby! eBay, the company whose business model is to monetize what people otherwise throw out or give away, is buying Skype, who gives away what everyone otherwise pays for.
posted by mkultra at 7:24 AM PST - 33 comments

The Milken Archive of American Jewish Music
posted by matteo at 6:54 AM PST - 12 comments

Afterculture
posted by jefgodesky at 6:17 AM PST - 43 comments

A collection of Zen koans to help ease you into the week. There's another collection here, and some more here. There may be overlaps between the three collections, but I have no doubt people will simply ask themselves what it means to encounter the same koan over and over again. The answer lies in the contemplation. This has always been my favorite.
posted by OmieWise at 5:54 AM PST - 43 comments

7000 aerial Katrina path pictures from NOAA. Here's New Orleans, and the Astrodome, and the Convention Center. Here's NOAA's writeup.
posted by the Real Dan at 4:54 AM PST - 11 comments

"Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience." George Washington's Rules of Civility.
posted by nthdegx at 2:57 AM PST - 21 comments

The laugh judgement our competition to find the funniest and most offensive religious jokes, in response to the British government's proposed anti-religious hatred legislation, is finally over. And we have two winners. Our funniest religious joke is about sectarianism gone mad, while our most offensive is a sick tale of tragedy on a clifftop – as voted for by Ship of Fools readers. Read on for the jokes.
posted by srboisvert at 1:37 AM PST - 96 comments

In 1992, General Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, awarded the prize for his strategy essay competition at the National Defense University to Lieutenant Colonel Charles Dunlap for 'The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012'. Rumor is, Colonel Dunlap's essay has been circulating among the military's top brass and strategists.

Vice Adm. Allen's appointment as successor to FEMA Director Michael Brown could be conditioning Americans (intentional or not) to accept the idea of Martial Law. Rep Cynthia McKinney's (D-GA) mention of "impeachment" four days ago on the House floor was omitted from the record. If our representatives will not be heard and if we do not want to live under a military dictatorship, then what? It makes me think of Romania (1989) Of course there's always concentration camps and slave labor.
posted by augustweed at 1:34 AM PST - 71 comments

The Hyena People of Nigeria. Photography from Pieter Hugo.
posted by tellurian at 10:48 PM PST - 28 comments

Ice Rocket is a blog spidering search engine that seems designed to allow users to track trends over time (mentions, say, of "pepsi blue" vs "coke zero" over the last 60 days). It's an interesting, if highly unscientific, use of bloggers writings as informal market research. No word on how many blogs are in their index, nor whether they're collecting any available demographic data on the bloggers (where such information is even available, that is).
posted by jonson at 10:47 PM PST - 12 comments

Unoticed news: riots in Belfast. I've been surprised that I haven't seen much reporting on the riots in Belfast, especially since it is the second night of rioting. The lack of coverage is probably due to the fact that no one has yet to be killed coupled with the ongoing coverage of both Katrina and John Roberts nomination.
What I find interesting about this is that these riots seem to be the cumulation of increasing sectarian violence. apparently, this is not the first riot to happen in Northern Ireland this year. The Guardian has the best coverage of the events, and points out that both the pressures and rewards of the peace process have been placed and (apparently) granted more toward the Republicans than the Loyalists. The rioting also comes after the "Love Ulster" propaganda campaign started distributing pamphlets all over the province.
This also comes as there is an ongoing feud between Loyalist groups. This apparently paused when the Northern Ireland football (soccer) team beat the British team on their home turf.

Disclaimer: I am an American with some Irish extraction and tend to have very little sympathy for the Loyalist cause.
posted by Hactar at 10:47 PM PST - 49 comments

And you reckon the USA PATRIOT Act is bad? An American peace activist, Scott Parkin (who I’ve never heard of before but wrote this article) has been arrested detained in Australia and will soon be repatriated to the USA, with little or no explanation. He's spent three months in Aus giving workshops and hugs and undertaking protest actions (with street theatre!) Apparently he may be a “security risk” or may be an embarrassment to the US government - and we couldn’t have that in a proud and independent country like Australia, could we? Of course, while in detention, he gets charged $130 a day. Still, I guess it's better than 'rendition'.
posted by wilful at 10:03 PM PST - 15 comments

Bill Cosby has no sense of humor... In a move that shocked the internet to the very soles of its shoes, Bill Cosby sent had his lawyer send a Cease and Desist letter to the creator of channel101.com's wildly popular House of Cosbys series, asking... nay, demanding the cessation of all Cosby related creative material generation. That's it. That's all there is to the story.

Wait! There's more! Channel101.com's Dan Harmon wrote an open letter to Cosby's legal team informing them of his intention to continue hosting the original 4 episodes, even if no further episodes would be made.

Hell, even the adorable Andrew Baio loves it. But then again, Andy Baio also likes peach colored page designs...
Channel101.com also mentioned here and here.
posted by shmegegge at 9:14 PM PST - 26 comments

Turdzilla wants YOU. Think you've got what it takes? The "conceptualist" behind GWAR (w/sound and also likely to be NSFW after a click or two) is seeking musicians to perform the music on Turdzilla's CD.
posted by emelenjr at 9:12 PM PST - 12 comments

Today the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt turns 70. To celebrate this occasion, Estonian Radio Klassika Raadio will be broadcasting his music all month, as well as a comprehensive documentary series on his life and works. The first segment of the series airs today and is entitled "I Thirst For Music". Listen.
posted by derangedlarid at 7:54 PM PST - 16 comments

My Friend Dario Hot dancers in tiny bikinis and football helmets. A lead singer that looks like a pomo Leather Tuscadero. And headbanging mulletheads playing imaginary instruments. 'Nuff said.
posted by vronsky at 7:42 PM PST - 15 comments

I, too, would like 5 million dollars.
posted by scrim at 7:35 PM PST - 36 comments

Gloria Estefan and Mylo [warning: eighties]
posted by Pretty_Generic at 7:22 PM PST - 35 comments

The list is impressive. According to psychiatrists, society suffers from a number of mental disorders. Asperger Syndrome. ADHD. OCD. Bi-Polar Disorder. PTSD. Anorexia. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many here that the average person could probably find at least 3-4 in their immediate family. Perhaps all these ills are the real pandora's box, although Borderline Personality maks the others seem mild.

So the question is, what's your dysfunction?
posted by mystyk at 6:56 PM PST - 93 comments

Being Poor ... what it actually entails. More from Body and Soul, and from Making Light, and from here's a whosit. And this article, in which ...they were trying to rescue people with a helicopter and the people were so poor they were afraid it would cost too much to get a ride and they had no money for a "ticket." Dupree was shaken telling us the story. He just couldn't believe these people were afraid they'd be charged for a rescue. ...
posted by amberglow at 6:32 PM PST - 34 comments

DNA: frightening government privacy invasion tool of tomorrow or beautiful source of personal art today?
posted by mathowie at 4:13 PM PST - 18 comments

Can't beat a good protest, and when Less Tax On Fuel (catchy..) start then this definitely won't be a good protest. It'll be about as much fun as their last one, although their Forum's good for a laugh and will let you voice support when you're stuck at home cause the pumps have ran out as a result of their actions!

While everyone I know agrees that we pay too much for petrol here in the UK, blocking the roads and disrupting supplies isn't going to help. I don't know of anyone who supports a return to the protests of 2000.

And besides, there are some motorways in the UK where they'll be lucky to reach 20mph at rush hour. They might even speed things up..
posted by Nugget at 3:59 PM PST - 41 comments

Toshio Matsumoto's (J) first film (E), Ginrin (or "Silver Ring"), once believed lost has been found! Ginrin was an English Language, "relatively avant garde" PR film that had perhaps the first use of Musique Concrete in a Japanese film -- in this case, the first score by Toru Takemitsu. The film was discovered to be lost (as a result of the firm it was made for going under) in the 1980s when it was desired for a retrospective on the 1950's Japanese Avant-Garde at the Pompidou Center. [More Inside]
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 3:49 PM PST - 4 comments

Biodiesel could be one way out of high fuel costs and foreign oil dependency. Fuel efficient vehicles are on my mind lately. Will we ever be driving vehicles like this DIY special? or even this one?
posted by pekar wood at 3:02 PM PST - 50 comments

ITC Sangeet Research Academy - a guide and resource of Hindustani classical music
RealPlayer and Flash recommended
posted by Gyan at 2:32 PM PST - 4 comments

9-11 I've never posted a link before and don't mean to create any debate or make any statement. I just thought that before the day was out we do the obvious and remember.
posted by brautigan at 1:46 PM PST - 136 comments

Some Click Candy at the Whitney A nice update at the WHITNEY Artport site. "Benjamin Fry received his doctoral degree at the MIT Media Laboratory, where his research focused on methods of visualizing large amounts of data from dynamic information sources"
posted by Mr Bluesky at 12:29 PM PST - 3 comments

