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One of America's Great Parks is not a natural wonder at all. It was once a swamp dotted with shanty-towns. It cost more to build than the purchase price of Alaska. At times it has not been pretty, but today it is much more than a crime scene. It is Manhattan's Central Park.
posted by ilsa at 8:15 PM PST - 17 comments

I So Want This House It Hurts. Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House is up for sale. If price was no object and location wasn't a problem, where would you choose to really live? What architect, living or dead; what building, available or not, would you choose? [NYT reg. required for main link..]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 7:31 PM PST - 44 comments

Surfer Movie Posters of the Sixties
posted by crunchland at 5:55 PM PST - 8 comments

College University is a series of animated, Family Guy-ish flash cartoons by two guys from Milford, CT. Don't miss the catchy opening, featuring music by The Strokes. Episode One is here.
posted by Ljubljana at 3:54 PM PST - 16 comments

McDonald's gets bad review, sues critic. "McDonald's has labelled as "defamatory and offensive" an influential Italian food critic, who poured scorn on the quality of the fast-food giant's cuisine. The corporation has sued Edoardo Raspelli, a critic and commentator for the Italian newspaper La Stampa, after he compared its burgers to rubber and its fries to cardboard, in an article last year. McDonald's is seeking undisclosed damages, possibly as much as the 21m euros (£15m; $25m) it spent on advertising in Italy last year. " Is it really defamation if it's true? What if every restaurant that got a bad review decided to sue?
posted by kayjay at 11:48 AM PST - 33 comments

Threats over Usernames: Could you be sued over your username?
posted by Mack Twain at 11:10 AM PST - 22 comments

AOL and Microsoft settle AOL's Netscape lawsuit. AOL gets $750 million and keeps IE as its default browser for seven years. Is this the death of Netscape?
posted by timeistight at 9:39 AM PST - 31 comments

Dissent in the ranks. US Secretary of State Colin Powell was under persistent pressure from the Pentagon and White House to include questionable intelligence in his report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction he delivered at the United Nations last February, source: US News and World Report Magazine. According to the report, the draft contained such questionable material that Powell lost his temper, throwing several pages in the air and declaring, "I'm not reading this. This is bullshit."
posted by CrazyJub at 8:16 AM PST - 76 comments

The unh! project. A collection of guttural moans from comics [via boingboing.net]
posted by srboisvert at 7:00 AM PST - 3 comments

Khajuraho. History and extensive galleries on the Indian temple site (built in the tenth century) famous for its erotic sculptures. (Not suitable for work, and the front page contains a warning that it is not suitable for under-21's). (more inside)
posted by plep at 12:19 AM PST - 9 comments

U.S. Insiders Say Iraq Intel Deliberately Skewed "Vince Cannistraro, a former chief of Central Intelligence Agency counterterrorist operations, said he knew of serving intelligence officers who blame the Pentagon for playing up "fraudulent" intelligence, "a lot of it sourced from the Iraqi National Congress of Ahmad Chalabi." The marines are looking, but they can't find a damn thing. So... were Bush and company played by the INC, or were the American people played by Team Bush?
posted by owillis at 9:36 PM PST - 21 comments

isolation stretcher: staff at a japanese medical system support company demonstrate the company's 'isolation stretcher': "The highly protective stretcher, which costs 5.2 million yen (a half million dollars?), has been in demand since the spread of SARS" ...a 'bed' you wouldn't want to wake up in.
posted by n o i s e s at 7:43 PM PST - 5 comments

By now, you might already have heard about Mark Walker, the 3 year old hoops prodigy that Reebok is featuring on their website; while the video of him hitting 18 straight shots from various spots on the floor is cute/impressive, the "interview" movie is horrendously creepy. The closing tagline "I'm the future of basketball; I am Reebok" done in the voice of such a small child just conjures up visions of in vitro logo tattooing. (Warning: Movies are in Quicktime)
posted by jonson at 6:26 PM PST - 29 comments

Cheese rolling Of all the weird and wonderful things I've read about this week, this really takes the cheese.
posted by lunadust at 3:21 PM PST - 15 comments

Hoorah! Fairy Congress '03 is almost upon us. With the admiral goal of Promoting Quality Human & Fairy Relations and special guest Dotty Maclean of Findhorn Community fame who apparently has done more than any other person in the 20th century to popularize the idea that humans can communicate with devas, in attendance you'd be crazy to miss it. Sure looks like fun...
posted by zeoslap at 2:21 PM PST - 17 comments

In The Rain boasts a huge collection of vintage erotica; beautiful, artful poses of women you won't see in Maxim anytime soon. The appeal of Vintage Sex is ephemeral, but we've been making erotica long before cameras; since the beginning of civilization, really. (Should really go without saying that none of these links are safe for work.)
posted by headspace at 1:13 PM PST - 22 comments

Fired by text message by the ironically titled Accident Group. Staff advised that they wouldn't be paid either. I'm suspecting that the legalities of this are pretty shaky.
posted by feelinglistless at 12:54 PM PST - 12 comments

3-D Maps of Nearby Space "The first detailed map of space within about 1,000 light years of Earth places the solar system in the middle of a large hole that pierces the plane of the galaxy...The new map, produced by University of California, Berkeley, and French astronomers, alters the reigning view of the solar neighborhood." (one view|another view|links to bigger images)
posted by kirkaracha at 12:36 PM PST - 5 comments

The Japanese Tatu clones are here: Juemilia and Suitei Shoujo (Presumed Girls). Do Rino and Lissa have a message for their fans? (via Geisha asobi blog)
posted by son_of_minya at 12:24 PM PST - 16 comments

Take off your shoes. Look out folks, we have a new candidate for worst song of the summer.
posted by jmgorman at 11:59 AM PST - 37 comments

IMStalking is a site that syndicates the instant messenger away messages of its participants for no particular reason. It's amazing what unemployed cartoon addicts will do to fill their time.
posted by endquote at 11:50 AM PST - 5 comments

Star Wars to Bar Wars. The Star Wars kid is suing, and the $4,000 collected for him may have to be returned. Always a shame to see the kindness of strangers pushed aside in favor of litigation. Good thing the money never got turned over...
posted by luser at 8:55 AM PST - 79 comments

Login, check out a link, post a comment, find out what gender you are... By noting the subtle differences in the words used by men and women, a new computer programme identifies the sex of an author. By implementing this new software, MetaFilter could potentially become even more informative than it already is.
posted by orange swan at 8:36 AM PST - 25 comments

Regime Change Bonanza. Donald Rumsfeld is pushing for Iran to be the next to fall.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 8:00 AM PST - 44 comments

"I don't think it's your average everyday pothead that is buying these pieces." [Via Zed]
posted by debralee at 6:59 AM PST - 14 comments

Pentagon: space is for Americans only
At the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs in early April, (NRO director Peter) Teets proposed that U.S. resources from military, civilian and commercial satellites be combined to provide 'persistence in total situational awareness, for the benefit of this nation's war fighters.' If allies don't like the new paradigm of space dominance, said Air Force secretary James Roche, they'll just have to learn to accept it. The allies, he told the symposium, will have 'no veto power.' Suckers!
posted by magullo at 6:31 AM PST - 80 comments

Looking for a design for your next website? Open Source Web Design is a site that offers tons of free web design templates that you can take and modify for your own needs.
posted by oissubke at 6:05 AM PST - 10 comments

Looking for a design for your next website? Strange Banana is a generator that randomly produces XHTML transitional, CSS-layout-driven webpages. Hit "refresh" repeatedly, and find that one layout that matches your inner web designer's dream. (Found on Zeldman's Daily Report.)
posted by Katemonkey at 3:12 AM PST - 20 comments

Salam Pax, the Baghdad Blogger is finally tracked down.
posted by MintSauce at 2:31 AM PST - 20 comments

Goblins in upstate NY! Brought to you by Adventures in Midland. They have a very indepth, Live Action Roleplaying website. Funny pictures and all that. Go Too much too look at in one sitting... I feel like this has been posted here already, apologies if that's true.
posted by Slimemonster at 12:17 AM PST - 5 comments

How to Walk of Japan. Strange tourist attractions - some NSFW.
posted by plep at 11:52 PM PST - 7 comments

Satellite pictures of the Mesopotamian marshlands, published by the United Nations Environment Programme, show that the wetlands are beginning to return to life. [Via Best of the Web.]
posted by homunculus at 11:42 PM PST - 7 comments

Mr. Spock's Nudes David Bowman talks to 72-year-old Leonard Nimoy about Leonard Cohen's music, the famous Vulcan hand sign, and his movie career, but especially about his new book of female nude photographs, and how they relate to the Kabbalistic idea of Shekhinah. Nimoy comes across as more than a little flaky (but that's nothing new); turns out he can also be thoughtful, perceptive, and dryly funny.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 10:22 PM PST - 6 comments

20 days in Spring 2003 one artists response to 20 days in spring 2003 that have reshaped the world we live in.
posted by specialk420 at 6:45 PM PST - 18 comments

I find this relaxing - should I be institutionalized?
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 4:38 PM PST - 26 comments

The Clickz Weblog Business Strategies 2003 Conference & Expo kicks off on June 9, with the highly-relevant keynote: "What Are Weblogs?" Also on the schedule: "Business Blogs: Hype or Opportunity?"

Kathleen Goodwin (conference chair) Blogs : "Someone wrote that they are offended that blogs, what used to be "an 'innocent' repository of ideas," are now becoming commercialized. Hello! Get with the program. It is the 21st century and every great idea gets commercialized in a nano second these days."
posted by scarabic at 3:50 PM PST - 21 comments

japanese wood-block masters, flash-enabled gallery.
posted by crunchland at 2:59 PM PST - 4 comments

For those concerned about loss of Liberty in the United States: a look toward China. Four young friends who met on Bejing University campuses to discuss their progressive politics and posted occasional essays on the Internet have been sentenced to long prison terms, accused of "subverting state power."
posted by the fire you left me at 2:45 PM PST - 22 comments

The Modern Modular. Resolution: 4 Architecture is redefining prefab housing with its thoroughly modern-looking modular designs. Their premier design just won the Dwell Home competition sponsored by Dwell Magazine. Nice profile in today's WSJ.
posted by me3dia at 2:10 PM PST - 13 comments

Child Pornographers Using Small Storage Drives. Small drives like this are giving the police quite a bit of trouble. One of the more interesting quotes from the story, "Even if the photos are encrypted, computer forensics specialists can break through most encryption schemes these days anyway."
posted by banished at 12:46 PM PST - 32 comments

Tyson spouting off again In Thursday night's "The Pulse" on Fox, Mike Tyson goes on the record about his 1992 trial that put him in jail for three years. (sentenced to six, paroled after three). He denies raping Desiree Washington and says "I just hate her guts. She put me in that state, where I don't know...... I really wish I did now. But now I really do want to rape her.'' Reuters has an article on it too I thought after Tyson's statements about breaking his back after his last fight he would calm down a bit....but it's Tyson.
posted by meanie at 12:08 PM PST - 34 comments

"The roots of Hip Hop Culture will no longer be ignored. Hip Hop's pioneer MC's, DJ's, B-boys and Graffiti Artists finally get to tell their stories.  Travel with the real Hip Hop historians (Ralph McDaniels, DJ Red Alert, Grandmaster Caz, Kool Herc) through their old stomping grounds and listen to them reminisce as we drive down memory lane.  Hush Tours takes you to all the hot spots Uptown (Harlem and the Bronx) giving Hip Hop Culture more than a venue... also a voice."
posted by monkeymike at 12:02 PM PST - 10 comments

Need a job? The winner of the Google Puzzle Contest might recieve a prestigious spot in the Google engineering labs. So whip out all your old Martin Gardner books and get practicing, because the competition is on May 1st (and registration closes today).
posted by kaibutsu at 11:10 AM PST - 6 comments

The kilogram has lost some weight (and/or mass, depending on your point of view) in the past 2 centuries. Scientists race so their spiffy idea will be the next benchmark. via Ars Technica
posted by Nauip at 10:32 AM PST - 22 comments

Oh, the mundanity!

In the lyrics of the Beatles; in our tastes for amateur porn; in how to prepare a peanut butter and jelly sandwich; and, by extension, in The Journal of Mundane Behavior. It's about nothing extraordinary
...and everything ordinary. Think of it as Lilek's ...with Science.