Things ain't what they used to be. Blues, jazz, Cajun and country music great Clarence Gatemouth Brown dies at 81. Brown safely evacuated his home in Slidell, but was said to be broken hearted by the devastation wreaked by Katrina on his beloved Louisiana. Alligator bio (sound alert).
posted by madamjujujive at 10:52 AM PST - 31 comments

The Epicurean online. Charles Ranhofer's 1893 book The Epicurean is available online from the Michigan State University Library and the Museum as part of their Feeding America digital project. Ranhofer was the head chef at Delmonico's Restaurant from 1862 to 1894; he popularized the Escoffier version of French cooking to America, modifying it to take advantage of American foods such as turkey, squash, corn, and Pacific salmon. Besides thousands of recipes, The Epicurean discusses table settings, menus, various methods of presentation, and kitchen management. The book may be downloaded as a PDF in two parts.
posted by watsondog at 9:23 AM PST - 7 comments

4,000+ shows from bands that allow taping, courtesy of SugarMegs.org.
posted by xowie at 6:48 AM PST - 22 comments

Back in April monju_bosatsu posted something on FEMA and the REX 84 Program and Concentration Camps in the U.S. So Katrina hits, the news reports talk about how bad the evacuee (or 'refugee' for you racist bastards) camps were, people dying from stomach flu at the Astrodome and Russ Kick is chewing over the impact of possible escaped monkeys from the level three infectious disease biolabs in NOLA, the authorities bar the Red Cross, but Blackwater gets the go-ahead, FEMA is under homeland security and chunks have been 'privatized'... REX 84 was a plan to suspend the Constitution in the event of a national crisis like a major disaster, massive internal dissent, or national opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad requiring martial law. Trifecta anyone?
posted by Smedleyman at 3:45 AM PST - 66 comments

Two Moons Passing in the Night. Mars rover Spirit took these sequential photos of Martian moons Phobos and Deimos passing overhead in the night sky. Those rovers are still going strong!
posted by brownpau at 10:33 PM PST - 16 comments

Taking Stock of the Forever War. "A terrorist leader four years ago, Osama bin Laden is now an ideology as well — and a viral movement. Terrorist attacks worldwide are on the rise. Iraq could well end up a 'failed' state. Maybe it's time to stop fighting on their terms." Also, Osama bin Laden: Lost at Tora Bora. (bugmenot)
posted by homunculus at 10:17 PM PST - 31 comments

hack your brain An insightful post on "ourselves". A interesting metaphor: your brain as an OS.
posted by omega at 10:06 PM PST - 65 comments

"Guantanamo hunger strike staged," reads the BBC. Reports vary from the US military claiming only 76 of the 500 prisoners there are involved in a hunger strike to claims of more than 200 of the prison population by others. There's widespread divergence for the reasons for the strike ranging from the prisoner's demands to be tried or set free to "rumors of a violent interrogation session and two rough extractions of detainees from their cells, as well as a new incident of alleged desecration of a copy of the Koran, the Muslim holy book." Some of them are reported to be undergoing force feeding now. The detainees are apparently attempting to embarass the U.S. government into action. The government needn't worry since most of the U.S. main stream media isn't reporting it anyway.
posted by jperkins at 9:50 PM PST - 23 comments

Terragen is a scenery generator, created with the goal of generating photorealistic landscape images and animations. It is available for Windows and the Mac OS. The newest version was released this week. Be sure and check out the gallery. (previously mentioned)
posted by crunchland at 8:52 PM PST - 22 comments

The National Archives recently announced a new phase in the ongoing project called the Electronic Records Archives (ERA) whose vision is to catalog and make available online electronic documentation produced by the Federal government (E-mails, Word Documents, etc), which otherwise could disappear entirely or at least be very difficult to locate. Funded with over 300 million and set to debut in 2007 and be complete by 2011 it is a project of unusual scope and complexities but promises to make government more transparent to researches and the general public.
posted by stbalbach at 8:05 PM PST - 5 comments

Own a piece of national tragedy. Rehnquist's original signed decision on the 2000 election recount, throwing the country over to the loser of the popular vote (and, quite possibly, the loser of the electoral college) is up for auction.
posted by jonson at 7:18 PM PST - 39 comments

Blackwater: Now in New Orleans. "As the threat of forced evictions now looms in New Orleans and the city confiscates even legally registered weapons from civilians, the private mercenaries of Blackwater patrol the streets openly wielding M-16s and other assault weapons. This despite Police Commissioner Eddie Compass' claim that "Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons.""
posted by dash_slot- at 6:37 PM PST - 102 comments

"A natural history of birds. Most of which have not been figur'd or describ'd, and others very little known from obscure or too brief descriptions without figures, or from figures very ill design'd." [1743] and "Birds of North America" [1903] Samples (the last 15 from each link): [1743]: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. [1903]: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. [MI]
posted by peacay at 11:17 AM PST - 22 comments

A reminder of better times Yeah, I know. It's probably been posted here before, but it brought me back to the good old days and cheered me up a bit.
posted by GernBlandston at 10:50 AM PST - 66 comments

Quark gets a new face. Problem is, it looks just like the face of the Scottish Arts Council. Via MacCentral.
posted by juiceCake at 10:49 AM PST - 65 comments

After the Storm Sometime this weekend, you may be able to hear one of the best expressions of New Orleans’ role in music and culture available in any mass media. It's American Routes, a weekly show carried on many US public radio affiliates. Programmed and hosted by folklorist and UNO professor of folklore and culture Nick Spitzer, the show normally broadcasts from a studio in the heart of the French Quarter, but has found a temporary home on a Creole/Cajun French/English public radio station in Lafayette. Spitzer told the NYT that he began planning the music for this week’s show as he was fleeing the flooding city in his car, playing Fats Domino’s “Walking to New Orleans." This week’s show highlights New Orleans’ recovery from disasters past, emphasizing the city’s role as the greatest single wellspring of American music. The Crescent City, after all, has either birthed or nurtured everything from jazz, R & B, cajun and the related black-influenced zydeco, soul, blues, gospel, and rock and roll.) With an encyclopedic knowledge of American vernacular music, an utterly democratic spirit, and an unmistakeable respect and love for American musical forms and the people who create them, Spitzer has stepped forward several times this week to serve as a compassionate and optimistic spokesman for the irrepressible creative spirit of a suffering city and a culture in diaspora.
posted by Miko at 8:24 AM PST - 19 comments

Vicunas. Perhaps everyone else already knows about them, but I just learned today. Vicunas are my new favorite animal. Not only are they intelligent, shy, highly photogenic and notoriously difficult to tame, but they also orgle. This, while extremely cute, is not a vicuna.
posted by cleardawn at 8:12 AM PST - 30 comments

Temperance. Silence. Order. Resolution. Frugality. Industry. Sincerity. Justice. Moderation. Cleanliness. Chastity. Tranquility. Humility. Benjamin Franklin's 13 virtues. "He committed to giving strict attention to one virtue each week so after 13 weeks he moved through all 13. After 13 weeks he would start the process over again so in one year he would complete the course a total of 4 times."
posted by nthdegx at 6:38 AM PST - 32 comments

We are the Children of the Multiprismed Light and we are here for you. FSM!? Light of the Giant Moth! Moonmonsters! Xenu!? Ancient Nasquat413G!! GOD'S EYE OF DEATH! Stockpile soy products! Sleep deprivation! Yoni massage! Dance with reptiles! Take the quiz!
posted by loquacious at 6:20 AM PST - 24 comments

Jared Diamond, Racist? The anthropologists at savage minds have issues with Jared Diamond, some might say they think he is a “sham anti-racist.” Brad Delong is not impressed, neither are the folks at crooked timber. The discussion gets into cargo cults and lots of other good stuff. Here is the latest from Savage Minds, and the response from Delong and Crooked Timber. Nice compilation of links here.
posted by afu at 3:25 AM PST - 63 comments

What Aren't We Seeing? Panoramic (high-res) Photographs of Profound Geological Erosion. When we're in Monument Valley, it's tempting to say that we're looking at monuments - large hunks of stone scattered across the landscapes like statues to honor past heroes, or tombstones to honor the dead. A closer look tells us there's more to it than that. As we scan from one "monument" to the next, we can see in each monument a sloping base of roughly uniform vertical thickness and then straightsided rock of very uniform thickness. The rock is the same in all of them, suggesting that they were all part of two (or many more) uniform layers of stone that extended across the entire region. And how about here, where the Front Range and the Great Plains meet. Do you see a fault? An experienced geological observer would see a high ridge to the left with at most a few scattered ragged exposures of rock, whereas a prominent ridge of sedimentary rock juts up in the middle but is nowhere to be seen to the left. The road that we see going away from us on the left side of the image seems to separate two rather different areas. That observation provides us with a hypothesis: maybe there's a fault between two different kinds of rock. (more discussion here, and don't miss the Virtual Field Trip to a Major Unconformity).
posted by derangedlarid at 1:22 AM PST - 21 comments

The iTunes 5 Announcement From the Perspective of an Anthropomorphized Brushed Metal User Interface Theme.
posted by Tlogmer at 9:45 PM PST - 55 comments

Solutions For Grandeur Nicolas Sarkozy has become the most popular French politician by diving headfirst into the country’s most explosive political issues. If he has his way, this hyperactive, pro-American, Gaullist, free marketer will transform French politics for good. via
posted by Kwantsar at 9:25 PM PST - 18 comments

It should be mentioned wherever possible, and it should not stop until the mainstream media and all politicians realize that we, the people, will not stand for gross negligence, willful and wanton misconduct, nor the utter lies, any longer.
"We" the people? Or just a couple of blowhard bloggers? Do you feel a storm brewing?
posted by If I Had An Anus at 9:07 PM PST - 56 comments

The Davis-Bacon Act was passed in 1931 and requires all contractors for federally funded or assisted projects to pay their workers no less than the locally prevailing wage. The impetus for the act was a contractor from Alabama, hired to build a Veteran's hospital in Long Island, who brought a low-paid workforce with him rather than hiring more pricey locals. Organized labor is rather fond of this Act while others see it as racist and un-American. One provision allows the president to suspend the Act in times of national emergency, and now is one of those times.
posted by ewagoner at 8:42 PM PST - 29 comments

Know Thy Neighbor --playing hardball with those who sign a petition amending Massachusetts' Constitution to end same-sex marriage there. All who sign it will have their names and addresses posted on the site. It's the brainchild of Thomas Lang and Alexander Westerhoff, one of the first gay couples married in Massachusetts. A little more here, including this: ...altering the state Constitution is a big deal, and if the backers of this (or any) constitutional amendment can't find 66,000 Massachusetts residents who feel strongly enough about doing so that they're willing to make their support public, then maybe the measure shouldn't be on the ballot after all. ...
posted by amberglow at 5:57 PM PST - 219 comments

Norway is the world's third largest oil exporter and western Europe's largest gas producer. It has been saving oil revenues in a fund worth around $190 billion for future generations. Norway has an amazing welfare system. The Daily Show's book hit the nail on the head (pdf)(see 1967/93) Norwegians love hot dogs so much that a university professor wants to ban them. What an interesting country! They have a priest as their Prime Minister, but for how long? . Oslo, the country's capital, is the most expensive place to live... But minimum wage is far higher than in the US. They have had state accepted unions of same-sex couples since the early 90's. Norway isn't part of the EU.

Today Norway sits on approximately half of the remaining reserves of oil and gas in Europe.. And even though Norway's oil production has dropped, it still remains a huge supplier of oil to the US. But, no matter what, they will be okay.. Oh yeah.... the UN just said that it is the best place to live (pdf) in the world. (p.s The US went from 7th to 10th in the last year...wonder why?)
posted by thedoctorpants at 4:27 PM PST - 88 comments

Watercolor galleries from Korea (2,3,4,5).
posted by Wolfdog at 3:19 PM PST - 6 comments

Paying for Katrina: Republican congressman Zach Wamp of Tennessee suggested today that the costs associated with Katrina were 'good reason to at least delay' expanding the Medicare prescription drug benefit. Should the elderly and poor be expected to bear this burden?
posted by wadefranklin at 2:42 PM PST - 24 comments

Java applets to help visualize various concepts in math, physics, and engineering
posted by Gyan at 2:16 PM PST - 12 comments

Meanwhile, Malawi Withers
After a poor harvest that brought in 1.3 million tons of maize (well short of the 2.1 million tons needed) the United Nation made an $88m (66 million pounds) food appeal for Malawi ten days ago but has not received a single penny or pledge of aid from any nation so far.

Woops, check that, Ireland's just pledged a million euros. Only 65 million to go.
posted by fenriq at 1:56 PM PST - 19 comments

U.S. Can Detain Padilla Indefinitely. President George W. Bush was handed a major victory on Friday in his effort to assert sweeping presidential powers in the war on terrorism as a US appeals court upheld his authority to imprison indefinitely a US citizen captured on American soil.
posted by solistrato at 1:48 PM PST - 76 comments

Beautiful Gallery (Google Cache) of b & w photos of Germany from 1929. The shots look like something out of a fairy tale, or a Jean Cocteau film. Here are some favorites. Compare to this (all to brief) flickr gallery of photos from about 15 years later, during WWII.
posted by jonson at 1:25 PM PST - 19 comments

The Third Annual World Quoits Championship will be held tomorrow in Amityville, PA. This ancient game, related to the discus, involves pitching rings at a peg in the ground. Once widely played in the UK and US, the game of quoits has declined in popularity over the years, replaced in the US by its derivative--horseshoes (which are easier to throw and more likely to score “ringers”). Today, it’s a regional pastime, played primarily in PA, NJ and NY. Learn everything there is to know about quoits here. They’ll even find you a partner.
posted by jrossi4r at 12:39 PM PST - 6 comments

Shutterbook - "drag and drop photo sharing." A flash-based Flickr-esque photo community..."The service is similar to Flickr before Yahoo and while it is in an open beta at the moment, there will be a cost for the premium version..."
posted by tpl1212 at 12:22 PM PST - 22 comments

NYC Remembers: Public Service Audio and Video Ads

"It's our big September 11 sale! Take 30 to 40 percent off every item throughout the store! Plus early birds take an additional 10 percent off! . . . Doors open early and stay open late!" (Video Ad 3)

The ad is the creation of One Day's Pay (similar post from 9/11/04) a nonprofit group working to establish Sept. 11 as a national day of volunteering. [via]
posted by clgregor at 11:52 AM PST - 3 comments

Vintage Projects do it yourself plans, vintage reprints and building ideas from the 40's, 50's and 60's for farm, workshop, woodshop, machineshop, kids and camping. Includes plans for a pop-up camper, toy excavator, snow blower, and concrete block machine.
posted by Mitheral at 10:42 AM PST - 18 comments

Michael Brown, head of FEMA is relieved of duties. After a rocky week and increasing doubts about his background and experience (like a padded resume), Brown gets pulled from FEMA duty. Pretty surprising to see, given that the "CEO President" proclaimed "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" just a few days ago.
posted by mathowie at 10:31 AM PST - 215 comments

La Tomatina! Every year, on the last Wednesday in August, the world's biggest food fight takes place at the Plaza Del Pueblo in the small town of Buñol in Spain. In 2005, the streets ran red with juice of 25 tons of tomatoes.
posted by Gamblor at 10:10 AM PST - 13 comments

Katrinanomore&global warming Welcome to the first web site in America dedicated exclusively to raising awareness about the connection between hurricane Katrina and global warming. See below an essay just written by author Mike Tidwell that explains how climate change will soon turn every coastal city in America into another New Orleans unless we make a rapid switch to clean, renewable energy worldwide.
posted by Postroad at 8:57 AM PST - 42 comments

Born abroad. 7.5% of the UK's population was born outside the UK and Ireland. This fascinating mini-site from the BBC shows where they all came from, and where they live now. Immigration has been a hot-button issue in UK politics for a while now. In Scotland, they want more immigrants. In England, at least on the right, they want far fewer. The conservative right hate Europe, and hate immigration. Perhaps we'd better not tell them that Germans are the third-largest immigrant group (India and Pakistan at 1 and 2), while the USA-icans languish in 5th.
posted by athenian at 8:57 AM PST - 7 comments

It isn't difficult to find a chess programme that is better at playing chess, but you won't find many that shows you what it is thinking. It also explains how it works. Rather fascinating.
posted by SharQ at 7:34 AM PST - 28 comments

The Chinese in California 1850-1925. The site is poorly designed. To get to the content click Essays & Galleries. To get to the photos, click on the (practically hidden) gallery link at the top right of each short essay.
posted by OmieWise at 7:17 AM PST - 7 comments

In the summer of 1995 there was a week-long heat wave in Chicago. Over 700 people died. Most of them were the elderly, poor, and African-Americans. Link above is a Slate article by Eric Klinberg who wrote the definitive Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (2003) in which he concludes that "a city, in its decision to operate like a corporation, experienced the breakdown of massive social services" and the resulting "widening cracks in the social foundations of America's cities".
posted by stbalbach at 6:25 AM PST - 20 comments