--And here's one for MrBaliHai: Squat Toilets and Cultural Commensurability: Two Texts, Plus Three Photographs I Forgot to Take. (Earthquake not included.)
posted by y2karl at 10:01 AM PST - 9 comments

When Most Of The Reviews (And Indeed Books) Are Long Since Forgotten, David Levine's extraordinary portraits of the public figures and obsessions of the last 40 years will stand as a lasting impression of our literary and political lions, masters, avatars and bugbears. The generous and ever essential New York Review of Books offers us a complete and fully searchable gallery of the great caricaturist's work since its first issue hit the stands back in 1963 - almost 2,000 cartoons in all. It's fascinating to trace the sequence and evolution of Levine's drawings through the years of particular figures: Nabokov and Beckett, for instance.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:49 AM PST - 10 comments

Bob Hope turns 100 today. And he's still alive, unlike that Emerson fellow.
posted by WolfDaddy at 9:38 AM PST - 42 comments

"Are You a Manly Man Full of Vigor?" Such was the come-on in John Romulus Brinkley's ads for his goat-gland operations. He made enough money from them to start first station KFKB (Kansas First, Kansas Best!), then (after he was run out of Kansas) XER out of Del Rio, Mexico, at a half-million watts the most powerful station in the world, which made the Carter Family (among many others) famous. Read William Bryk's brilliant account, and if you get nostalgic for the old days of AM, listen to the Blasters' great "Border Radio."
posted by languagehat at 9:35 AM PST - 7 comments

Welcome to the World Sex Guide forums • Ever wonder if your town had a seamy underside? The WSG forums exist to facilitate "the exchange of information between men who are looking for sex with women," and allow users to browse by city & country to discuss the local cruising scene with other Johns in the field. It's replete with much insider lingo, curious acronyms, awkward tiptoe language (think "bong" vs. "water-filtered tobacco pipe" in headshop culture), and red-herring posts left as bait for the law enforcement (LE) who evidently monitor these forums. Agree or disagree morally with the John lifestyle, it's still worth a glimpse into this strange subculture.
posted by dhoyt at 9:29 AM PST - 19 comments

Now here's a business plan... give me some money, and I'll do some traveling and tell you all about it. Gimme a little more, and I'll even send you something back.
posted by COBRA! at 9:19 AM PST - 3 comments

Threat of ban to Dutch cannabis cafés...
It'd be like an airplane without wings! Surely the whole point of buying some weed at these places is to smoke it on the premises?
posted by tomcosgrave at 9:05 AM PST - 7 comments

UH OH, Fantagraphics Books in Seattle, home of chris ware, dan clowes, r. crumb, charles burns and a host of other awesome comic artists is facing desperate times!
posted by Peter H at 8:42 AM PST - 22 comments

A miniture underground railway, known as Mail Rail has carried the post from one end of London to another. The system is closing down this weekend. An employee gives her story. Another quirky piece of London consigned to history....
posted by brettski at 8:36 AM PST - 6 comments

The treasures of the sea. A fascinating look at underwater archeological sites in France. The Cosquer Cave is particularly enthralling due to the art and the difficulty in getting to it. (warning - annoying frames and popup info boxes that don't work so well in Mozilla) [More inside...]
posted by Irontom at 8:35 AM PST - 2 comments

Haifaa al-Mansour might be the only active female Saudi filmmaker in existence. Her film recently debuted at a festival in the United Arab Emirates, and although it didn't win, it did create quite a stir among the attendees. Her father, also a director, and her family helped her get the project off the ground in a country where some believe even owning a television set is a sin, and where women have very little opportunity outside the home. Using the web as a means of distribution, al-Mansour hopes to someday see her creations on the big screen all over the world.
posted by greengrl at 8:27 AM PST - 7 comments

Guess who wants presidential term limits to be repealed... Putting aside your feelings for Bill Clinton (or Ronald Reagan for that matter), should the U.S. president be allowed to serve more than two terms?
posted by Durwood at 7:38 AM PST - 50 comments

Does Information Technology(IT) matter? A recent Harvard Business Review paper has been criticized for its controversial stance that IT does not matter. Does it?
posted by SandeepKrishnamurthy at 7:11 AM PST - 13 comments

Richard Blechynden's invention from the 1904 World's Fair is the quintessential summer drink. Not only is it good for you, it can also come in a multitude of flavors, or even with a little kick to it.
posted by debralee at 6:32 AM PST - 9 comments

The bait and switch. A last-minute revision by House and Senate leaders in the tax bill that President Bush signed today will prevent millions of minimum-wage families from receiving the increased child credit that is in the measure.
posted by four panels at 6:14 AM PST - 21 comments

Miss, Miss! Little Jimmy Bond peeked at my intelligence report! "The UK's latest move in the fight against terrorism is a secret project to bring together intelligence data from the UK's security agencies, say reports." Because normally, it's far more sensible to have all the different agencies hoarding their own information and not letting anyone else see it... But seriously: first steps to a UK TIA? Knowing the inefficiences, bureaucratic in-fighting, and awful data mess that these agencies routinely engage in, I doubt it.
posted by humuhumu at 5:26 AM PST - 3 comments

2 stabbed in an attempted Qantas hijacking over Melbourne. I hope this isn't the start of a worrying new trend.
posted by Jubey at 2:32 AM PST - 18 comments

Huarochiri: A Peruvian Culture in Time. 'Huarochir is an Andean province near Lima, Peru. This site offers an ethnographic and historical tour of some of its communities. It samples the Huarochir Quechua Manuscript, which alone among colonial documents explains a pre-Christian tradition in an Andean language, and visits modern highlanders who inhabit and interpret the mythic landscape.' Related :- Martin Chambi. Chambi was an Amerindian Peruvian photographer famous for his photographs of indigenous Andean life. The site is in Spanish - no impediment to enjoying the photographs.
posted by plep at 11:36 PM PST - 2 comments

Hybrid Medical Animation creates fascinating 3D animations of biological phenomena, including one of SARS. [Via J-Walk Blog.]
posted by homunculus at 11:32 PM PST - 5 comments

How to symbolify your life! I put in both "I am a no talent ass clown" and "Life is just a bowl of cherries" and was rather pleased with the results. (I made sure to click on "all" in the options, on the right side.
posted by Lynsey at 9:13 PM PST - 9 comments

Video games are good for you. Now I just need some combination of Half-Life and Dance Dance Revolution and I can become some kind of super-human.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 9:06 PM PST - 10 comments

Lord of the Rings...THE MUSICAL. You heard it here first, folks.
posted by adrober at 8:48 PM PST - 14 comments

Father's day is coming! What do you get for the dad who has everything? Well, you can't get him a Dayak poisoned dart blowpipe from Kenya, or a Lohar throwing sickle, or even a gorgeous domed shield from Persia, because they've all been sold. Better hurry, or it's another tie this year. Maybe you could get him something to poke his elephants with. And yes, I am just a shill for this company: for every 10 scary-looking shark's tooth swords I sell, I get a free decorative skull.
posted by Hildago at 7:58 PM PST - 7 comments

Way Too Personals. I'm interested in a woman who is not caught up in the dependency of a psychotherapy relationship. I prefer someone who is not addicted to simple "therapyisms" and who has the courage to survive and enjoy life without a "therapy crutch". I prefer someone able to get beyond simple psychotherapy paradigms, and view behavior (in the REAL WORLD) in terms of factors that explain considerably more than a negligible amount of the total variance.
posted by srboisvert at 7:43 PM PST - 9 comments

Quick, Hide The Body! "...But the Bush administration chose to keep the findings out of the annual budget report for fiscal year 2004, published in February, as the White House campaigned for a tax-cut package that critics claim will expand future deficits. The study asserts that sharp tax increases, massive spending cuts or a painful mix of both are unavoidable if the US is to meet benefit promises to future generations. It estimates that closing the gap would require the equivalent of an immediate and permanent 66 per cent across-the-board income tax increase."
posted by owillis at 7:10 PM PST - 18 comments

Copernica Martin Wattenberg, in collaboration with NASA and Rhizome.org, developed a gorgeous applet to showcase NASA's commissioned art program. Participating artists include William Wegman, Andy Warhol, Annie Leibovitz, and Robert Rauschenburg, among others. Pieces can be viewed by subject, title, or create your own gallery. Beautiful.
posted by ariana at 2:53 PM PST - 9 comments

Poor little Pikachu. This link may not be work safe but could be the funniest thing since the Star Wars Kid.
posted by Smooth at 2:18 PM PST - 22 comments

Mr. Bush goes to Palestine Everyone in the White House must be incredibly giddy. The most incredible political and cultural schism in the world may finally be patched up in the event of a successful round of talks done Texan style--face to face and man to man. George W. Bush will be leaving shortly for a trip to the Middle East to take a crack at solving a little disagreement among the neighbors.

In a way, he is as much the son of Jimmy Carter as he is of Ronnie Reagan. Just a simple man, with more than a few complicated plans, a big, broad smile, and a ten-gallon hat. But will his down-to-earth working man's values be able to put an end to a simmering and increasingly, explosive animosity? Assuming everything works out for the United States and the world in general, is it actually possible that this man could go down as one of the most influential presidents of all time? Or will he ultimately fail like the others that failed before him?
posted by Hammerikaner at 2:17 PM PST - 52 comments

What do these people have in common? Mr. Lucian Jacob Wojciechowski, of Salton City, CA, whose various nicknames are Wladysla wa poniecki, Kuba, and Lovie. Mr. Maximus Englerius, of Seattle (presumably) who would like to “ban Playgirl mag.” Mr. Ole Scorpio Savior, of Minneapolis, who lists his first favorite Book as “Bible: Revelations.” Mr. Warren Roderick Ashe, of Newport News, VA, whose hobbies and special talents are “Professional musician and double-AX bass player. Astronautical and Astrophysics computer math involving saucer technology and time travel.” Choices, choices, choices!
posted by micropublishery at 12:51 PM PST - 9 comments

Uh, folks, this is not a documentary; it's a comedy, OK? People are actually trying to call God as seen in the Jim Carrey comedy Bruce Almighty. Sigh.
posted by alumshubby at 11:08 AM PST - 48 comments

Intelligence expert does new kind of spin (as in the 180 degree kind). Intelligence expert (and former National Security Advisor) Kenneth Pollack appeared on NPR [scroll to 3rd entry for full audio] to retract statements that he made on the same show in November. Pollack seems to be the first major wonk to call change his mind not on a single, tangible intelligence claim, but on the broader rationale for war in Iraq, and on the reliability of American intelligence in general.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 10:11 AM PST - 10 comments

"I can't compete with Brad Pitt or Ewan McGregor. I can't even compete with John Smith and Joe Average. But, I ask myself... Could I compete with Hitler?" The very best use of HotOrNot ever.
posted by webmutant at 10:00 AM PST - 39 comments

U.S. says Iraq may have junked toxic arms Thus spake Rummy in a speech. We know they have them. If we can not find them it is because they got rid of them. But that still means they had them at one time, right? Question: what are those top scientists and Bath party members telling their captors wherever they are being held for questioning? Or is too important to reveal too.
posted by Postroad at 9:29 AM PST - 62 comments

Buy your porn now! In a little over two weeks, you will no longer be able to purchase anything in Ebay's mature categories, or many other forms of online adult amusement, using PayPal. New rules being implemented and enforced by PayPal follow [with a bit of coercion, some claim ] new rules laid down by Visa late last year making it significantly more difficult to sell porn online if you want to accept Visa cards. While it's unclear why exactly PayPal and Ebay are doing this, PayPal and Visa's corner on the online payment market is going to lead to some sort of change in the business of online porn. [all links except "exactly" SFW]
posted by jessamyn at 8:56 AM PST - 17 comments

Missing WMDs found ... buried in a field near Maryland
posted by magullo at 8:08 AM PST - 43 comments

The Unforgettable Gertrude Stein: A charming miscellany of first encounters with the fascinating writer and personality, compiled by Dana Cook. [From The New Yorker's excellent web guide to Gertrude Stein .]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 7:12 AM PST - 4 comments

"Clinton was a good guy, but he did fuck all" or so says Bob Geldof when it comes to Clinton getting aid to Africa. And he's just as critical about the EU as well ("The EU have been pathetic and appalling, and I thought we had dealt with that 20 years ago when the electorate of our countries said never again...") pointing out their tiny contribution to the recent aid shipments to Ethiopia. But what about the Bush government you ask? "You'll think I'm off my trolley when I say this, but the Bush administration is the most radical -- in a positive sense -- in its approach to Africa since Kennedy."
posted by PenDevil at 4:35 AM PST - 18 comments

South African Photography during the Era of Apartheid. A good collections of photos of men, women and children.
Related :- Inside Africa: Soweto uprising remembered - the famous photo of Hector Peterson; Sam Nzimi, Photographer of the Apartheid Era; Peter Magubane.
posted by plep at 11:17 PM PST - 1 comment

US bills Australia for bombs. This is the first time I have seen a 'user-pays' principle of modern warfare spelled out in this way. But then again Australia doesn't make a habit of going to war. 'The ADF will also be required to pay an undisclosed amount – believed to be up to $3 million – for satellite time and band width to connect the Canberra war room with command in the Gulf, and enable it to talk directly with SAS troops on the ground. "It was described as the first struggle in the war, to secure band width," said Derek Woolner, defence analysis director at the Australian Defence Studies Centre.'
posted by blue at 10:30 PM PST - 21 comments

The SalmoFan: So long, and thanks for all the fish and animals, and plants... Amidst the catastrophic decline of large ocean fish, Salmon farmers can choose the hue of their "farmed" Salmon with the SalmoFan. [Meanwhile, these same salmon are fed on a factory fishing catch process which effectively strips most large life forms from the ocean.] With 1/4 of all mammmals and 1/2 of all plant species facing extinction, Is the planet truly at a crossroads? Are we losing the extinction battle? .."Overfishing is a global problem. People are taking marine life faster than it can reproduce. The world's catch peaked at 86 million tons in 1989, up fourfold in 50 years.....But many governments, including the United States, Mexico, the European Union, Japan and China, kept on pouring subsidies into commercial fishing fleets to keep them afloat...The Gulf of California in Mexico is not dead, but it is exhausted from overfishing, which has caused every important species of fish there to decline....Crucial fisheries have collapsed worldwide."