Planning on taking part in this Sunday's Freedom Walk? Better register today or you will face arrest on Sunday. If you'd rather cheer on the march instead, be prepared to peer over a four-foot high "snow fence."
posted by Otis at 5:28 AM PST - 100 comments

"We should not fight because it’s simply not worth it." Are these the words of a long-haired hippy? A neutral Swiss? A flip-flopping Democrat? A Frenchman in mid-surrender? Nope. It's from a speech by Texas Republican Ron Paul.
posted by Jatayu das at 4:44 AM PST - 30 comments

Yes, it's another Katrina post - sorry, but... this is a great photo essay from with New Orleans before, during and after Katrina. Besides some really interesting photography, it goes some way to showing just why people didn't leave before, or immediately after the hurricane - the sense of normality is astounding, given what we know now...
posted by benzo8 at 4:39 AM PST - 102 comments

Vint Cerf, "father of the internet", joins Google! It seems Google is going from strength to strength. Not content with buying up the world's dark fibre, they've now wooed Vint Cerf to work for them as "Chief Internet Evangelist" (what a great job title!) Vint's interview is here, and information on his major cause: the need for more IPs!
posted by tommyc at 3:38 AM PST - 24 comments

None Dare Call It Fraud: Harpers article on the report Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio.
posted by blue shadows at 1:25 AM PST - 81 comments

Rami Chami, a graduate student entering Tulane University, was among those who sought refuge in the Superdome. Chami was formerly an editor at the Indiana Daily Student, and has written a three-part series for the paper about the experience.
"The field before us, which would have been ideal to lay down on was empty, but off bounds. The field was manned by National Guardsmen who would not allow people on it. I was told by those around me that it was a multi-million dollar field which the stadium management did not want ruined."
"Our first choices for a bed that evening were: a wet floor, damp chair or in the reeking but dry hallway."
"The atmosphere in the dome had gotten incredibly tense and the soldiers were walking around with shotguns, which I assumed was an ideal weapon for close quarter combat."
posted by kyleg at 12:27 AM PST - 26 comments

New Orleans Flood in Your City Map overlays of the New Orleans flood over various US cities.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:52 PM PST - 41 comments

House and Senate GOP leaders announce the (Republican dominated) "Hurricane Katrina Joint Review Committee" which should ensure that no-one near the top of the (Republican Dominated) chain of command is in any danger of repercussions over the death of a great American city. In fact, it seems likely that incompetence will be richly rewarded: representative Waxman thinks that a Provision in Katrina Emergency Bill Leaves Government Open to Waste, Fraud, and Abuse. But that's nothing! Despite near-universal opprobrium as a dysfunctional bureaucracy led by an unqualified political appointee, FEMA will receive nearly all of the funds approved on Thursday -- $50 billion... (all links via TPM)
posted by dinsdale at 10:29 PM PST - 43 comments

NO First Responders and their families are getting some time off in Las Vegas. In the wake of two suicides and lots of resignations, some first responders are being rotated out to get a break from the stress of responding to the disaster. The trips are being paid for by the Red Cross as well as donations from Station Casinos and Allegiant Air. The first group arrived Tuesday, and gets five days to check out the town and get some rest - sleeping in soft beds, eating hot meals, gamble if they please and maybe catch a show or two. Other cities like Atlanta are also participating in helping the first responders get away from the disaster zone to get a break.
posted by SirOmega at 10:26 PM PST - 8 comments

Lustron House "We were revolutionizing a whole industry," said Richard Jones, former Lustron vice president of sales. "We were saying with our house: 'You put down a hammer and a saw and pick up a wrench.'" Though radical in its use of porcelain enameled steel, the Lustron house — a one-story, gabled-roof ranch with a bay window and side porch — looked much like other postwar-era dwellings. Behind its traditional façade, however, lay the hopes and expectations for a new era in American housing.
posted by goalyeehah at 9:54 PM PST - 13 comments

Three days after Katrina hit, on September 1st, Red Cross national president Marsha Evans 'first made the request to undertake the operation' ... 'to enter New Orleans with relief supplies', but the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness 'rebuffed' the request. As events unfolded, 'the Red Cross never launched its relief effort in the city' -- as reported by CNN. Fox News (transcription) broke this story with a slightly different perspective. Somewhere in between, I am sure, lies the truth.
posted by mischief at 9:03 PM PST - 37 comments

OpenDemocracy It's terrible terrible that the one institution which was created at the end of World War II to prevent any future wars from occurring. It is going to be the next place where these fasicists are going to be gunning for.
posted by N8k99 at 8:29 PM PST - 37 comments

Genes Reveal Recent Human Brain Evolution. Two important new papers in the journal Science (available here) from the evolutionary geneticist and rising star, Bruce T. Lahn (see this recent profile from The Scientist), are potentially the tips of some very large icebergs. The papers document how two genes related to brain properties that underwent strong selection during the course of hominid evolution, have continued undergoing strong selection since the emergence of anatomically modern man. The papers wonderfully illustrate how biological evolution is an ongoing process as well as the artificial distinction between “micro” and “macro” evolution, and promise to be controversial for two reasons: First, the brain genes underwent the strongest selection during two periods of cultural and technological efflorescence (roughly 37,000 and 5,800 years ago). Second, the genes are distributed very differently in modern human population groups, existing at very high frequencies in some groups and being very rare in others, ensuring that the modern function of these genes will be a source of more research and much impassioned debate. More observations from anthropologist John Hawks.
posted by Jason Malloy at 7:29 PM PST - 53 comments

In an interview with American ABC TV news to be broadcast on Friday (US time), Colin Powell , former Secretary of State, describes his speech to the UN Security Council on Iraq's WMD capabilities as "a blot" on his record. "I'm the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world, and (it) will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It's painful now," [Powell] said. Finally, some recognition of this fact, albeit two years too late.
posted by Effigy2000 at 6:43 PM PST - 60 comments

Rappers I Know - FMJU presents 31 days of the "best shit you've never heard" for download. Featuring Talib Kweli, De La Soul , Oh No (Madlib's brother), J-Zone and the Kanye West "George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People" Gold Digger remix, a response to Hurricane Katrina from The Legendary Knock Out Boyz. ...and much, much more.
posted by SweetJesus at 5:54 PM PST - 39 comments

View the Pacific Walrus community at Alaska's Walrus Island State Game Sanctuary via their handy webcam. However, do your viewing soon as the camera will be going offline for several weeks starting tomorrow due to annual hunting by Alaskan Natives and their wishes for privacy . (yes, the animals in the last link are seals, but it illustrates why they don't want this broadcast live)
posted by numlok at 5:17 PM PST - 3 comments

On live TV, irate Miss. man tells Cheney to "self-copulate" Thus turns the karmic wheel ? Recall: over a year ago VP Cheney said ' "I expressed myself rather forcefully, felt better after I had done it," after he told Vermont Senator Patrick Leahey - on the floor of the US Senate - to "Go f_ck" himself. Today, during Cheney's tour of storm damaged Miss., a resident approached Cheney's press meeting and shouted: "Go f_ck yourself, Mr. Cheney!!  Go f_ck yourself!!!". The exhortation was aired on at least one national cable channel. Here is the video ( ALT ). The LA Times,CNN, and FOX are carrying the story.
posted by troutfishing at 3:34 PM PST - 125 comments

A Passion for Pachinko
posted by Rothko at 3:30 PM PST - 9 comments

Japanese Castles.
posted by Wolfdog at 3:03 PM PST - 14 comments

Creative COW (Communities Of the World) seems to be a one-stop... stop... for help with After Effects, Combustion, and other industry software of just about any type. While some (nevertheless incredible) tutorials are a bit difficult to decipher, they could also be much worse. The focus looks mostly to be on After Effects and other Motion Graphics software, but the forums are invaluable for just about anything you might need. Of particular note would be the Demo Reels forum, where anyone from Editors to Directors of Photography, and even Game Developers (former or otherwise) can post reels for criticism and even be approached for work. Some of them are incredible, even if you're not involved in the industry.
posted by shmegegge at 2:44 PM PST - 8 comments

Tolkachev, A Worthy Successor to Penkovsky [via]
posted by event at 2:35 PM PST - 8 comments

Lucy and Ethiopia From a favorite mailing list, I receive my dose of satellite images. One of the images this week is from Ethiopia. Reading the text they provide, you’ll see this is the area where ‘Australopithecus afarensis’ hails from; she is know as Lucy to most of us. Why Lucy? Because Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was playing on the radio when they found her. The site also lead me to this guy, who has the title Paleo-Artist and has rather interesting artwork on his site.
posted by fluffycreature at 1:42 PM PST - 1 comment

Vancouver's elite Urban SAR team has been and returned, having helped out in New Orleans in the way they were trained. There's more help on the way from Canada, in the form of Operation Unison; this includes a a Canadian Navy flotilla consisting of the destroyer HMCS Athabaskan, the frigates HMCS Toronto and HMCS Ville de Quebec and the Canadian Coast Guard boat tender HMCS Sir William Alexander. The flotilla carries around 1000 servicepeople, many of them medical and rescue specialists, in addition to engineering and construction crews. Additionally, forty Canadian navy clearance divers will be accompanying the relief force. Despite recent diplomatic spats between our two nations (notably over Iraq, cattle and softwood lumber) we remain good neighbours. After U.S. Ambassador to Canada Paul Cellucci's departure Canada was awaiting an even worse adversary in replacement Ambassador Wilkins. And yet, despite Wilkin's lack of knowledge of things Canadian, he appears to have a significantly greater measure of humility than dick-swinging Cellucci ever did. In any case, as "irrelevant and disappointing" as Canada is to the likes of Bill O'Reilly, we're on our way to help our friends to the south.
posted by illiad at 11:36 AM PST - 50 comments

6.8 Ghz Quantum personal supercomputer. 1 terabyte of non-volatile quantum-optical RAM, 2 terabytes of mass storage in non-volatile quantum-optical ATA-IDE. All solid state, no moving parts. In a fscking laptop. With an 8 hour battery life. Debuting at CES 2006. (Warning: Ugly website. Possible vaporware. Lots of pictures, though.)
posted by loquacious at 11:33 AM PST - 56 comments

Blame the tree-huggers? The national Sierra Club was one of several environmental groups who sued the Army Corps of Engineers to stop a 1996 plan to raise and fortify Mississippi River levees.
posted by flyboy at 11:18 AM PST - 42 comments

Our story begins with a flood and the theme continues throughout our literature. On this wet, wet planet of beings who depend on water for survival, deluge is an undeniably universal experience. With the help of a much-maligned organization, the literature grows...
posted by mds35 at 11:16 AM PST - 4 comments

The Flying Spaghetti Monster Game. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (discussed here) now has a game. Convert the people into Pastafarians with your noodly appendage.
posted by caddis at 10:28 AM PST - 38 comments

Lightstalkers.org is a great place for photographers and photojournalists from all over the world to give and get help, keep track of goings on or just keep in touch with each other. I, myself, am enjoying all the wonderful member galleries.
posted by deathofme at 10:18 AM PST - 4 comments

The Song and the Singer For many he is the greatest Lieder singer of the 20th century. As he turns 80, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau reflects on his long career.
posted by matteo at 10:14 AM PST - 7 comments

Losing New Orleans: Four months before it happened, I described for a New York editor, in detail and with stunning accuracy, the tragedy that is now unfolding in New Orleans.
In April, I e-mailed the editor my proposal. Two weeks later, she sent her response. As much as I hate saying this,” she wrote, “the only way for this book to actually work is if New Orleans had already sunk.” I’d like to know what “transportation security” meant to Mr. Hutchinson, if it did not include the concept of evacuating a stricken city, or protecting its great port, or safeguarding the third of our nation’s fuel that enters by way of New Orleans?
If I, a reporter in Little Rock, with nothing more than Internet access, a car and a telephone, could predict, almost hour-by-hour, the horror that Katrina would unleash, what were Hutchinson and his cronies at Homeland Security doing with all the assets at their disposal and nearly $40 billion in funding?
posted by thisisdrew at 9:45 AM PST - 71 comments

Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky, California paramedics give an eye witness account of their experience of Katrina in New Orleans
posted by threehundredandsixty at 9:32 AM PST - 50 comments

It's All in the Head -- "It could be said that the restroom wall is the last great medium for pure self-expression."
posted by Orb at 9:01 AM PST - 32 comments

Bizarre music video featuring a cgi animated Nazi army composed of anthropomorphized piglets. The video is for a song called Shvayne by a 19 year old Russian singer named Natasha Ionova, who performs under the name Glukoza. Video is embedded flash animation.
posted by jonson at 7:32 AM PST - 40 comments

Louisiana Leads in Army Corps Spending, but Millions Had Nothing to Do With Floods
In Katrina's wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large.

[H]undreds of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state's congressional delegation and approved by the Corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate. Despite a series of independent investigations criticizing Army Corps construction projects as wasteful pork-barrel spending, Louisiana's representatives have kept bringing home the bacon.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 7:14 AM PST - 70 comments

Foudre en Boule avec des micro-ondes (Making ball lightning in your microwave). Complete with movies and audio spectrum analyses. From the Plasma Research website. Also: how to build a stable plasmoid in your microwave; simple ball lightning generation in your microwave; and, last but certainly not least, how to build yourself a glow discharge plasma panel. "This panel is not able to generate some thrusting effects, but you will be able to explore some OAUGDP properties like the air drag reduction effect and to test the EM Cloacking effect."
posted by OmieWise at 6:58 AM PST - 7 comments

Dictionaraoke. Your favorite songs, as performed by the audio pronunciation samples from online dictionaries.
posted by CunningLinguist at 5:37 AM PST - 48 comments

Custody After Civil Union Pits States Against Judges (NYT) - This may be the most signficant custody battle to ensue following the collapse of a Civil Union. Are there any laws in place to allow the non-biological mother visitation rights over the three year old child born during this union? Vermont says yes, Virginia says no. Final verdict? Jury's still out, this one may go all the way to the Supreme Court.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 5:13 AM PST - 17 comments

"I come from Harvard... there's no testin' me, 1-6-double-doughnut on the S.A.T..." Gates raps! I've seen references to this around the web a couple of times, but I just discovered I had a friend who is actually in it. Yes, Nerds:// the Musical! is about to open its limited run at the Beckett Theatre for the New York Musical Theatre Festival and, from what he's saying about the response to previews and earlier runs, your next chance to see it might involve much heftier ticket prices. Will Bill come? Will Steve? Woz might!
posted by umberto at 7:15 PM PST - 6 comments

Oil companies, not environmentalists behind refinery shortages. The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR) today exposed internal oil company memos that show how the industry intentionally reduced domestic refining capacity to drive up profits. Internal memos from Mobil, Chevron, and Texaco show different ways the oil giants closed down refining capacity and drove independent refiners out of business. In related news, petroleum industry analyst Tim Hamilton showed that from January 17th to April 18th 2005 gasoline prices jumped 65 cents per gallon and refiner profits rose [pdf] by 61 cents per gallon.
posted by dejah420 at 7:05 PM PST - 79 comments

Next generation page for weather sat info Tutorial is attached to the "New User" button. This is nice. "Purpose" is some Flash thing I can't read but the weather satellite maps (USA, for now) are very nicely done. You can see the lights coming on as the sunset line sweeps across the country. Except, of course, where they're off ...
posted by hank at 6:58 PM PST - 4 comments

Nagin Knockin Noggins on Blanco Na-Na? "The mayor certainly has ordered [mandatory evacuation of New Orleans] but the governor, and that would be me, would have to enforce it or implement it. We are trying to determine whether there is an absolute justification for that," she told FOX News - Wed Sept 7 2005
posted by dand at 6:35 PM PST - 39 comments

Beyond Incompetence Reading the news after the Katrina Hurricane and the lack-of-response disaster, a pattern began to emerge. Mainstream media compilation - Collective Bellaciao via xymphora, which has several other uniquely critical posts on Katrina
posted by ism at 6:04 PM PST - 28 comments

Lessons from British folk songs
posted by kenko at 4:43 PM PST - 19 comments

Opinion: No time for turf wars--and much more coverage worth reading People at all levels of government will have to answer for what they did and didn’t do in the days before and after Hurricane Katrina. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has earned scorching criticism for its day-late-and-billions-short response to the ghastly crisis in New Orleans. And maybe it was only a matter of time before officials at FEMA and its parent organization, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, began looking for others to blame.
posted by Postroad at 4:32 PM PST - 18 comments

I can't afford my gasoline.
posted by Guerilla at 3:08 PM PST - 61 comments

Leader of a major global governmental entity takes responsibility for massive failures of management within his organisation, showing humility and expressing regret. No, not him. Now, if I was in charge...
posted by klaatu at 2:45 PM PST - 32 comments

The New York Times is offering Katrina reporters trauma counselling. Reporters covering warzones in Iraq, Chechnya and the Sudan were not offered near-mandatory trauma counselling by the newspaper of record.

Journalists in Lousiana and the rest of the Gulf Coast were.