Contrast that with This: "[once upon a time there were] cod shoals "so thick by the shore that we hardly have been able to row a boat through them." There were six- and seven-foot-long codfish weighing as much as 200 pounds. There were great banks of oysters as large as shoes. At low tide, children were sent to the shore to collect 10-, 15-, even 20-pound lobsters with hand rakes for use as bait or pig feed. Eight- to 12-foot sturgeon choked New England rivers, and salmon packed streams from the Hudson River to Hudson's Bay. Herring, squid and capelin (a small open-water fish seven inches long) spawning runs were so gigantic they astonished observers for more than four centuries"
posted by troutfishing at 8:55 PM PST - 30 comments

Newsfilter: Maryland Gov. vetoes 9-year-old's bill to designate walking as Maryland's official state excercise. "Saying walking has no specific ties to Maryland, Gov. Robert Ehrlich announced Wednesday that he vetoed the bill because 'it serves no public purpose.' Supporters questioned that logic Thursday, especially after learning Ehrlich signed another state symbol bill - [also] sponsored by elementary school pupils - proclaiming the thoroughbred as the state horse."
posted by Joey Michaels at 8:36 PM PST - 20 comments

Why a ban on spitting is catching in the throats of Chinese. Apparently, spitting in public is very common in China. "They consider phlegm excrement," explained a coworker of mine who recently visited Shanghai. With SARS spreading in airborne saliva and mucous particles (aka respiratory secretions, China has had to tackle the challenge of outlawing a practice as "common as breathing."
posted by scarabic at 5:48 PM PST - 33 comments

The Infrared Zoo. The frisky puppy is hot. The python is not.
posted by srboisvert at 3:33 PM PST - 15 comments

Black Table Beer Run Ever wondered which beer is like a well-hung hunchback? This is the place for you. It's also racist, sexist, homophobic and overall very PinC (especially the sequel), so be forewarned.
posted by joaquim at 2:54 PM PST - 18 comments

The most reliable computer you can buy is... June's Consumer Reports surveyed 39,000 readers and...dare I say it? That not said, how reliable are reliability reports?
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 2:54 PM PST - 49 comments

We don't need no stinkin' Geneva Convention - US plans death camp - plans to turn Guantanamo Bay's Camp X-Ray into a death camp are in the works.
posted by jackspace at 1:27 PM PST - 66 comments

Created by the CIA in Saigon in 1967, Phoenix was a program aimed at "neutralizing"--through assassination, kidnapping, and systematic torture--the civilian infrastructure that supported the Viet Cong insurgency in South Vietnam. The CIA destroyed its copies of the documents related to this program, but the creator of Phoenix gave his personal copies to author Douglas Valentine. He, in turn, has given them to The Memory Hole. They have never previously been published, online or in print. Via Politech.
posted by gd779 at 12:32 PM PST - 28 comments

Cake or Death? The spectacularly funny British comic Eddie Izzard, currently on Broadway in A Day In The Death of Joe Egg has revamped his web site (warning: irritating flash animation & audio), and annouced that he is coming on tour, starting Down Under and continuing throughout Canada & The U.S. For those NY mefites, check out Joe Egg while you can, it is depressing but simultaneously funny, and anyone who hasn't seen Eddie either live or on HBO, do yourself a favor and catch a show, it's good stuff.
posted by jonson at 11:11 AM PST - 35 comments

Abas Amini is knocking on deaths door, after sewing his eyes and mouth shut to bring attention to his request for asylum. He claims if he is sent back to Iran he will be executed for his political past. This guy is hardcore, he is threatening to set himself on fire if anyone tries to force feed him.
posted by dancu at 10:25 AM PST - 18 comments

Who was that masked man? A bunch of friends decide to fool their local paper into thinking there is a real-life superhero in Tunbridge Wells. Local paper falls for it hook line and sinker. Swiftly followed by national media. This thread on a Divine Comedy discussion board describes the whole dastardly plot unfolding. The fun starts on page 2.
posted by salmacis at 7:59 AM PST - 13 comments

It's What Comes After The Dot, My Dear, that really matters in Internet addresses, don't you know? A useful list of TLDs (that's Top Level Domain names to you, kiddo) is also a reminder of the incredible variety of cool ISO country codes. If there are personalized license plates, why not e-mail addresses? I, for instance, am definitely looking into acquiring a prestigious .mc address. Unless it means actually having to move to Monaco, God forbid. [Via Bifurcated Rivets.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 6:20 AM PST - 34 comments

I AM the Federal Government. "L'Etat, C'est Moi", apparently said Louis XIV of France. You would have thought a guy with a French-sounding family name who also happens to be a brasshat in the US govt., would have steered clear of a modern paraphrase of a despotic 'Old Europe' monarch. Wouldn't you? (from The Seattle P-I & The Jewish World Review)Hmm, hard to find at JWR - they wouldn't have removed it, would they? Aah, but Google have it)
posted by dash_slot- at 6:12 AM PST - 14 comments

What? No more wild cards in the Olympics? This must be a conspiracy to take all the fun out of the Games. We must talk to them about REAL entertainment value.
posted by acrobat at 3:13 AM PST - 9 comments

Easycinema - Stelios Haji-Ioannou, founder of the European no-frills airline Easyjet, is planning to open Easycinema, the first of what he hopes to be a no-frills theater chain, in Britain (the London suburb of Milton Keynes) on Friday. All ticket buying will be conducted on the Internet (there will be no box office at the theater); tickets must be printed out at home; early buyers can purchase tickets for as little as $.35, while tickets purchased on the day of the screenings will cost $8.00; there will be no concession counter, no trailers, no ads. In an interview with the BBC on Sunday, Easycinema claimed that movie distributors representing the majors have balked at providing new releases or even quality second-runs.
posted by suprfli at 11:13 PM PST - 31 comments

Big Plans. Little Brains. Mike Clattenburg's Trailer Park Boys could soon be more than just a Canadian phenomenon. The mockumentary began as a film, was adapted into a TV series and has been airing for three seasons on Showcase in Canada (not to be confused with this). Ricky, Julian and Bubbles even joined Our Lady Peace during its Fear of the Trailer Park Tour last summer (soon to be documented on CD and DVD) and could be seen alongside Don Cherry in The Tragically Hip's video for "The Darkest One" (a look behind the scenes - qt version). Bubbles even appeared in that informer guy's video for "Legal" and has been writing music reviews in character. (TPB was mentioned briefly here and here.)
posted by boost ventilator at 9:19 PM PST - 14 comments

160 million people watched the gloriously kitsch Eurovision Song Contest this year. The UK's entry [Real] scored an astonishing nul points (i.e. none of the other 25 countries thought the British song was in the top 10 competitors). The singers blame the country's worst ever result on sabotage. What do you think?
posted by Pretty_Generic at 7:49 PM PST - 37 comments

Other People's Stories: "These stories have been overheard and misheard, told and re-told and sometimes refined over time. They do not shy from hearsay, gossip, myth or guys we knew in high school." Some of the stories are funny (warning: NSFW picture on that link), others sad, scary, and some just bizarre.
posted by eclectica at 6:35 PM PST - 14 comments

Asshat, the best word ever. Of course, a post about asshats couldn't be complete without an example.
posted by thebabelfish at 6:15 PM PST - 54 comments

Proof that metaFilter is evil!
posted by timeistight at 4:01 PM PST - 27 comments

The No Logs Network is encouraging web hosts and system admins to refrain from keeping site access logs, saying their storage can constitute a threat to free speech. It sounds like a good idea, but considering how paranoid many system admins tend to be, one has to wonder whether it could ever really take off as a movement.
posted by mrbula at 3:09 PM PST - 24 comments

"We can only watch the slaughter, say UN troops" in the Congo - where machetes are turned into weapons of mass destruction - the hobbled UN presses for action, and the US and Major US Media outlets take no notice.
posted by specialk420 at 3:07 PM PST - 51 comments

In Anne Frank fashion, a man sentanced to death by Saddam Hussein emerges from hiding after twenty years. Years spent living In between the walls of his parents house.
posted by bitdamaged at 2:58 PM PST - 9 comments

BodyBurden: the pollution in people. "Researchers at two major laboratories found an average of 91 industrial compounds, pollutants, and other chemicals in the blood and urine of nine volunteers, with a total of 167 chemicals found in the group. Like most of us, the people tested do not work with chemicals on the job and do not live near an industrial facility. Scientists refer to this contamination as a person’s body burden. Of the 167 chemicals found, 76 cause cancer in humans or animals, 94 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 79 cause birth defects or abnormal development. The dangers of exposure to these chemicals in combination has never been studied." This was also the subject of a PBS program by Bill Moyers, Trade Secrets. Moyers himself was found to have 84 chemicals in his blood and urine. [Via This Modern World.]
posted by homunculus at 1:04 PM PST - 17 comments

Extra, extra! Think your job is bad? Film extras (or 'background' as they're commonly referred to) just stand around waiting all day, have to bring their own wardrobe, and must always obey the unspoken rule of not chatting up the real talent. It's the job that's pretty much 'about nothing', with no guarantees, no glamour, no money. Yet, with that said, there are already many who do it, and more trying to break in every day. Are movie extras merely suckers for punishment, or are they hoping to find fame and fortune?
posted by debralee at 8:31 AM PST - 19 comments

OK, I admit it. I'm a junkie for inscrutable Japanese flash clips. This rousing one has a stylish and powerful use of type and this one, a fun combo of music & ascii art. But what's this - bondage love and a dramatic international rescue? Or this militaristic call-to-action with a decidedly anti-bush tone, should DHS be worried? And this seems a cautionary tale on substance abuse, perhaps the result of attending too many kitty raves?? At least this sweet tale of found love seems familiar. Can anyone elucidate me?
posted by madamjujujive at 8:23 AM PST - 26 comments

Britain finds Iraq's 'smoking gun': a top-secret missile Ok. Now reveal what you have always believed and affirm or deny this.
posted by Postroad at 5:05 AM PST - 70 comments

His Turgid Member, Her Heaving Bosoms, My Gag Reflex: There's nothing like really bad erotica to take your mind off sex. There's no sentence like "Brooke ripped off Randy's mesh jersey. His abs were undulating hills, with heavy underbrush around his navel." to make you think of lint and tumbleweed. For our undelectation, Nerve.com's readers have chosen the very worst examples of lurid chastity-inspiring unsexiness. [Safe for work and Viagra-proof thanks only to downright descriptive incompetence. If you're excited by any of this, seek psychiatric assistance immediately.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:21 AM PST - 31 comments

How clean is your computer?
posted by dg at 9:15 PM PST - 22 comments

Make your own EKG for less than $5 in parts, using your PC, pennies for electrodes, and a simple amp circuit. But careful with the voltage, now.
posted by Vidiot at 8:06 PM PST - 9 comments

Ralph Waldo Emerson turns 200 today.
posted by Silune at 7:49 PM PST - 9 comments

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick: His disappearance is not the only mystery left behind.
posted by hama7 at 7:39 PM PST - 16 comments

Toilet Roll Art
posted by srboisvert at 7:29 PM PST - 2 comments

Online Tours of Great Artworks. From the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC :- Julia Margaret Cameron; Degas; Jasper Johns; Manet; and more.
Related :- the online collection of the National Gallery in London is similarly extensive, and organised bytheme.
posted by plep at 4:01 PM PST - 3 comments

Remember the outrage of the US Govt. as the Iraqi's paraded POWs before television cameras - a pretty clear-cut breach of the Geneva Convention?
It appears the US Govt. isn't so concerned about what behaviour breaches the convention, anymore.

"The International Committee of the Red Cross so far has been denied access to what the organisation believes could be as many as 3,000 prisoners held in searing heat [near Baghdad airport.] All other requests to inspect conditions under which prisoners are being held have been met with silence or been turned down."

posted by Blue Stone at 11:42 AM PST - 62 comments

Al-Muajaha, "The Iraqi Witness," is a new independent newspaper in Baghdad that's also published online. In fact, new newspapers are appearing in Iraq almost every day, though many are mouthpieces for political parties. I find this proliferation of information to be a good sign.
posted by homunculus at 11:24 AM PST - 7 comments

Flash Animation A response to an article about Advertising.
posted by Niahmas at 10:24 AM PST - 19 comments

Prospecting for Gold Among the Photo Blogs

Photo blogs are the colorful offspring of blogs, or Web logs, written diaries posted and updated regularly on the Internet. For a half-dozen years people have been posting text blogs to rant and to ponder the events of the day and the dust beneath their feet. Then, sometime in 2000, people started posting photographs to go with the text. The photo blog was born. Now photo blogs often are posted with no text at all. And there are thousands of them.--Oolong gets his picture in the New York Times, among other things
posted by y2karl at 6:42 AM PST - 20 comments

The Worst Book I Ever Read “Finnegan’s Wake is the best example of modernism disappearing up its own fundament.” A Brief History of Time and Iris Murdoch show up twice. Mein Kampf is as interesting as a bus timetable and “JK Rowling is the sub-literary analogue of Tony Blair.” Tolkien appears most foten, making him the most hated of this little group.
posted by raaka at 4:51 AM PST - 140 comments

Pentagon officials are pushing for action they believe could destabilize the government of Iran. Why? Intelligence reports suggesting al Qaeda operatives in Iran played a role in the May 12 suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia. Sound familiar? Time to brush up on Iran's history and change the Q to an N on your No War With Iraq signs?
posted by Outlawyr at 4:05 AM PST - 17 comments

Are You A Food Snob? Do you like Posh Nosh? Does it turn you on or put you off? Find out! Watch it, though: you might be a reverse food snob or a junkista. Aha! OK, I'll go first: "My name is Miguel, I'm 47 and I'm a food snob..." [ Real required to view the funny clips in the second link.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 1:44 AM PST - 19 comments

She's been (among other things) Maria Callas, Norma Desmond, and---(of course)---Eva Peron; she's done Sondheim, Mamet, and Porter; she's worked with DeNiro and Spike Lee; and she has a new cd out. Impressed? There's more: Patti Lupone sells stuff on e-bay!
posted by adrober at 11:30 PM PST - 4 comments

Online Poker Player turns $40 into $3.2 million with his entry into the World Series of Poker. He decided to give poker a try after seeing the Matt Damon film Rounders. Turned out to be a good career choice.
posted by IndigoSkye at 8:04 PM PST - 6 comments

BlogTalk blogs itself: A Malkovich meme? No! A smorgasbord of variegated blogthought from "Why are there so many bloggers in Poland and Iran?" and "Why are there so few bloggers in the Hispanosphere?" to "Phil Wolff adds the missing bullshit." And now, for extra "blogging the bloggers blogging blogs" pleasure, death by PowerPoint!
posted by hairyeyeball at 5:25 PM PST - 3 comments

And solitaire's the only game in town.... A topical twist on a typical office timewaster.
posted by konolia at 5:07 PM PST - 6 comments

Painting with Marxism. A gallery of socialist realism and the Mexican muralists, with a nice links section (such as the Chisholm Gallery's Russian, Spanish Civil War and Cuban posters. More at the Art of Marxism. (The children's literature page is quite intriguing).
posted by plep at 3:54 PM PST - 10 comments

2003 Reith Lectures. Neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, Director of the Centre for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, talks about a number of fascinating neurological disorders and the insights they provide into mental functioning.
posted by srboisvert at 2:35 PM PST - 10 comments

Old Firm dialectics It's going down the thinnest wire tomorrow in the Scottish Premier League (football/soccer/fitba that is) as Celtic and Rangers, with one game left to play in perhaps the most absurd league in Europe, stand equal on points and goal difference after 37 games thus far.
posted by skellum at 2:17 PM PST - 7 comments

Panoramic view from top of Everest (requires QuickTime) [via kottke.org]
posted by kirkaracha at 2:02 PM PST - 15 comments

You need to dress a cat. And you will say to a cat together with a family. "It has changed just for a moment". [ "it being very dear" or ] You will pass pleasant one time. Costumes for your cat + some great Engrish. (via Boing Boing.)
posted by Vidiot at 1:50 PM PST - 9 comments

The Directory of Open Access Journals, launched this month by Lund University Libraries in Sweden, links to peer-reviewed online scholarly journals whose entire content is freely available. (More inside.)
posted by mcwetboy at 12:31 PM PST - 11 comments

Conservative acts like conservative Columnist William Safire (in the NYT, though mirrored in the link for your convenience) takes on corporate consolidation of media and culture: The overwhelming amount of news and entertainment comes via broadcast and print. Putting those outlets in fewer and bigger hands profits the few at the cost of the many. Does that sound unconservative? Not to me. The concentration of power - political, corporate, media, cultural - should be anathema to conservatives. The diffusion of power through local control, thereby encouraging individual participation, is the essence of federalism and the greatest expression of democracy. (search for info. about your hometown media). Safire, in fighting against deregulation alongside "the left", has some strange bedfellows. Obviously, terms like "left" and "right" are less than perfectly useful, but is this the beginning a larger shift? 20 years from now, will libertarians and gun-owners still be de facto Republicans, and if not, will they simply cease to be a block, or find comfort elsewhere on the political spectrum?
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 10:02 AM PST - 26 comments

The Tragic Mulatto wore Doc Martens. In this NYT Magazine piece, Paul Tough explores the uneasy case of white supremacist Leo Felton - a would-be racial holy warrior who happens to be biracial, the child of a white woman and a black man.

While "passing" has always, always been fraught with risks and contradictions, this is one of the more charged, vivid, and frankly depressing examples in recent memory. But is there some hope bound up in it? With "race" increasingly being understood as a social construct, some seven million Americans identifying themselves as "multiracial," and an interracial community replete with its own voices, was Leo Felton the prophet of something entirely other than what he thought?
posted by adamgreenfield at 1:47 AM PST - 72 comments

College Chess Team Recruiting Scandal! Stacking the deck with grandmasters allegedly earning degrees. Ludicrous/pathetic consequences.
posted by crunchburger at 9:36 PM PST - 8 comments

Yes! Gulp Your Food Down! Feast your eyes on snackist salamanders and this future classic: not a salamander, but a very strange suction-feeding tadpole. [Quicktime required. ]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:07 PM PST - 3 comments

Antique Botanical Prints from Panteek, and many more.
posted by hama7 at 8:55 PM PST - 3 comments

The Disney Doctrine (see also Team Rodent)
posted by eilatan at 7:42 PM PST - 10 comments

Emma Peel could eat Buffy Summers for breakfast. An online encyclopedia dedicated to one of the best shows to come out of Britain, The Avengers. It's also the best TV fansite I've ever seen, I think--comprehensive, well-designed, smart without being "inside" or academic, and free of fanboy attitude. Even if you've never watched the show, take some time to look around. [more inside]
posted by Prospero at 4:53 PM PST - 24 comments

From crematorium scandals to pimp suits and Ben Curtis in between, the Chattanooga area has it all. Enter our latest wonder: Beer for the Homeless.com. Created by a local Talk Radio DJ or two, the site is a serious attempt (ok, it's kinda tongue-in-cheek) to stop homeless citizens from hassling people for beer money. Well, they made their first delivery last week and have some photos and quote from their "clients".
posted by mkelley at 2:53 PM PST - 4 comments

Toys of the 80s
They don't make them like they used to.
posted by Mwongozi at 2:45 PM PST - 10 comments

The Young Hipublicans. "Still searching for their identities, many of these kids are not yet prepared to declare a particular political affiliation. This is where the conservative campus activists come in. Having recognized the importance of conservativism to their own lives, they have committed themselves to the task of bringing out the unacknowledged conservatism in other students. The mission of today's activists involves less an act of persuading their peers to accept an ideology than in awakening them to the fact that they already embody it." Welcome to Room 101.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 1:45 PM PST - 31 comments

I have a what!?! And now ladies and gentlemen, here is our first candidate for the most annoying song of this summer.
posted by beatnik808 at 1:00 PM PST - 32 comments

Jacko wants to make a run for the border. What happens when you want more fast food? Make democracy work for and contact your Congressman. Yikes! Two threads about Michael Jackson in one day? It must be Friday!
posted by Bag Man at 12:49 PM PST - 1 comment

Footage of a young Jay-Z freestyling. You gotta start somewhere (From trickology.com if you care).
posted by Slimemonster at 11:30 AM PST - 7 comments

MAKE MONEY (?) FAST by blogging. Someone who just doesn't get it tries to cash in on the blognomenon -- but who's actually gonna pay $3/month to read blogs? Oh, and you can get paid to blog...but given the blogs they point to as successful examples, I can't imagine that the're raking in the cash. Found via Google TextAd on MeFi. Really.
posted by Vidiot at 10:58 AM PST - 22 comments

Economists is a little bit of socio-political commentary that doubles as Friday Flash. More likely to generate chuckles than comments...
posted by BentPenguin at 10:42 AM PST - 3 comments

Fo shizzle my nizzle! At last, the lingustic puzzle is solved, or at least attempted. Over and over. And over. Definition - "for the sizzle" of tasty burgers on the grill. Often used by members of lower classes because they cannot taste the tasty burgers, nor enjoy the sizzle.
posted by xmutex at 10:02 AM PST - 33 comments

What is the value of good customer service? An oft asked question indeed, but one that is being answered as wee speak. The abject failure of Dixons, a UK retailer, to repair a TV set may cost them $475,000 of lost sales in less than a week (start from the bottom and work up....). [Via The Register.]
posted by davehat at 9:36 AM PST - 10 comments

Elliott could no longer bear the waste. He had six staff and a budget of £3.5m a year. He had a potential client group of 25,000 users ... but at the end of all his work and all that public money, the total number of detox beds he was able to provide was five. The Guardian reports from the front-line of the drugs war. (part two) You may have no interest in Drugs or the UK but read this superb piece for a profile of a bureaucracy in farcical, tragic, total collapse.
posted by grahamwell at 9:31 AM PST - 5 comments

Cal Professor John Ogbu thinks he knows why rich black kids are failing in school. Nobody wants to hear it.
posted by studentbaker at 9:20 AM PST - 50 comments

I'm glad I live in D.C. Why? Because we'll never run out of News of the Wierd: "FBI Specialist runs over the foot of a "person of interest" then gets police to issue him a ticket for 'walking to create a hazard'."
posted by omidius at 9:19 AM PST - 4 comments

Mort pour la France Setting aside partisan differences and arguments re: Iraq for the moment, and at the risk of offending the more cynical of the denizens that lurk within with what they may consider the smarminess of this link, we would do well to remember during the upcoming weekend, what Memorial Day should be about - a tribute to those who have served & fallen in uniform.
posted by Pressed Rat at 9:14 AM PST - 13 comments

Christian sex ed recordings from the 1940's are delightful - a few choice tracks pulled in mp3 format. I expect to hear some of these lines sampled into techno tracks and pronto.
posted by jonson at 9:10 AM PST - 18 comments

Lomographic Society International. Long live the lomo. Great cameras, great photographs, great site.
posted by tomplus2 at 7:19 AM PST - 27 comments

Cuba is best known for its legendary cigars and bearded dictators, but it's also home to some of the healthiest ecosystems in the Caribbean. Pygmy owls, bee hummingbirds, and solenodons share the islands of Cuba with tiny tiny tree frogs, trogons, and one of the largest groups of snails in the world. There are problems, though. Many species such as the giant cursorial owl, the ivory-billed woodpecker and the smallest of the giant sloths have been wiped out over the last 5,000 years, and other species are threatened.
posted by bshort at 7:12 AM PST - 8 comments

Here is the Michael Jackson Nasal Exchange Mechanism: Now name that nose! And, if you don't like it, go ahead and make a face of your own ! [First link via Bifurcated Rivets. Usual Flash restrictions apply.]
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 6:54 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Who Was Photog? In 1986, an 11-year-old boy named Nathan Bitner designed a character named Fearless Photog. He won a contest to have his creation made into an action figure in the He-Man/Masters of the Universe line. The figure was never actually never produced. In 2003, a website specializing in 80's junk culture asked Who was Nathan Bitner? (scroll down for the comments). It's a story about call girl named Gemini, working for Bungie (creators of Halo), insurmountable credit card dept, joining the army at 28...
posted by andrewzipp at 6:47 AM PST - 23 comments

WWASP still doesn't get it. A sort of follow-up post to this thread - despite constant attempts to shut down various facilities, the organization is still setting up schools all over the world for parents to have their children "kidnapped" and sent to. Despite massive exposes of the organization, and Samoan, Mexican, Czech and now Costa Rican governments stepping in, these schools are still running. It bothers me to see this list of violations and am wondering how much better it is to be in those schools than in jail. What's worse - is they are working to transfer the students to one of four of their other compounds - Casa By The Sea, Tranquility Bay, Academy at Ivy Ridge or Spring Creek Lodge - at least the last two are in the US but the first two are under serious scrutiny themselves. Several State Officials are beginning to take notice but at this point, (aside from consular inquiries), all the state department has done is issue a warning. Can anything else be done? SHOULD anything else be done?
posted by bkdelong at 5:56 AM PST - 17 comments

Who Is Mary Rosh?
Mary Rosh often spoke sweetly of her days as a student of John's, she gave a glowing Amazon.com review of his book "More Guns, Less Crime," she criticized anyone who questioned John's research or his conclusions, and she attacked other researchers in her ardent defense of Lott's idea that more guns on the streets leads to less crime.
Take that Jayson, you rookie! Let a real man (guffaw) show you how to write cheat!
posted by nofundy at 5:34 AM PST - 5 comments

Comic Strip Classics Stamps. (via Dublog).
Related :- A nice collection of exhibits at the National Postal Museum, part of the Smithsonian (such as this exhibit of Cuban stamps and this one on FDR's stamp collecting); the Bath Postal Museum of British postal history; stamps of Greenland; stamps of Tibet.
posted by plep at 5:32 AM PST - 1 comment

The Sports Book of Virtues (not) By Bill Bennett. "I believe in a strong family unit and doubling down on 11."
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 9:53 PM PST - 5 comments

How to quit being fake John Kusch: “When I was 13, I decided to become a fake poet.... When I was 27, I decided to become a fake writer. When I was 32, I decided to become a fake personal assistant.... I was tired of dressing Fake Business Casual, of lowering my fake gaze in the boardroom while dropping off copies during a fake meeting, of waiting until the fake members had their pick before being allowed to have a leftover cookie.... So I got a job working nights in a jail, alphabetizing things that nobody else can be bothered to alphabetize, where I will be left alone, where I can be a real nobody in a real nowhere, under the radar screen that I am beginning to suspect is fake, too”
posted by joeclark at 8:02 PM PST - 63 comments

Creative Commons license: could it force you to suffer for your users' sins? Dan Bricklin says the liability clauses could do just that. MonkeyX says the benefits outweigh the risks. The Commoners respond. Ming the Mechanic and others prefer an alternative scheme: Primarily Public Domain, in which all content is donated to the public domain by default unless otherwise specified. And then there's plain old-fashioned copyright, like MeFi. How do you limit the incorporation of your cyberself?
posted by hairyeyeball at 6:44 PM PST - 18 comments

Have you heard of Stella? This comedy trio has been doing nightclub shows in NYC and across the country since 1997, and they were involved with MTV's the State before that. Perhaps you've seen one of the members somewhere else: Michael Showalter as Lionel Prichard in Signs, Michael Ian Black as the host of Spy TV or as Phil Stubbs on Ed, or David Wain as the director of Wet Hot American Summer(Black and Showalter are in the movie). Together they have put together several video shorts available here. I highly recommend Bored, Whiffleball, and David's Cousin. College Reunion, Christmas Caroling, and Turkey Hunting are also hilarious, if you share their off the wall, perverse sense of humor. None of them are safe for work. Enjoy!
posted by insomnyuk at 6:35 PM PST - 16 comments

From Sheet Music to MP3: Music through the 20th Century Among the current notices of legal online music stores finally coming of age across the 'Net, this is a lengthy but quite deep and interesting analysis (deepest I've seen so far) on how the music industry ended up being what it is today, how "pop" music came to be, and more. If anything, it shows how corporate greed and shady business practices are far from being a recent happening in the industry everybody loves to hate. The study ends with the state of the industry circa 1999, but that makes it no less valuable.
posted by betobeto at 6:14 PM PST - 2 comments

Jayson Blair doesn't know when to shut up. The first interview with the disgraced New York Times reporter indicates that if he's feeling bad about what he did, he's not exactly showing it. Oh, and he has "a book full of anecdotes." Very subtle, Jayson.
posted by solistrato at 6:13 PM PST - 35 comments

"Virginia Attraction to Put its Heads Together." Like a bizarre hybrid of Easter Island and Mt. Rushmore, the future Presidents Park in Williamsburg, VA, will feature 43 house-sized busts of the presidents of the United States, allowing you to get very, uh, close to history [scroll down a bit]. Hopefully this will be as glorious as that other monument to the presidents in South Dakota; you know, this one.
posted by arco at 4:53 PM PST - 3 comments

Hadrian's Wall, a UNESCO World Heritage site, runs for 84 miles near the northern border of England with Scotland. Built by the Romans around 122 AD to keep out invading barbarians and marking the northern most extent of the Roman Empire, it opened on May 22rd, where, for the first time in 1600 years hikers will be able to walk the entire length along an unbroken path.
posted by stbalbach at 4:18 PM PST - 17 comments

No Child Left Behind? States dumb down tests to avoid losing federal education funding.
posted by dogmatic at 2:12 PM PST - 8 comments

Hi! My name is...what? MeFi's own RJ Reynolds has posted a snippet from his hard-hitting documentary about bloggers. Features heartfelt treatises on the worth of self-publication from unknown bloggers around the world. Or not.
posted by patricking at 2:02 PM PST - 12 comments

If you find an atheist in your neighborhood, TELL A PARENT OR PASTOR RIGHT AWAY! Or if that's no fun, how about some Christian Game Theory from theorist "Diamond" Jack Holgroth? Perhaps the classic Prisoners Dilemma?
posted by cohappy at 1:40 PM PST - 35 comments

Ever hear of Fred Funk, Tom Lehman, or Jim Furyk? All three are currently tied with a certain female golfer who posted a +1 score today. The question is this: should female golfers be allowed to qualify and participate in the PGA? I mean, they already have their own league. Actually, the same argument was used back in 1947.
posted by graventy at 12:22 PM PST - 44 comments

Pale Blue Dot: The Earth and Moon as photographed from Mars. Just in case you needed a bit of perspective.
posted by aladfar at 12:21 PM PST - 14 comments

Robert Byrd speaks to the Senate, May 21, 2003 Regarding the situation in Iraq, it appears to this Senator that the American people may have been lured into accepting the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of long-standing International law, under false premises. There is ample evidence that the horrific events of September 11 have been carefully manipulated to switch public focus from Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda who masterminded the September 11th attacks, to Saddam Hussein who did not...