"In fact, the circumstances were so shocking to reporters that according to one staff member, The New York Times e-mailed information about dealing with trauma to reporters in the field, outlining warning signs; employee-assistance counselors also placed calls to reporters."
posted by huskerdont at 12:37 PM PST - 35 comments

The First Interspecies Online Chat. An Internet chat with Koko the Gorilla. Some fascinating discourse with the world's most famous primate..... Question: Do you like to chat with other people? LiveKOKO: fine nipple
posted by Idiot Mittens at 11:46 AM PST - 32 comments

Custom Flickr photo books & posters.
posted by Vidiot at 11:19 AM PST - 22 comments

iPhone is here (nearly!) ...Apple reveals the iPhone! And the iPod nano?
posted by tommyc at 10:58 AM PST - 149 comments

Marvel to finance up to ten new films — Marvel Entertainment has received a line of credit to produce new superhero films. The characters in the arrangement are Captain America, The Avengers, Nick Fury, Black Panther, Ant-Man, Cloak & Dagger, Dr. Strange, Hawkeye, Power Pack, and Shang-Chi. "These movies are tentpoles for either summer or the holidays," said Marvel chairman and CEO, Avi Arad. Right. Because who wouldn't want to see a film about Hawkeye? Or Ant-Man? I can't wait! (Related: how to make a superhero movie that doesn't suck. My first thought? Have a superhero that doesn't suck.)
posted by jdroth at 10:15 AM PST - 134 comments

Rick Santorum isn't afraid to kick people even when it's not popular to do so. Yesterday he showed off his future Presidential nature once again by calling for tougher penalties for people who won't evacuate when told to by the government (no clarification if there's a distinction for can't). Given the evidence that race and economic class were primary indicators of whether or not people were able to be evacuated from New Orleans before the disaster--is he being dense, insensitive or just playing to his traditional values base?
posted by illovich at 8:53 AM PST - 145 comments

Mad Meg does all of her work with a black ball point pen on notebook paper.
posted by crunchland at 8:50 AM PST - 37 comments

The first episode of NerdTV is out but the site is so inundated with users that the official torrent is the only way to get a copy at the moment. It's an online-only series featuring hour long episodes filled with interviews done by Robert Cringely.
posted by mathowie at 8:49 AM PST - 15 comments

Open House London takes place every September (17th & 18th in 2005). There are 604 buildings open this year, and you can search by borough, period (medieval anyone?) and even go to one where an architect or engineer will show you around. How about the Freemason's Hall, Lloyd's of London or the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street?
posted by quiet at 7:17 AM PST - 6 comments

Quick! Hide the bodies! FEMA's coming. (Or was that the DoD?) via Atrios
posted by bashos_frog at 6:09 AM PST - 125 comments

Arnold Schönberg Web Radio - a rotating program of documentaries, lectures, history, the composer's own words, and recordings of nearly all his works. The Schönberg center also has some beautiful manuscript pages scanned.
posted by Wolfdog at 4:01 AM PST - 9 comments

As if a looming draft isn't enough, we now have a military recruitment web site nearly masquerading as commercial (.com) job-placement web site run by the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) from the Pentagon. ASVAB stands for Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, a test administered for career placement for all branches of the U.S. Armed Forces. Will there be any children left behind in America. Is our past our future?
posted by augustweed at 3:32 AM PST - 35 comments

The City of Louisiana. Keith Olbermann has crystallized my thoughts exactly(embedded wmv, qt vid here) regarding the ineptness (or is it the complete indifference?) that has played out for us in the past week.
posted by thedoctorpants at 2:18 AM PST - 66 comments

California passes same-sex marriage bill The California Assembly, on a mostly party-line vote, passed Assembly Bill 849, and the California Legislature becomes the first legislative body in the country to pass a same-sex marriage bill.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:22 PM PST - 32 comments

"These are 20 of the most awesome trick shots I have created and learned over this summer." Warning: embedded wmv
posted by jonson at 9:39 PM PST - 21 comments

Weathering the Storm: Lessons in Hurricane Risk Reduction from Cuba [pdf] Oxfam America report described Cuba's community-based response system in April 2004, five months before category 5 hurricane Ivan tore across the island but resulted in zero deaths. From Medicc Review: "Of those evacuated, fully 78%...were sheltered in the homes of family, friends or neighbors. 8,026 tourists were transferred to safe areas. 359,644 boarding school students were transferred to their homes. 898,160 farm animals in vulnerable areas were moved to safer ground." The International Red Cross had similar praise for Cuba's planning after Hurricane Michelle in 2001: " The contrast between events in Cuba and earlier disasters, such as Hurricanes Mitch and Georges in 1998 and the floods in Venezuela in 1999, is enormous."
posted by mediareport at 8:34 PM PST - 31 comments

Weasel words 'Spare Don Watson, author of Death Sentences from all of these weasely, wishy-washy, and worst of all, ugly bits of management-speak that have drifted out of consulting sessions and into the social realm.' Forbes.com..................... Your favourite spin doctoring ?
posted by johnny7 at 8:09 PM PST - 31 comments

Katrina timeline And another , as the first only goes up till Friday the 2nd. Both these only reference verified events. That said, these both seem to have been done by left-leaning people, and I'd like to see some right-wing or even (*ghasp*) non-partisan ones.
posted by delmoi at 7:55 PM PST - 41 comments

Ask a philosopher.
posted by tellurian at 7:01 PM PST - 32 comments

Dead Zones - Causes and Consequences Found by way of this article series where I read: "Ask scientists, government types, fishermen, almost anyone about the low-oxygen zone coming off the mouth of the Mississippi River and one question spills from their lips. "Have you talked to Nancy Rabalais?" ... marine ecologist Rabalais has led the search for answers to the 8,500-square-mile zone and the charge to find a solution. " ----- From the first linked page, you can view eight video clips -- each about 9.5 minutes long -- of a February 2005 slide lecture. She's awesome.
posted by hank at 5:43 PM PST - 10 comments

The Old Man vs. The Comeback Kid. On Wednesday evening at 7pm EST Andre Agassi will face James Blake in the US Open Quarterfinals. At 35, this will be Agassi's 20th appearance at the US Open. Although he's been persistently dodging plans for retirement this may possibly be the last time Agassi graces Arthur Ashe court. James Blake's story is different. At 25, he's spent the past year and a half recovering from a neck fracture, the death of his father and an illness in which he temporarily lost feeling in his face and suffered from blurry vision. He will also be the first black man to reach the quarterfinals in the US open in 23 years. Will this match-up be a passing of the torch to a younger generation of US men's tennis players or will experience prevail over youth? Regardless, this may be one of the most anticipated matches at the US Open since Agassi faced Pete Sampras in the 2002 final.
posted by quadog at 3:56 PM PST - 26 comments

I'm not expecting much from foreign nations because we haven't asked for it," (Bush) said. "I do expect a lot of sympathy, and perhaps some will send cash dollars. For a while there foreign countries were unsure whether to send aid and the US was sending mixed signals. Now of course, even Qatar is coughing up "cash dollars" and other countries are lending a hand. But the question remains: why do we even need it? This guy blames privatization, and I can't say I blame him. (NYT link).
posted by Smedleyman at 3:13 PM PST - 53 comments

Is "Refugee" a racist term? The Rev. Jesse Jackson seems to think so.
posted by riffraff at 2:57 PM PST - 115 comments

Rape rumors false? No word on turnstyle jumping or wearing of heavy coats . . . (via)
posted by hackly_fracture at 2:43 PM PST - 37 comments

Life is but a dream. Some people study dreams, while others post to dream BB's. You can even learn how to have lucid dream with these cool, little coins. And of course, there is the inevitable link list. Enjoy!
posted by flyboy at 2:36 PM PST - 11 comments

International Dialects of English Archive
posted by kenko at 2:22 PM PST - 17 comments

A creepy closed amusement park in Korea.
posted by jragon at 1:47 PM PST - 32 comments

Blair apologizes to Britons caught in New Orleans during Katrina. The British Foreign Office was repeatedly "rebuffed" by both US State Department and Louisiana state officials when it came to getting their own citizens out. Some US rescuers even took photos of stranded Britons, and asked them to flash their tops (a la Mardi Gras)...leaving without them when they wouldn't comply. British nationals were left to fend for themselves as US citizens were given priority for evacuation. Get ready for more stories like this as foreign nationals who survived Katrina make it home.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 1:43 PM PST - 60 comments

"[Operation Fresh Start's] mission is to use energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies to reduce the human suffering and economic loss caused by natural disasters." An intiative of the Dept. of Energy, Operation Fresh Start has helped many communities rebuild after disasters. Under the case studies link you can read about four. The most fascinating is Valmeyer, IL, which moved two miles to higher ground after being destroyed in the 1993 Mississippi River floods. Here is a Context article about the Valmeyer move, and one from Smithsonian Magazine, both well worth reading. (The DOE also published Rebuilding for the future...A guide to Sustainable Redevelopment for Disaster-Affected Communities.)
posted by OmieWise at 1:21 PM PST - 5 comments