...We cower in the shadows while false statements proliferate. We accept soft answers and shaky explanations because to demand the truth is hard, or unpopular, or may be politically costly.

Words of wisdom from a senior US Senator.
posted by jasper411 at 12:20 PM PST - 44 comments

Buffalo chips and so much more! Welcome to the Silicon Zoo, a place where cheetahs run alongside guitar-strumming T. Rexes, while The Simpson's Milhouse looks on with a grin. Brought to you courtesy of those wacky scientific folk at Florida State University. [More]
posted by clever sheep at 11:53 AM PST - 2 comments

Wearable camera could store your life in images. "Casual capture" is HP's term for a way of taking snapshots that involves the minimum of effort on the part of the photographer. Ideally, the consumer could don an always-on, wearable camera, visit an event such as a party, and afterwards find that the camera had automatically selected and cropped the most memorable images. (More Inside).
posted by Ufez Jones at 11:43 AM PST - 16 comments

At last! A superhero costume for the masses!
posted by titboy at 9:57 AM PST - 19 comments

Personality type: Asshat. You carry around philosophy books you haven't read and wear trendy wire-rimmed glasses even though you have perfect vision. You've probably added an accent to your name or changed the pronunciation to seem sophisticated. You hang out in coffee shops because you don't have a job because you got your degree in French Poetry. People who drink capuccino are notorious for spouting off angry, liberal opinions about issues they don't understand.
The Oracle of Starbucks. (via chemaccino)
posted by PrinceValium at 9:49 AM PST - 30 comments

Is this excessive punishment? Some might think so . . . until they find out the crime is pedophilia. Or is it? Interesting excerpt:

According to the new book Remembering Trauma, by Harvard psychologist Richard McNally, which debunks the "traumatic amnesia" theories that have been bruited by some child protection workers, children may forget molestation simply because they were too young when it happened or because the abuse didn't feel weird or troublesome enough to remember for very long.

At what point does the zeal to persecute cause more harm (to the criminal and his victim both) than the crime itself? Of course, I fully expect that no clear thinking will prevail, since "OH MY GOD THINK OF THE CHILDREN!"
posted by yesster at 9:42 AM PST - 49 comments

Welcome to self-policing corporate responsibility. A division of the pharmaceutical company Bayer (Expertise with responsibility) sold millions of dollars of blood-clotting medicine for hemophiliacs - medicine that carried a high risk of transmitting AIDS - to Asia and Latin America in the mid-1980s while selling a new, safer product in the West.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 9:17 AM PST - 6 comments

The Hay Festival of Literature begins tomorrow. Lasting for ten days, and touted as the world's largest literary festival, it is located in Hay-on-Wye (Y-Gelli), the world's first booktown and self-proclaimed Independent Kingdom. Hay-on-Wye is a booklover's paradise (or hell, depending on the state of your credit card), with over 40 incredibly well-stocked bookshops (in a small town of only 2500 people, this means about three bookshops per block). This year's Festival offers a chance to hearfrom the likes of DeLillo, Atwood, Said, Childish and Hitchens, and while some are obviously on-tour and will be standing next to a table of their newest product, the events aren't free. Would you pay to hear your favourite authors read? Has hearing an author changed the way you read his/her book? Which authors have been as entertaining in person, and which have turned you off reading their books forever?
posted by spandex at 9:01 AM PST - 10 comments

yeah, I've done alot in my retirement. Habib a spritely young whip of a lad has been drawing his pension since 1938, remarkable.
posted by johnnyboy at 8:14 AM PST - 11 comments

"Are you a terrorist?" There's a judge in Tarrytown, NY, who's got an interesting spin on applying the Patriot Act. Or something.
posted by alumshubby at 6:15 AM PST - 33 comments

Buddhism tames the amygdala Covered recently on Metafilter (here), new research at the University of California San Francisco Medical Centre ( into the "Happy Buddhist" phenomenon ) shows that Buddhist meditation techniques "can tame the amygdala, an area of the brain which is the hub of fear memory." [BBC] -Is this the Rx for a nation of Americans gripped by fear? Do Christianity, Islam or Judaism have effective techniques to tame the amygdala too?
posted by troutfishing at 5:35 AM PST - 48 comments

Object Not Found. Lost and found photographs, postcards and letters.'The collection of postcards, photographs and letters collected here allows me to peek into a however small part of other peoples lives. '
Found via Countries of the Mind, a page about an imaginary world, and its postage stamps and postcards.
Related interest :- P22 Mail Art, and gallery.
posted by plep at 12:06 AM PST - 5 comments

Have you seen the episode of "Dr. Who" written by the late Douglas Adams, that was done completely in Flash animation?
posted by GriffX at 10:36 PM PST - 7 comments

Bye-bye Brunching. For nearly six years we've been entertained by The Brunching Shuttlecocks: Lore, David, and The Self-Made Critic. Now, the site is officially closed.

Let us take a moment to reflect upon this loss, then perhaps check out the surviving appendages. Haven't got a favorite feature? Sample the author's favorites, or try a random page if you dare...
posted by atavistech at 9:28 PM PST - 25 comments

MS Chat and the US Army Although a very interesting article on the logistics behind networking an entire battlefield - this bit worried me slightly:- "What's funny about using Microsoft Chat," he adds with a sly smile, "is that everybody has to choosean icon to represent themselves. Some of these guys haven't bothered, so the program assigns them one. We'll be in the middle of a battle and a bunch of field artillery colonels will come online in the form of these big-breasted blondes. We've got a few space aliens, too."
posted by robzster1977 at 5:18 PM PST - 17 comments

You've Come A Long Way, Baby: Unfortunately, you picked the wrong one, dear old Old-Fashioned, dean of cocktails. Robert Hess's definitive essay on the ever-changing ways of making one shows just how contentious a cocktail recipe can be. It also bears sad testimony to how the great classics are being fruited up, iced up, fizzed up, shaken till obliteration and generally girlied, dumbed and boozed down. So how do you stand on the cherry, the pineapple and the orange? And don't even bother commenting if you're a seltzer fan! ;)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:09 PM PST - 51 comments

Ranch Rescue is a organization dedicated to the notion of preserving "Private property first, foremost, and always." Darlings of the far right-wing press, they are not anti-tax or anti-regulation of business, they are a group that exploits laws allowing landowners to apprehend or shoot trespassers by organizing armed expeditions of "concerned citizens" to hunt down undocumented border crossers. Begun in Arizona and Texas, they have recently expanded to all Mexican/American border states. Check out the different state pages to learn of their upcoming "operations". This site requires a lot of perusal to ascertain the reality of what these people are doing, but they do give you some insight as to what the hell they are thinking.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 2:46 PM PST - 30 comments

So I guess it started when Jeremy Hedley made these buttons, dissatisfied as he was with the W3 Validator's default icons. Or was it Winer's white-on-orange button that did it, and the ensuing variations that appeared? In any case, we now have pixely buttons for just about everything, scripts to make even more, and GUI frontends to those scripts for fun and ease. And if you want to be kind to their servers; here's the source if you have Image::GD.
posted by brownpau at 1:57 PM PST - 33 comments

Amy Bender writes modern fairy tales. Whether these stories are magical realism, irrealism, or just plain crazy, is this a continuing trend in fiction?
posted by son_of_minya at 11:58 AM PST - 18 comments

All we need is Radio Ga Ga... Ever heard of Clear Channel? They are the largest owners of radio stations and billboards in the United States. They are based in Texas. Bush is from Texas. Bush is running for President in 2004. Bush and CC are friends. Before the conspiracy bangwagon gets too full, think of all the money and energy spent of political advertising near the end of their campaigns, it's sad to think that most people vote (or don't vote) for what a candidate looks like on a 30 foot billboard rather than his/her political views. Will Bush win the 2004 election? Be very afraid
posted by lsd4all at 11:34 AM PST - 52 comments

It's just after mid-May and that means one thing: it's summit time on Everest. Current reports are mostly good with only a broken leg and attempted rescue reported so far. If you've ever followed Everest, you'll certainly know about the 1996 disaster, the stories that surrounded it, and the constant death toll (4 out of every 100 that attempt the climb will die trying). There are a lot of teams going up this year, including a team with the youngest american to ever peak and an attempt from the oldest (who was also the guy that first climbed all seven summits). Yesterday and today look like the big summit attempt days, with the north side route having the best luck (though it has the more difficult route). Should be interesting to watch over the next few days, especially to see if the british climber with the broken leg will survive.
posted by mathowie at 11:10 AM PST - 27 comments

"How do you talk about domestic violence without portraying violence or having some statement about violence?" PSAs about domestic abuse developed by the Calgary-based HomeFront Society have been judged too graphic to show on television. Violent acts from actual domestic-abuse investigations are depicted in public settings: a boardroom, a restaurant. They will not be broadcast, but are available for download online (MPEG format). Warning: These ads are extremely difficult to watch. They hit you like a ton of bricks. But isn't that the point?
posted by mcwetboy at 6:54 AM PST - 71 comments

GardeningFilter! James Dyson's Wrong Garden - water going uphill in a perpetual-motional Escher-like fashion; how is it done...?
posted by klaatu at 6:49 AM PST - 9 comments

Women in Iraq
some worry that women are being sidelined as never before. Thikra Nadr, a novelist in her mid-forties who published a tale about a government that ruined the country through deprivation and war, said she cannot remember a time when women had less visibility or freedom. “The long period of sanctions reduced the role of women in Iraq,” she said as a generator roared across the street from her ground-floor apartment in the middle-class Mansour district. “But this period we’re living in right now has completely canceled the role of women in society.”
Isn't it time that this issue was addressed? Or was the "liberation" talk just another sound bite from the spin machine?
posted by nofundy at 6:38 AM PST - 19 comments

Toy Symphony: A project from the MIT Media Lab, developing new instruments like the networked Beatbugs and squeezable Shapers. There's their composition software Hyperscore, free for downloading, as well as sample scores to play. This morning's Wall Street Journal (page D10, upper left corner) reports that Fisher-Price will be releasing a commercial version soon (though of Hyperscore or the instruments, it's not entirely clear... I'd like a Beatbug!).
posted by meep at 4:36 AM PST - 5 comments

The Meat Tree. Yes, beef that grows on a tree.
posted by swift at 4:14 AM PST - 42 comments

How to create a golem. (No, not him.) The method for creating golems is said to come from a Kabbalistic text, the Sepher Yetzirah. I've always wanted one of these, but "purity of purpose" might be a problem. [First link via The Cartoonist.]
posted by homunculus at 12:16 AM PST - 19 comments

Eek eek! - Jennings Bryan spins in his grave: "Chimpanzees are so closely related to humans that they should properly be considered as members of the human family, according to new genetic research." [BBC] In the early 1900's, Jennings Bryan offered $100 in cash to anyone who signed an affidavit declaring that he personally was descended from an ape.
posted by troutfishing at 9:31 PM PST - 44 comments

Beef industry stunned by mad cow disease
posted by synecdoche at 8:58 PM PST - 17 comments

Project Bio Bus... ROAD TRIP! Smells like a french fry, looks like a school bus.
posted by thunder at 7:55 PM PST - 13 comments

extraordinary photographs [via newstoday] from todd hido. photographs and the ability to see so many new young photographers work every day - is one of my favorite aspects of the web. additional favorites here, and here. anyone else have any little known faves?
posted by specialk420 at 6:19 PM PST - 23 comments

They're ugly. I mean small and really ugly! And they don't do us any favors at all. We can hold each other's hands, and share support. Our fight against them may lead to knowledge in other battles, but I think its time to go on the offensive. Its time to defang the beastie. (Maybe I should have posted this at Warfilter instead?)
posted by Wulfgar! at 3:33 PM PST - 20 comments

Mad Cows With Guns And Cows With Bad Puns: Whoever's thinkin' of a steak dinner... runs! [ Flash required; soundtrack crucial.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:35 PM PST - 12 comments

Warren Buffett the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway seems to disagree with the Bush clan on tax cuts.