Bob Denver, beloved to millions as the lovable beatnick Maynard G. Krebs on the early television show The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, has died at age 70.
he was also on a later show about seven stranded castaways
posted by yhbc at 12:21 PM PST - 81 comments

"As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters - his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week - a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta. Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers. Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA."
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:19 AM PST - 145 comments

Dyslexia - Myth?
posted by Pretty_Generic at 8:19 AM PST - 64 comments

Hayseed-Dixie "Ace of Spades" video (link to a quicktime). This band covered Greendays "Holiday" on Top Of The Pops (BBC, UK) last week and in my opinion is was inspired genius. I couldn't find that video, so I'm posting this one instead. And I don't like R'n'B enough to know what this is they're covering. Again a link to a quicktime, but it made me giggle. (more videos/mp3s on their site)
posted by 13twelve at 7:08 AM PST - 49 comments

Everything Sounds Like Coldplay Now
posted by feelinglistless at 3:20 AM PST - 226 comments

Barbara Bush insults Katrina survivors. Said today while visiting relief efforts at the Houston Astrodome: "Almost everyone I've talked to said we're going to move to Houston. What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. (Said with concern.) Everybody is so overwhelmed by all the hospitality. And so many of the peoples in the arena here, you know, they're underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them." I'd be curious what she'd think after after living there for just a week, much less for months on end, before being sent off to somewhere even further from their homes, friends, and relatives. Please note: This woman raised our president. Did the acorn fall far from the tree?
posted by insomnia_lj at 1:32 AM PST - 203 comments

A toxic landfill site on which low-income housing was built in central New Orleans is now under floodwaters with the potential to pollute and contaminate portions of the Gulf Coast. In the 1940s and 1950s, the site was routinely sprayed with DDT, but in 1962 some 229,300 cubic metres of excess fill was removed because subsurface toxic fires kept erupting (and got the site known as "Dante's Inferno"). According to the editor of Hazardous Waste magazine, the site -- now under water -- will almost inevitably leach toxic effluent into the floodwaters, with the potential of inflicting unpredictable damage on the coast, and those that live there -- a possible environmental catastrophe. Tests by the EPA in the 1980s and 90s found 149 chemicals - 44 of which are known carcinogens. Among the toxic substances found were arsenic, lead, mercury, barium, and other organic compounds that are associated with pesticides and the burning of waste. Finally, what is the status of the Waterford 3 nuke plant just north of New Orleans, and what is the status of that plant's nuclear waste ? News reports say it sustained damage to 'off-site buildings' but what does that mean? Were those waste containment facilities?
posted by Babylonian at 12:38 AM PST - 46 comments

Communication Breakdown is a problem that often prevents doctors from treating immigrant patients effectively. Language and cultural barriers prevent patients from understanding doctors instructions, sharing their symptoms of illness, and even from being examined by the doctor in cases where religious beliefs prohibit contact with someone of the opposite gender.
posted by gregb1007 at 12:34 AM PST - 9 comments

In other news, let's all welcome the newest nation on our little planet, the Islamic Republic of Qaim. Newly created by the Iraqi faction of Al-Qaeda on the Iraqi side of the Iraqi-Syrian border, they're executing "collaborators" and at least one "prostitute". Their nearest neighbor's security forces -- the US Marines -- say they haven't heard anything about it.
posted by raaka at 12:32 AM PST - 13 comments

New Orleans' critical 17th Street Levee has apparently been plugged, but more work remains. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has a 1999 report, National Register Evaluation of New Orleans Drainage System, that discusses changes to the system throughout its history. It's worth noting that delays in implementing sewage and drainage improvements go back to the 19th century, even after the American South confronted the deadly Yellow Fever epidemic of 1878 (the last U.S. case was in 1996). More inside...
posted by cenoxo at 11:30 PM PST - 9 comments

Aircheck is an excellent program on the legendary free-form radio station WFMU, showcasing vintage radio. Highlights include the deeply blasphemous Bob Lassiter, the "Paul is Dead" broadcast, and Cleveland DJ Murray "It's FRIIIIDAYYYY!" Saul.
posted by starkeffect at 10:34 PM PST - 10 comments

The Accidental Panhandler I found a great corduroy blazer in a thrift shop and I loved it. I was out handing out flyers to drunk college boys that night in my lovely new coat and several of them each handed me a dollar. When a fifth person offered me a buck I asked why people were giving me money. "Aren't you out here asking for money?" "No. I'm here promoting for a film festival." "Oh! Well that can't pay much." "Dude, they rent me an apartment, a car, fly me all over the country and I make money o'plenty." This guy who'd intended to be generous then turned angry. "Yeah! Then why the hell are you wearing that stupid coat!" He left his dollar and moved on. I was handed three more dollar bills that day and did not protest. Wanting to be true to the lifestyle I'd found myself in, I spent the money on fortified wine. How much do panhandlers really make? Can you possibly make a living at this? How much of a difference does a funny sign make? Will people give to a guy in a banana suit? Does every sign have to say "God Bless?" Important questions. I aim to find the answers. Give me a dollar. God Bless. Panhandling Worldwide
posted by caddis at 8:50 PM PST - 58 comments

Nice Cup Of Tea And A Sit Down
posted by Silune at 6:22 PM PST - 45 comments

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

At the age of 70, Cohen's retirement savings have been depleted to under $150,000 and he is being forced to return to full-time touring and recording.
posted by huskerdont at 6:02 PM PST - 66 comments

How To Win An Argument. Plus, if you scroll down, you'll find an argument about "How To Win An Argument." (Which may remind you of a Monty Python skit.) What do you think of this guy's strategy? Compassionate or passive-aggressive?
posted by grumblebee at 5:31 PM PST - 56 comments

Michael Homan rode out Katrina in New Orleans and later "escaped" one of the freeway-based collection points. His is the first of what will surely be many firsthand accounts appearing on blogs. Why not collect your link finds here?
posted by mwhybark at 5:21 PM PST - 29 comments

Yet to draw national sympathy--and shock? Some hurricane survivors are being allowed to return to check their homes and authorities are working to deal with the dead. But how many people may remain in mortal peril? The NOLAView weblog reports some ongoing, hair-raising situations: "Kathy Frank is stranded and trapped at 1737 Valence Street. She is text messageing. . . . Right now it is Monday at 12 pm." "[A]rson fires have been set in the Bywater and criminals are still in control of the streets at night." And this is within New Orleans. What about rural areas--struggling and receiving little or no federal assistance? And the spread of infectious disease and other post-hurricane threats?
posted by flug at 11:47 AM PST - 47 comments

BEHIND THE CURTAIN.... George Bush's photo-op tour of New Orleans yesterday has apparently driven Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu over the edge. Today she blasted FEMA for its feeble response to Hurricane Katrina and Bush for his phony, stage managed promises of action:
posted by Postroad at 10:10 AM PST - 129 comments

Fascinating video (wmv,08:45) about recent Thracian tomb excavations in Bulgaria. With over 15000 mounds unexplored in the region it is a race against the mafia to uncover the golden treasure.
posted by stbalbach at 9:47 AM PST - 20 comments

Help process survivor data for missing-persons network (via BoingBoing) The Katrina PeopleFinder Project is an effort to gather online data on missing Katrina disaster victims into an easily searchable database, so their loved ones can be more easily contacted when they are finally found. Via a wiki-style site, volunteers are organized and assigned to enter information gathered from various blogs and online resources.
posted by PsychoKick at 9:25 AM PST - 8 comments

Patrick Flanagan hates flying clay objects!! trick shooting exhibition- embedded wmv
posted by jonson at 9:20 AM PST - 23 comments

The almightyness of a search engine? And here's other interesting info about it: Google's non-existing data retention policies, Google's new "We make Phone-Companies needless" Software, , Google tracks our postage, our Mails, our everyday life (not YET in realtime). Google is threatening businesses, records every single one of our steps in the virtual world. The more we live in a data world, the more we get into Google's Matrix.
posted by seitensprung at 5:46 AM PST - 42 comments

Bush Nominates Roberts As Chief Justice
President Bush has nominated John Roberts to succeed William H. Rehnquist as chief justice, and called on the Senate to confirm him before the Supreme Court opens its fall term on October 3rd. Is he really the right person for the job? This piece on him, by Harold Evans of the BBC, makes me wonder.
posted by tomcosgrave at 5:38 AM PST - 96 comments