"As owner of 31 percent of Berkshire, Buffett would receive $310 million in extra income if the company decided to pay $1 billion in dividends next year; his tax rate would plunge to 3 percent, while the rate of Berkshire's receptionist would remain at 30 percent."
posted by CrazyJub at 2:07 PM PST - 50 comments

Madhubani Painting - 'an on-line exhibit of folk paintings by women artists who live in the Madhubani district of northern India.' With a gallery of paintings depicting, among other things, interpretations of popular Hindu stories.
Related :- an exhibition of Maithil paintings at asianart.com; Patterns and Prints of India.
posted by plep at 1:43 PM PST - 3 comments

Terror's myriad faces
Al-Qaeda, conceived of as a tight-knit terrorist group with cadres and a capability everywhere, does not exist in that form. It barely existed before the war in Afghanistan in 2001 destroyed Osama bin Laden's carefully constructed infrastructure there. It certainly does not exist now. Instead, we are facing a different kind of threat. Al-Qaeda can only be understood as an ideology, an agenda and a way of seeing the world that is shared by an increasing number of predominantly young, predominantly male Muslims. Eliminating bin Laden and a few hundred senior activists will do nothing to counter this al-Qaeda. Hundreds more will come forward to fill their ranks. Al-Qaeda, however understood, will continue to operate. The threat will remain and it will grow.
See also Sowing The Dragon's Teeth.
Or, alternately, Hercules and the Hydra.
posted by y2karl at 11:02 AM PST - 25 comments

Start-up demonstrates sound focusing technology. Basically, they can project a sound to a specific point/person from up to 100m away. Minority Report is coming closer to reality by the day...
posted by costas at 10:31 AM PST - 15 comments

A Republican straw man helps terrorists. Thanks charlie! Then again, was it not Bush who failed to implement a Clinton plan to prevent terrorism? (Hear & Now - Real Adieo)
posted by Bag Man at 10:14 AM PST - 17 comments

Adios to the slayer. Buffy the Vampire Slayer ends tonight. This well written farewell says goodbye to a much loved, and sometimes taken way too seriously pop-cult icon. Though talk of spinoffs abound. Nothing will ever be the same as first time you realized: "hey, this show doesn't suck at all!"

Thanks, guys.
posted by lumpenprole at 10:06 AM PST - 68 comments

Nicholas Kristof wrote this article
  about this woman
    who founded this hospital
      which treats this condition, which is so awful...
posted by languagehat at 9:32 AM PST - 27 comments

Hooters is coming to San Francisco Oh My, Hooters, The ultimate in crass disgusting guy-ness and un-PC-ness is finally coming to San Francisco-the utlimate in PC-ness and "new-age-king-of-guy-ness." Will San Francisco be able to handle it? Granted the self-professed "slightly tacky yet unrefined" Hooters IS going into Fisherman's Wharf, which is tacky tourist-central. But, "it's about so much more than...that..." you know.
posted by aacheson at 9:29 AM PST - 51 comments

Heavy metal music and popular American children's songs are being used by US interrogators to break the will of their captives in Iraq. Uncooperative Iraqi prisoners are being exposed for prolonged periods to tracks by rock group Metallica and music from children's TV programmes Sesame Street and Barney in the hope of making them talk, reports the commies at the BBC today.

Barney the dinosaur would break me in a nanosecond. What would *you* play to break the spirit of your boss, childhood enemy, or - beautiful image- to wipe that smug smile of Barney's crimson visage and leave him whimpering in the arms of Baby Bop?
posted by Pericles at 8:55 AM PST - 79 comments

Screw Major Tom! "Oscar 1 was battery powered. Its signals lasted for about two weeks. The batteries were not rechargeable". Awww..... Here are the actual sounds of the first satellites. In fact, I may just become a MeFi musician just to sample them. So there.
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 8:02 AM PST - 8 comments

New York man gets ticket for sitting on a milk crate. Not, of course, that i take the NY Daily News all that seriously, but still... This is beyond ridiculous (much like a lot of things taking place in New York these days). Makes me ill that I have to wait until 2006 to vote this ridiculous mayor out of office.
posted by cadence at 7:48 AM PST - 22 comments

The steam-powered drum machine - an astonishing extract from the journal of Charles Franklin, the founder of the London Museum of Techno. Written in 1894, Franklin describes a steam-powered drum machine and what may have been the world's first rave. "Driven by the thunderous rhythms of Hoovenaars tremendous "drum machine" the crowd - academics and dockers, architects and cobblers - were whipped into a frenzy, dancing and screaming like savages until sunrise, when the Machine finally ground to a halt with a suffering hiss."
posted by adrianhon at 6:34 AM PST - 33 comments

Theme Birds on Stamps listed by country, and more.
posted by hama7 at 6:13 AM PST - 7 comments

Interest rates are so low that you lose money buying bond funds. A preview of the liquidity trap?
posted by alms at 5:59 AM PST - 9 comments

Go to the ant, you sluggard;
consider its ways and be wise!
It has no commander, no overseer or ruler,
Yet it stores its provisions in summer
and gathers its food at harvest. -- (proverbs 6:6-8)
posted by jamespake at 1:49 AM PST - 10 comments

Move Over, Right Wing Radio - the Liberals Are Coming. "The handwriting is on the wall for right-wing talk radio: To build profits, programmers must reach beyond diehard Republicans to unserved listeners."
posted by thedailygrowl at 12:50 AM PST - 39 comments

I was wrong. Free market trade policies hurt the poor. “As leader of the delegation from the United Kingdom [to Seattle in 1999], I was convinced that the expansion of world trade had the potential to bring major benefits to developing countries and would be one of the key means by which world poverty would be tackled... I now believe that this approach is wrong and misguided.”
posted by raaka at 9:22 PM PST - 33 comments

Google News has reportedly confirmed they have removed Indymedia from their list of news sources. Why you ask? Apparently Google bowed to pressure brought upon them by an email campaign organized by people who disagree with some of what gets posted under IndyMedia's policy of allowing anyone to post to the newswire, and not exerting editorial control. People are claiming IndyMedia is "anti-semitic", because of trolls who sometimes post hateful posts on the unedited, user-supplied newswire. Check out the thread on Little Green Footballs or Silent Running or this one at Yourish.com. Inexplicably, Yourish points to this mailing list posting as proof of IndyMedia's "anti-semitism". If you go to Google news and search for indymedia sorted by date, nothing after May 16th comes up. Now in their effort to remove truly anti-semitic material from Google News, they've removed all the legitimate stories of IndyMedia from Google News as well.
posted by Babylonian at 6:58 PM PST - 54 comments

oddies but goodies. Oddball cars from yesteryear.
posted by crunchland at 4:03 PM PST - 5 comments

The History of the Internet as told, with a humourous touch, by The Lemon. "If anyone makes any overused Al Gore jokes they will be beaten unconscious with a 300 baud modem."
posted by thebabelfish at 3:52 PM PST - 7 comments

Danny Glover is a no good communist according to MSNBC's right-wing pundit Joe Scarborough. Scarborough is taking credit for forcing MCI to drop Glover as a spokesman because Glvoer's views are "too far to the left." Add this to the Bull Durham fiasco, and Sean Penn's claims of a new blacklist start to look pretty real. Do we only have freedom of speech if we agree with the neo-conservatives?
posted by hipnerd at 3:46 PM PST - 78 comments

Why do strippers customarily return the third dollar you tip them? Molson Canada has unleashed a public service to single, heterosexual beer-drinking men everywhere, but the details are top secret. Pass a simple test and the details will be revealed.
posted by jonson at 3:31 PM PST - 38 comments

Open Democracy: Anticapitalists Of The World, Left And Right, Unite? Open Democracy is a very interesting project which proposes to discuss - and open to discussion - the great issues of our day. While mostly socialist and liberal - with some new anarchism intelligently thrown in - it refreshingly makes space for conservative philosopher and polemicist Roger Scruton's reflections on the political and social consequences of how we eat. Despite a vaguely anticapitalist bias, so far as I can see, Open Democracy seems to be intellectually wide open. I've been a subscriber for a while now (it's free, btw) and it's that old-fashioned thing: it makes you think. Do consider adding it to your usual peregrinations. [I'll resist the temptation of pointing to favourite essays and debates - it really is worth exploring one one's own. Jacknose was the first to refer to Open Democracy on MeFi, back in December 2001.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:20 PM PST - 5 comments

How does President George W. Bush compare with other presidents on job creation? - Not too well: neck and neck with Herbert Hoover. However the underlying economic pathology, "The Clinton boom....built on three unsustainable bubbles", preceded GW Bush's administration [although the current slump is surely exacerbated by the GW Bush deficits, tax cuts and wars], argues this economist who predicted the recent stock market crash and who now predicts an end to the "high dollar" and real estate bubbles.
posted by troutfishing at 2:11 PM PST - 24 comments

"You look like a pimp," said the principal of a Chattanooga school to a student who wore a suit to graduation. Girls in gowns were also forbidden to walk across the stage to get their diplomas. Other than wearing, say, a chicken suit or something, can one be too dressed up for graduation?
posted by Oriole Adams at 2:05 PM PST - 47 comments

The end of a stereotype? Ireland's Prime Minister wants to limit advertising and slap warning labels on alcoholic beverages in an effort to curtail teenage binge drinking. It doesn't seem to work too well here in the U.S., can it work in Ireland, the punch line of most drinking jokes?
posted by MediaMan at 12:18 PM PST - 21 comments

A new fusion of cinema and cyberspace will be seen in Peter Greenaway's upcoming film "The Moab Story" (NYTimes article). Unlike other Hollywood websites, the film's site will deepen the story beyond imagination. Greenaway's "megalomaniacal" plan is to create "The Tulse Luper Suitcases" ("The Moab Story" is the first phase), which will "eventually include three to five films, a 16-part television series, a touring theater production, several books, DVD's and Web sites and an online computer game."
posted by jacknose at 11:57 AM PST - 12 comments

Political Cartoons from US Presidential Elections 1860-84. Related interest :- American Political Prints 1766-1876; the World of Thomas Nast; British General Election Cartoons 1959-97; Madam & Eve, a popular cartoon about the new South Africa; The Censored Cartoons Page, 'a guide to the cuts and edits which have been rendered to the classic cartoons of Warner Brothers, MGM, Paramount, and other studios when broadcast on television ... ' ; Iranian Cartoons; the London Cartoon Gallery.
posted by plep at 10:58 AM PST - 8 comments

Tired of extreme sports? Need a new thrill? Extreme Kidnapping, the brainchild of Mr. Scrillian, a rap artist from Detroit, is looking to provide thrill-seekers with the ultimate in adrenaline rushes. For as little as $500 you can experience a "No-Frills Adrenaline Amp Kidnapping", or go whole hog with a custom videotaped "Standard Kidnapping" complete with restraints and mock torture.

Is this the next wave of extreme sport?
posted by greengrl at 10:40 AM PST - 25 comments

Ari needs a new job. According to his announcement, he plans to "do something more relaxing — like dismantle live nuclear weapons". It's likely he'll follow in the footsteps of his predecessors Joe Lockhart (consultant) or George Stephanopoulos (TV pundit) or Mike McCurry (Chairman and CEO of a software company). I'll bet this company could use a CEO. Maybe these people need a consultant? Come on, let's find Ari some work!
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:28 AM PST - 46 comments

This week's most buried headline could be a real stinker this week for the Pentagon. Apparently over $1 trillion are missing as well as "dozens of tanks, missiles and planes."
posted by jackspace at 9:28 AM PST - 25 comments

Patron Saints Index Topic List. Because you never know when you might need the Patron Saint of Haemorrhoids or Gravediggers. This actually is a very nice resource for the history of the Saints, their (known or presumed) backgrounds, and when and why they were beatified. Enjoy.
posted by Ufez Jones at 9:19 AM PST - 12 comments

Psychology has failed. It's not often that an entire academic discipline collapses, but according to Peter Watson, author of A Terrible Beauty, that's what is happening to Psychology. "....it has failed technologically, philosophically and is already in an advanced stage of decomposition." [more inside]
posted by grahamwell at 8:56 AM PST - 25 comments

1957 atomic revolution comic book. Quite a find for 1950s atomic memorabilia enthusiasts. Creepy and educational. Has anyone here ever heard of M.Philip Copp?
posted by Peter H at 8:25 AM PST - 10 comments

Am I the only one who gets annoyed by RAS Syndrome? Apparently not. But why do even apparently intelligent people repeatedly refer to PIN Numbers (google 69,200), ATM Machines (google 68,500), RAM Memory (google 173,000), HIV Virus (google 104,000) or GUI Interfaces (google 93,900)? I wouldn't mind, but today even the BBC are getting in on the act. Oh, and incase you care, they are technically called Acronym-Assisted Pleonasms.

I'd ask you to list others you know of, but I know this will get out of hand very quickly... ;)
posted by twine42 at 5:46 AM PST - 111 comments

Infrasound : Elephants use it to communicate, the military have sought to harness its power as a weapon (.pdf). So have The KLF. Now, a group of avant garde musicians invite you to feel the bass. If reports of the Feraliminal Lycanthropizer are to be believed, that could be one hell of a gig.
posted by jack_mo at 3:56 AM PST - 15 comments

Cyberlicious: the Art and Culture Network. In a lo-brow search for "bubblicious", I happened upon the hi-brow and highly browse-friendly, ACN. Why? Because "bubblicious" is one of its in-site "keyword" searches, describing that quality "shared by champagne, soap foam, hot air balloons, and gum... lighter than air, ephemeral, in a state of creative tension, colorful, beautiful, and amusing", and returning results for movements such as "Pop/Surrealism/Anti-Design", "Miniskirts", "The Digital Era", "Smarty Arty Pop" and "Glam Rock", along with artists such as Mary Quant, The Ramones, Mariko Mori, Gene Kelly, and Mouse on Mars. (more...)
posted by taz at 3:20 AM PST - 5 comments

I, like, pick good stocks. Chris Lahiji, the 19 year-old "LeBron James of Wall Street", spent his summer analyzing the annual reports from thousands of companies. He then put together the semi-experimental Lahiji Tiny Fund with a lofty long term goal: Ideally, I wish for my analysis to one day be synonymous with the entire micro-cap segment (really small companies). This group of stocks, composed entirely of smaller companies, is up an impressive 80.78% as of 4/15. Lahiji's site also documents the impressive amount of crap [and QT video] that he received from companies as a result of requesting 12,000 annual reports. He spoke with Wall Street Week's Geoff Colvin on Friday.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 2:14 AM PST - 10 comments

Steven Kowalczyk is now Steven Santoro. Great pop-jazz vocal music, and the definition of cool. Also of interest is Kate McGarry, whose recent album "Show Me" was produced by Steven Santoro. (more inside)
posted by son_of_minya at 12:45 AM PST - 1 comment

How Many? A Dictionary of Units of Measurement Did you know a pace is equal to two steps? That a pinch is equal to 1/8 a teaspoon? Or that the ancient Greeks defined an obolos as 1/6 a drachma? Now you do.
posted by moonbiter at 10:02 PM PST - 14 comments

Politics storms the museum Earlier this month, the National Museum of Natural History opened "Seasons of Life and Land," an exhibit of wildlife photographs by artist-naturalist Subhankar Banerjee. If you go to Washington, you'll find the show hung in the museum's Baird Ambulatory Gallery, essentially a basement hallway installed with lights. Just two months ago, however, it was prepared to run in a more complete form in a premiere gallery on the museum's main floor, alongside a major exhibit of botanical paintings. What happened?
posted by bas67 at 8:36 PM PST - 15 comments

Payboy: the Video Game "It looks like a lucrative area we're getting into," said Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy. "It's a logical step. One might suggest it's overdue. The video game industry is huge right now and [the games are played] by a lot of people who read Playboy." Slipping into Hef's silk pajamas, you'll face the challenges and rewards of building the Playboy empire.
posted by orange swan at 8:01 PM PST - 4 comments

OMG! HAX!!
posted by srboisvert at 7:19 PM PST - 19 comments

Ionaut is one example of a web-based question-answering system. These systems have a long way to go to compete with Google (try asking some questions) but it's interesting to see how researchers are using simple linguistic techniques (146k pdf) to return answers from the web.
posted by jamespake at 3:33 PM PST - 8 comments

Doll for auction on Ebay? It's haunted too? Don't even leave its pictures on my hard drive, you say? Well then...Firewalls at full-throttle, crew!
posted by LexRockhard at 11:54 AM PST - 22 comments

It Hurts, It Rankles, It Smarts, It Annoys, But... To see ourselves as others see us is still one of the most soul-cleansing and brain-sobering exercises we can indulge in and profit by. National stereotypes, like clichés, often have something to them. This view of Portugal, written by a Canadian called Ray Vogensen is full of gross mistakes, infelicities, oddities and even lacks of perception and yet... and yet I immediately, definitely recognized my own country in his careful, almost clinical dissection. Which is high praise in my book. Most of it, unfortunately, is spot on. I hate to say it but it's the most truthful assessment of the real Portugal I've ever seen outside a book. Are there any foreigners' views of your own country that you find yourself grudgingly agreeing with? Here's 911 Things To Hate About America to start off the American contingent.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:08 AM PST - 63 comments

( Matrix Revolution ) in just a few months! Warning: Link contains possible spoiler for those who haven't seen it! Looks like we won't have to wait very long until the conclusion to the cliff hanger ending of the Matrix is revealed in the sequel. Matrix 3 (Matrix Revolution)
posted by filecrave at 8:18 AM PST - 40 comments

Southwestern United States Rock Art Gallery. 'This page is devoted to Native American Rock Art of the Southwestern United States. Currently, most images on this page are from Utah. This will change as time permits.'
Related :- this Precolumbian Collection from Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection (which has an interesting history itself).
posted by plep at 3:30 AM PST - 7 comments

Jayson Blair has pretty good timing Almost, too good...
posted by delmoi at 3:07 AM PST - 1 comment

Don't let the minute spoil the hour. Ted Joans Lives!
posted by sudama at 11:51 PM PST - 3 comments

The Daguerreian Society: daguerreotype galleries, resources, and more.
posted by hama7 at 11:44 PM PST - 2 comments

The first time ever I saw your face: Is beauty perhaps not entirely in the eye of the beholder? [Via LinkFilter.]
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 10:02 PM PST - 25 comments

The Shallowing of American Taste First tastebuds and palates fall to McDonalds, now the eyes, ears, and minds fall to Wal-Mart, according to this NY Times article (free registration required)...

"The growing clout of Wal-Mart and the other big discount chains ? they now often account for more than 50 percent of the sales of a best-selling album, more than 40 percent for a best-selling book, and more than 60 percent for a best-selling DVD -- has bent American popular culture toward the tastes of their relatively traditionalist customers...But with the chains' power has come criticism from authors, musicians and civil liberties groups who argue that the stores are in effect censoring and homogenizing popular culture. The discounters and price clubs typically carry an assortment of fewer than a thousand books, videos and albums, and they are far more ruthless than specialized stores about returning goods if they fail to meet a minimum threshold of weekly sales."

Add in Clear Channel Radio and sanitized text books, and all I can say is that the internet has come along at the time it's needed. With the fingers of big commerce all over our culture, the web can serve to reverse an old mega-trend to "high-touch, high-tech." With Wal-Mart, et al, touching our minds, we need to resort to tech to add some depth and breath to their narrow and shallow offerings.
posted by fpatrick at 8:29 PM PST - 45 comments

Do you know your National Parks? We've all heard of Yosemite and Grand Canyon, but what about some of the less well known but nevertheless remarkable parks such as Haleakala, Capitol Reef and Isle Royale? (I guess I'm a sucker for underdogs.)
posted by oissubke at 7:27 PM PST - 19 comments

The Iconography of Saint Sebastian A terrific collection of images (14th to 21st centuries) in multiple media. For an interesting visual introduction to the development of iconography, see Augusta State University's rather no-nonsense Christian Iconography, which breaks the subject down into major topics, individual saints, and so forth.
posted by thomas j wise at 5:11 PM PST - 6 comments

Sexual Secret Spurs Deadly Dilemma
Her daughter was known to most people as a cocky Southwestern Ontario pig-farm worker named Angelo, married to a 26-year-old woman named Elizabeth Rudavsky.

A very sad tale of a woman who had a Gender Identity Crisis. Frankly, I can't imagine what sort of horrors both of these people went through. Is it possible that genetic testing will eventually prevent an identity crisis from happening? Is it even desirable? Is this a true case of gender identity crisis?
posted by ashbury at 4:31 PM PST - 16 comments

This unusual $20,000 full-page political add (pdf) ran on May 16th in The Washington Post. Read the fascinating story how this unusual add came to happen, the powerful people supporting it, the independent news site From The Wilderness behind the Add and the video The Truth and Lies of 9-11 that started it all.
posted by stbalbach at 4:18 PM PST - 37 comments

Marijuana possession law 'erased' Possessing less than 30 grams of marijuana is no longer against the law in Ontario, a Windsor judge says in a ruling released yesterday that compounds the chaos over Canada's pot laws. And it's a long weekend too. (btw, Ontario is a province in Canada that includes Toronto).
posted by bobo123 at 3:59 PM PST - 23 comments

"Do you know how much effort and time is put into the clothes you wear and the food you eat?"
-Sarah, 12, Bristol
Today is World Fair Trade Day. Even Dunkin' Donuts is giving it a try. Is Fair Trade potentially a better idea than boycotting?
posted by Shane at 11:00 AM PST - 24 comments

Genius goes online. A new website of Albert Einstein's scientific and other never-published travel diaries, various humanitarian statements, and his frequent pleas for peace, will be unveiled on Monday (May 19). The new site is the result of a collaborative effort of the Einstein Papers Project at Caltech and the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The site, www.alberteinstein.info. is scheduled to go live Monday, May 19, after 3 PM EDT. It's really a moment to look forward to.
posted by taratan at 9:04 AM PST - 1 comment

'Salam Pax' plays Americans for fools in Iraq more speculation from RogerLSimon, LGF and junkyardblog and a dissenting view needlenose.
posted by srboisvert at 7:01 AM PST - 34 comments

The New Shaker Wives Aren't Really Into Furniture or puritanism or bonnets. But kickass cocktails? And revenge? That, yes. Oh yes. Empowering? I should bloody well think so. Disgruntled housewives you say? I say their boring, stupid husbands don't appreciate their luck, more likely. Explore their website, enjoy and learn! [Offered as a companion-piece to tranquileye's June 2002 Ladies For The Preservation Of Cocktails post. P.S. This is neither here nor there but the more I live and know, the more I love and respect women and the less I like men.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:54 PM PST - 12 comments

The UK Guardian Meets Ann Coulter. Many people outside the US have yet to come to terms with the reality of the recent shift towards the right in the domestic American political landscape. Here, Johnathan Freedland of the genteel, centre-left Guardian interviews right-wing babe Ann Coulter. This article draws out some fairly representative American Right and British opinions on politics, war, sex and race -- and shows some stark differences, even outright hostility, between the two predominant political positions from these closely allied nations. Worth reading just to picture Freedland looking horrified when Coulter calls him a commie.
posted by Bletch at 9:41 PM PST - 111 comments

The Citypaper, sort of the Fox News of Nashville newspapers, ran an editorial today advocating the partial legalization of drugs and prostitution in Nashville. Could such an idea ever be sold in the Buckle of the Bible Belt?
posted by mikrophon at 2:25 PM PST - 20 comments

To Tell the Truth: Writer Sarah Hepola describes a night drinking beers with disgraced Times reporter Jayson Blair and her own muddy relationship with the truth. "I’ve been trying to stay outside the gray areas these days. I’m trying to tell the truth, in all its raggedness. But I slip up sometimes. I duck the straight and narrow. As I read over what I have written here, I wonder: Have I lied to you yet? Would I even know?"
posted by junkbox at 12:00 PM PST - 28 comments

I'm in the middle of a book called Will you miss me when I'm gone?, which chronicles the history of the famous Carter Family, and includes some incredibly charming descriptions of June Carter (later the wife of Johnny Cash; the development of her musical voice, her mountain-tinted wit, and her onstage goofball comedy. Unfortunately, June Carter Cash died yesterday.
posted by transient at 11:28 AM PST - 16 comments

"First they came for the Greens..." Texas' proposed "Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act," which its backers are hoping to extend nationally, is the next step after Patriot Acts I and II. The president of the Center for Constitutional Rights says the legislation criminalizes "basically every environmental and animal-rights organization in the country," which means that if you don't even march with, but send money to any of them, you may be tacitly waiving your 4th-amendment rights. [More inside]
posted by soyjoy at 10:07 AM PST - 72 comments

The keepers of the Bush image lift stagecraft to new heights. "We pay particular attention to not only what the president says but what the American people see," Mr. Bartlett said. "Americans are leading busy lives, and sometimes they don't have the opportunity to read a story or listen to an entire broadcast. But if they can have an instant understanding of what the president is talking about by seeing 60 seconds of television, you accomplish your goals as communicators. So we take it seriously."
posted by four panels at 9:51 AM PST - 23 comments

"It's not often that a painting you can stick in your briefcase sells for $200,000." A recently discovered long-lost Tom Thomson painting was sold at auction for far more than it was estimated to fetch. Sure, the price tag pales in comparison to the most expensive painting ever, but it's nothing to sneeze at. Are these auction prices calculated, or just some random numbers that they pluck out of the air? How should the value of a piece of art be determined?
posted by debralee at 9:43 AM PST - 4 comments

Flag-O-Rama. If you don't own this stuff, you're probably a terrorist. (Warning: GeoCities)
posted by xmutex at 9:37 AM PST - 10 comments

80's electronica nostalgia time Phil Oakey (Human League) presents a great 2 hour BBC radio programme featuring Soft Cell, Kraftwerk, Tubeway Army, Visage, Depeche Mode and many many more. Future music that sounds strangely quaint and, well, actually rather good! (courtesy of Protein Feed).
posted by rolo at 9:16 AM PST - 18 comments

The Hidden Dangers of Letter Campaigns.
A series of email petitions have been circulating over the past year, to prevent the execution of Amina Lawal, a 30 year-old woman found guilty by an islamic court in Northern Nigeria of adultery. Even signature-collecting websites have been set up by local Amnesty chapters (see for example this Spanish A.I. site). But this isn't helping - and is indeed damaging the cause of Amina Lawal, according to BAOBAB, a Nigerian group supporting Women's Human Rights:
...It turns out that letters and petitions, even the few that aren't just chain-letter foolishness, may do more harm than good and that the situation in Nigeria is at once far more complex and less dire than it seems from the outside. There are ways to help, starting with understanding what is really going on...
Good intentions, it seems, aren't good enough if one has little knowledge of what one is campaigning against or for.
posted by talos at 8:13 AM PST - 12 comments

Matthew's Eye has been healing ever since he got a nasty shot from someone. His site shows the process through a series of photos, one taken per day.
posted by dum2007 at 8:12 AM PST - 18 comments

Eh... I never liked high school anyway.
posted by mcgraw at 8:11 AM PST - 37 comments

Michael Jordan Tried to Steal My Date is just one of a number of stories in the Washington CityPaper this week, looking back at the good and bad of having 'MJ' in our city... even if it wasn't meant to last.
posted by GriffX at 8:07 AM PST - 23 comments

Friday Flash Bjork Fun! (And yes, some Flash for those who want that, too...)
posted by insomnia_lj at 7:42 AM PST - 6 comments

Indian soon-to-be bride breaks indian marriage rules. Not surprisingly she is a "software engineer" student probably a programmer with some clue. Groom goes to jail. On a tangent, your job position is currently being outsourced to this "civilized" country with only 7000 dowry deaths in 2001.
posted by elpapacito at 6:43 AM PST - 40 comments

Jeb Bush has asked a court to appoint a guardian for the fetus of a developmentally disabled rape victim. (reg: mefi, mefi) Never mind that in a 1989 case, the Florida Supreme Court declared that it was "clearly improper" to appoint a guardian for a fetus.