Yesterday Venice had its annual Historical Regatta, a traditional rowing competition whose origins date back to the 13th century and is held each year on the first Sunday of September. As it coincided with the Venice Film Festival, photographers were probably busier snapping pictures of George Clooney and fellow stars... so there's not much online about this year's event yet, but for your visual enjoyment here's a quick selection of images from past editions of the regata (more from this gallery of last year's event), showing both the rowers in the actual competition as well as the historical parade in traditional costumes; a few black and white images from the past (sorry, small and not good quality but still interesting): the regata in 1918, in 1956, in 1969, and in the 1970's; and, from the age before photography, famous paintings and engravings.
posted by funambulist at 3:26 AM PST - 7 comments

"It's as if the entire Gulf Coast were obliterated by a -- the worst kind of weapon you can imagine" ~ George W. Bush September 2, 2005
Another Presidential slip of tongue? Is this evidence that Katrina was steered toward New Orleans using scalar technology? This is not too far-fetched considering the U.S. Air Force's own doctrine of Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025 (.pdf). Senator Kay Hutchison seems convinced enough to have proposed S. 517: A bill to establish a Weather Modification Operations and Research Board, and for other purposes. Considering the U.S. government's history of secret human experimentation, I wonder just what other "purposes" this bill would have in store for us considering the vast uses of EM/scalar technology? Check out this video of Soviet Weather Engineering over North America
posted by augustweed at 2:39 AM PST - 163 comments

The Inequality Taboo - Charles Murray defends his ideas, published in the controversial book The Bell Curve.
posted by Gyan at 1:29 AM PST - 71 comments

A little local color to remind us of what we're fighting for.* Not to mention all these folks: too pretty for another city. Then there's this guy, who needs a place to return to, slasher movie-style.
*The woman's 80 years old, fer crissakes!
posted by brundlefly at 12:45 AM PST - 6 comments

N [note: flash, sound, some blood, and ninja killing robots]
posted by crunchland at 12:05 AM PST - 8 comments

Is the former Republican mayor of New Orleans really blameless? Not by a long shot. From lefty blog Lenin's Tomb, which points to evidence that New Orleans officials "never put plans into place" to evacuate the poorest of the poor. [thanks, Aknaton]
posted by mediareport at 10:50 PM PST - 70 comments

English as she is spoke : Infamous as the world's most ludicrously inept foreign phrasebook, the misbegotten work of Jose da Fonseca and Pedro Carolino was revived in a new edition by the Collins Library in March 2002. Some background.
posted by dhruva at 10:08 PM PST - 18 comments

Buy your own penguin! Have a pool? Want to recreate March of the Penguins in your backyard? No problem!
posted by amandaudoff at 10:02 PM PST - 15 comments

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

The Two Americas. See also A Nation's Castaways, 'To Me, It Just Seems Like Black People Are Marked' & White Man's Burden
posted by y2karl at 9:54 PM PST - 69 comments

New Orleans: A Geopolitical Prize A very enlightening article for anyone needing a little refresher in geography. New Orleans is not optional for the United States' commercial infrastructure. The United States historically has depended on the Mississippi and its tributaries for transport. Barges navigate the river. Ships go on the ocean. The barges must offload to the ships and vice versa. There must be a facility to empower this exchange... Without this port, the river can't be used. Protecting that port has been, from the time of the Louisiana Purchase, a fundamental national security issue for the United States.
posted by well_balanced at 9:02 PM PST - 17 comments

SomethingAwful.com , which has been running on fumes since Thursday because they're hosted in New Orleans, added a Paypal donation link for Katrina relief to their barebones status update site yesterday, raising more than $3,000 an hour. Paypal then froze the account for "suspicious activity," preventing over $30,000 in donations from reaching the Red Cross.
posted by MegoSteve at 8:26 PM PST - 19 comments

States That Do Not Actually Exist. (Flash, in english, but link is in french). Norwegian photographer Jonas Bendiksen, with credentials from Magnum, has been working on a project he calls SATELLITES. It is a photographic journey through the scattered enclaves, unrecognized mini-states, and other isolated communities that straddle the sourthern borderlands of the former USSR. The itinerary goes through such places as TRANSDNIESTER, a breakaway republic in Eastern Europe, ABKHAZIA, a unrecognized country on the Black Sea, the religiously conservative FERGHANA VALLEY in Central Asia, the SPACECRAFT CRASH ZONES between Russia and Kazakhstan, and the JEWISH AUTONOMOUS REGION of Far Eastern Russia.
posted by derangedlarid at 8:06 PM PST - 23 comments

365 Stuffed Animals. And Pancakes.
posted by nylon at 7:31 PM PST - 12 comments

Unconfirmed good news: In case you were really, really, worried, like I was after reading this, it looks like Alex Chilton survived the hurricane after all...
posted by lilboo at 6:44 PM PST - 26 comments

Judy, please turn off the lights while Wayne starts the projector. Streaming video of old educational films with a forum for snickering.
posted by longsleeves at 6:39 PM PST - 16 comments

Oh, the irony... The Bush administration, long critical of the United Nations, has accepted a U.N. offer of help in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and a U.N. team has gone to Washington to see how it can complement American efforts.
posted by saketini99 at 6:31 PM PST - 36 comments

There has been much criticism, both in the US and world media, of the handling of rescue operations after Hurricane Katrina. However, the Washington Post ran a survey Friday evening (registration required - bugmenot ) and of American's citizens 46 percent -- approve of the way Bush has handled relief efforts while 47 percent disapprove, a result that might offer some cheer to beleaguered White House staffers who feared a stronger negative reaction.
posted by dig_duggler at 6:24 PM PST - 79 comments

In-depth site details the swan-song of American technology and domestic manufacturing capability, the RCA videodisc engineering effort of the 1970/80s. Learn about CEDs, their manufacturing, see the high-tech players. Plus a nifty timeline of video technology and the CED.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 2:07 PM PST - 6 comments

Storm Hits, Capitalism Preserves Profits, Humanity Drowns. Beyond pointing out that Bush cares greatly about rich white people, what does the Left have to say about Katrina? How accurate is it to blame racism and capitalism for the federal governments's lack of response?
posted by cleardawn at 1:54 PM PST - 62 comments

FEMA fudging dates? (scroll down a bit). That's their screenshot, and then the current google cache, and the current page.
posted by 31d1 at 1:34 PM PST - 9 comments

Mayor Ray Nagin Memorial Motor Pool? The city of New Orleans owns buses - lots of them. So why weren't they used to evacuate the citizens BEFORE Hurricane Katrina struck? A rough count shows two hundred and five buses owned by the city of New Orleans. "Houston is 350 miles from New Orleans. At 50 miles per hour, 13,530 people could have reached Houston in seven hours. Turn the buses around. 14 hours later another 13,530 people are in Houston, far away from Katrina's wrath. In a little more than a day's time, you've gotten the poorest people who wanted to leave but couldn't leave on their own out of the city".
posted by Serena at 1:25 PM PST - 75 comments

"I'm sure the thugs at OMB are happily gnawing on Mike Parker's bones." Mike Parker, the former head of the Army Corps of Engineers from 2001-2002, was forced to retire because he vocally criticized Bush administration plans to cut funding for their anti-flooding projects. Here's a bit of Mike Parker's testimony from a Senate Budget Committee meeting in 2002, shortly before he was forced to resign: "After being in the administration and dealing with them, I still don't have warm and fuzzy feelings for them. I'm hoping that OMB (White House Office of Management and Budget) understands we're at the beginning of the process. If the corps is limited in what it does for the American people, there will be a negative impact." So, what is he saying now about what would've happened had New Orleans recieved proper funding? "Levees would have been higher, levees would have been bigger, there would have been other pumps put in. I'm not saying it would have been totally alleviated but it would have been less than the damage that we have got now."
posted by insomnia_lj at 12:10 PM PST - 21 comments

As reported by New Orleans ABC affiliate WGNO / ABC26 LA National Guard Wants Equipment to Come Back From Iraq
posted by theora55 at 11:26 AM PST - 10 comments

"They killed a man here last night." Stories of rapes, murders, and suicides are emerging from survivors of the "shelter" of the Superdome. From a National Guard soldier: "We found a young girl raped and killed in the bathroom. Then the crowd got the man and they beat him to death."
posted by cerebus19 at 11:13 AM PST - 110 comments

A just released report [pdf] from the organization OpenTheGovernment.org states that the federal government has been classifying records at an astonishing rate. An example from the report: "The 'state secrets' privilege allows the sitting U.S. president to nearly unilaterally withhold documents from the courts, Congress, and the public. At the height of the Cold War, the administration used the privilege only four times between 1953 and 1976. Since 2001, it has been used 23 times." Lots more numbers like that in the report. A newspaper summarizes the report here.
posted by marxchivist at 10:39 AM PST - 9 comments

"The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, "Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?" And he said, "Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday." And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night." Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish in New Orleans damns FEMA on Tim Russett this morning. (WMV clip)
posted by madamjujujive at 9:50 AM PST - 198 comments