The 22-year-old woman is so disabled that her pregnancy is considered a product of rape, is incapable of consenting to a DNA test and cannot otherwise help the police find the father; but I'm sure she'll make a great mom!
posted by magullo at 6:02 AM PST - 45 comments

Living The American Dream
Bush gave his speech Monday at a company in Albuquerque called MCT Industries. “We’re standing in the midst of what we call the American dream,” he said. MCT is privately owned by the family of Ted Martinez, who founded it on a shoestring in 1973 and is now a wealthy VIP who hangs around with politicians. “The Martinez family is living that dream,” Bush said.

A familiar dream for Bush. Just ask the folks in Arlington, Texas about a certain stadium. Getting rich from special considerations and the taxpayer's money. And doing it during the times of those onerous tax burdens he would relieve all such dreamers of.
posted by nofundy at 5:25 AM PST - 28 comments

The Personality Forge. Create an AI bot, and set it loose.
posted by plep at 4:29 AM PST - 6 comments

The alleged truth about how Private Jessica Lynch was saved.
This is a pretty amazing story, coming originally from the BBC and now a front page story on the Guardian. There's a program on it on BBC on Sunday.

Story courtesy of Karlin Lillington, where I picked it up.
posted by tomcosgrave at 4:21 AM PST - 10 comments

So you think you can BBQ? But could you be a contender? How good is your powerkraut?
posted by biffa at 3:08 AM PST - 8 comments

How To Destroy Possibilities. How much interaction is too much? Immersive world or guided tour? The fine folks at Grand Text Auto explore the narrative structure of video games.
posted by arto at 2:56 AM PST - 9 comments

International Pickle Week begins this Friday, May 16, to celebrate and honor these brine-soaked morsels of goodness. It's the perfect excuse to over-indulge in your favorite pickles, whether they're bread & butters, half-sours, gherkins, or deep fried dills. As if Friday could get any tastier!
posted by catfood at 9:16 PM PST - 23 comments

Just a reminder that the lunar eclipse occurs tonight, starting at 7:00pm Pacific Daylight Time (and lasting about three hours). Various webcasts have been set up for the darkness-impaired. Apologies for the double-post, and I am aware that I'll probably get like 5 comments that say "SpaceFilter".
posted by hammurderer at 5:33 PM PST - 41 comments

Caution. Low Flying Planes: "He arrived with a ladder, paint and rope. Brazenly, alone and in broad daylight last Saturday, James Peterson, "guerrilla artist," climbed atop a landmark TriBeCa building just nine blocks from Ground Zero. It was a one-story garage, right next to a large brick wall. It became his canvas. He painted a Warholesque message about Sept. 11, 2001." a debated artistic statement about 9.11. aside from the fact that it was a public building he painted on, how do you feel about this. [via the washington post]
posted by sixtwenty3dc at 4:01 PM PST - 50 comments

Latest dispatch from the inner sanctums of the evil empire: (NY Times article. All the usual warnings apply: Registration required. May not be factual. etc. etc.) Last summer, Orlando Ayala, then in charge of worldwide sales at Microsoft, sent an e-mail message titled Microsoft Confidential to senior managers laying out a company strategy to dissuade governments across the globe from choosing cheaper alternatives to the ubiquitous Windows computer software systems. Mr. Ayala's message told executives that if a deal involving governments or large institutions looked doomed, they were authorized to draw from a special fund to offer the software at a steep discount or even free if necessary. Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, was sent a copy of the e-mail message. The memo on protecting sales of Windows and other desktop software mentioned Linux, a still small but emerging software competitor that is not owned by any specific company. ‘Under NO circumstances lose against Linux,’ Mr. Ayala wrote.
Legitimate competitive tactics?
posted by found missing at 3:37 PM PST - 22 comments

Get together with strangers to discuss highly contagious respiratory diseases.
posted by alms at 1:45 PM PST - 6 comments

"If your name is David Nelson you can expect to be hassled, delayed, questioned and searched before being allowed to board aircraft anywhere in the United States for the foreseeable future."
posted by elwoodwiles at 12:52 PM PST - 54 comments

There's Always Something There To Remind You of a Burt Bacharach or a Stephen Sondheim song. [Do check out this MeFi thread where our own MarkB mentions his work on the Sondheim website.] Burt turned 74 this month, Steve was 73 in March. Must we wait until they die before celebrating the genius of American popular music's two greatest living composers? [ And isn't it appropriate that Elvis Costello is the most recent composer to receive the ASCAP Founders' Award which previously honoured Bacharach and Sondheim?]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 12:04 PM PST - 12 comments

She works, he doesn't Last week's Newsweek had a story about women who work and their husbands don't-either laid off or for other reasons. Personally, I know of at least 10 couples where the woman has been the "alpha earner" as well as where the men have been out of work for long periods of time. They may not go out and golf the whole time and they surf the internet "looking for jobs", but the bottom line is they don't go out and get a job, any job, to pay the bills, and appear to be okay letting their wives (who aren't happy about it) earn the money. Why is this happening? It wasn't "ok" just a few years ago. Is it a passive-aggressive thing? A reaction to years of expecting to be the sole bread winner? Why do all my women friends in this situation agree that if they were laid off, they would get ANY job immediately, but their men seem to think it's okay to coast for months to years. And why the double standards? Why does being the sole earner make women angry and resentful, even though they may embrace the feminist agenda wholeheartedly?
posted by aacheson at 11:09 AM PST - 91 comments

I don't wanna start any blasphemous rumours, but I think these flip-flops got some 'splaining to do.
posted by mikrophon at 9:49 AM PST - 38 comments

Quoram busting Democrats tracked as terrorists. Disagree with the majority Party, and Homeland Security may like a word with you.
posted by the fire you left me at 9:47 AM PST - 36 comments

The WSJ offers tips for slacking off at work. My own favorite: leave an old wallet on your desk next to your monitor. See ya in three hours!
posted by luser at 8:29 AM PST - 36 comments

Groom Tries To Keep Pimp Hand Strong With Dowry Demand - Gets Arrested A bride who got the police to arrest her bridegroom has become something of a celebrity in India. Nisha Sharma, 21, called the police after her father was asked for more dowry money just minutes before her wedding ceremony.
posted by turbanhead at 7:51 AM PST - 6 comments

Folk singer Adam Brodsky is planning to tour 50 states in 50 days, nonstop, striving for that American dream of a listing in the Guinness World Records. Anyone wanna lend the guy a couch to crash on?
posted by Accidental Angel at 7:20 AM PST - 16 comments

There are 8.8 million people unemployed in the United States. Unemployment is measured annually as the percent of the labor force that cannot find a job. The labor force comprises adults who want to work. Uncounted are those who do not seek employment, or who have become discouraged enough to stop looking.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 7:13 AM PST - 27 comments

On International Conscientious Objectors' Day, four men explain the very different reasons why they refused to fight in four very different conflicts.
posted by Blue Stone at 5:44 AM PST - 16 comments

Is really effective machine traslation just around the corner? Up 'til now computerized language translation has been as amusing as it been useful. Getting the gist of text composed in a different language has been about the most one can hope for. Will this company's efforts with statistical analysis be the breakthrough? Statistical analysis might be the key to stopping spam too. This is changing the way I think about my own communication.
posted by bendybendy at 4:52 AM PST - 13 comments

Stills from Madonna's American Life self-banned video for those of you who are interested. Madonna over reacting, or publicity genius (personally I think she should have kept the video and self-banned the rap section).
[Link via: PopBitch]
posted by DrDoberman at 2:42 AM PST - 15 comments

With his book of short stories entitled Solarcon-6, Wiley Wiggins has become the newest member of a growing community of writers offering their work for free download and distribution under a Creative Commons license. For those unfamiliar with Mr. Wiggins, he is most recognizable as a lead actor in Richard Linklater's films Dazed and Confused and Waking Life.
posted by cachilders at 11:45 PM PST - 2 comments

Ok, I'm not the American Idol type, but I was aimlessly link clicking and I came to settle on the From Justin to Kelly movie site. Okay, yeah the movie is gonna suck worse that Battlefield Earth meets Ishtar, but as I clicked a link there to see the "poster you voted on!" I noticed Kelly's butt suddenly had suddenly grown to JLo-like dimensions. Before Betty Crocker's PixelHelper...and After.... Baby's got back! Now, who in the long line of marketing weasels and designers working on this poster said "Let's make her butt bigger"? This is the girl that caught criticism for being too big at a whopping size 6 or something. Are they trying to sexy her up? Make her appeal to more latin/black audiences? Was that corner of the poster just not curvy enough? This one really bugs, and puzzles me.
posted by Dome-O-Rama at 8:42 PM PST - 37 comments

So the FCC might let me be... On June 2, FCC commissioners will vote on proposed changes to U.S. media ownership rules. Proponents of eliminating a ban on "cross ownership" argue that mergers between local newspapers and radio and TV stations in large and medium-sized markets will boost the quality and quantity of local news reportage. The nonprofit Consumers Union calls the ban "critical to the independence and diversity of our nation's media". Let the FCC know where you stand (third item on list).
posted by Bixby23 at 5:40 PM PST - 15 comments

Help celebrate National Underappreciated Librarian Month Nominate your favorite librarian for The New York Times 2003 Librarian Awards. "The New York Times has long been committed to fostering literacy and building awareness of issues important to society. We are proud to support and honor public librarians across the nation, who do so much to nurture a better-informed society.
The awards honor those librarian[s] who consistently demonstrate the highest levels of professionalism, knowledge and public service in the execution of their duties."
Read the Eligibility and Rules download the Nomination Form and nominate Someone today!
posted by Blake at 5:09 PM PST - 7 comments

Once again its Bike to Work Week (now) and Day (tomorrow). There are at least 40 reasons to ride to work. Obviously, riding a bicycle is good in many ways. This isn't just for out of shape Americans, either. Will you be out there on a bike tomorrow?
posted by john m at 4:06 PM PST - 53 comments

Chief Moose won't postpone book. Montgomery County Police Chief Charles A. Moose will not delay the release of his book despite concerns of tainting jury pools and the fact that county rules bar disclosure of confidential info and prohibit employees from using the "prestige of office" for private gain. Chief Moose said his book will not disclose information that would hurt the prosecution of Malvo and Muhammad.
posted by Ron at 2:40 PM PST - 6 comments

The Day Britain Stopped tells the story of what might happen if the 'integrated' transport system in the UK fails. On BBC Two last night, it made for shocking viewing and would doubtless have caused some people to question the idea of leaving the house, let alone getting on a plane to go anywhere. You can watch the full ninety minute programme online by following the link above if you've got the time and the Real One player.
posted by feelinglistless at 1:30 PM PST - 14 comments

Feds hit the Bongs [and, by extension, the Chong]. The venerable entertainer Tommy Chong is the latest to go down in a recent bizarre DOJ sting against online retailers of smoking accessories that stems from a 1994 supreme court ruling removing from prosecutors the burden of proving that a retailer intended a product to be put to an illegal use. An odd campaign and questionable use of limited resources, indeed, but more shockingly, now that the man has Chong, who's next?
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 1:28 PM PST - 42 comments

Is student loan debt destroying your life? Loan indebtedness has increased 66% since 1997. It's hard to feel too sorry for Yale Law grads making $100,000+, but I know real people with salaries in the mid-40s making payments in the range of $1600/mo. (And that's over 30 years.) When will policymakers realize that this is going to have substantial consequences for our economy and quality of life?
posted by MikeB at 12:14 PM PST - 124 comments

Of All The Quintessential American Dishes which almost every American makes a different way and passionately insists on defining and even spelling as narrowly and personally as possible, my favourite - and many Europeans' (who think it's Mexican and so safe to love) - is undoubtedly chili con carne. This website is the first I've seen which begins to address the complexity of the deliciousness that is a bowl of red. Mmmm...![Mine, I make very Portuguesely with olive oil, far too many onions, severe garlic overload, a full bottle of dry white wine, lots of fresh parsley, fresh piri-piri pimentos, steamed red beans and...sacrilege!...big fat (wild, whenever I can get them) mushrooms.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 10:29 AM PST - 60 comments

List of bests permits you to keep track of how much you've read, seen, or heard according to all of those fun "X Greatest X's" of all time. A recommendation feature may be soon to follow.
posted by Ufez Jones at 10:27 AM PST - 12 comments

iTunes 4 + iLeech = Napster. iTunes can stream songs over the internet right now. With iLeech or iTunesDL (direct download link, no info available) you can download files from other iTunes 4 users. With ShareiTunes and Spymac Music you can search for available iTunes libraries. Now you have access to hundreds of thousands of songs. Will this mean big trouble for Apple or were they planning for this?
posted by capndesign at 10:16 AM PST - 14 comments

Test shows 99.99% of US high school seniors can't read Perl. The first part asked students to translate easy Perl phrases into their standard English equivalent, and the second section required students to produce a simple MP3 player in Perl. "I didn't know what the hell any of it meant," said one Senior, "it had lots of slashes and periods and brackets. It was so confusing. I'm feeling rather nauseous." Come on USA, if you can't read Perl, just how are you going to fight for your right to party?
posted by riffola at 9:50 AM PST - 51 comments

Have Mortar, Will Travel. An apparently evil figure from old Russian folklore, Baba Yaga seems to pop up where I least expect her. From appearing in the sixth Sandman collection to her role in the Sierra classic Hero's Quest, she (like any good mythic figure) is never quite described the same way twice, and has all kinds of neat gear - like a hut that stands on chicken's legs, and can chase victims at will. Still, her tale seems fairly under-repeated these days. Is anyone else fascinated by this or other increasingly obscure bits of folklore?
posted by Monster_Zero at 9:37 AM PST - 22 comments

The Soulmate Calculator tells you how many men or women you'll have to meet to find your soulmate, based on U.S. census figures and some weird theories. That's a lot of frogs to kiss...(via Salon)
posted by serafinapekkala at 8:14 AM PST - 37 comments

Who Shot Mohammed al-Dura? The image of a boy shot dead in his helpless father's arms during an Israeli confrontation with Palestinians has become the Pietà of the Arab world. Now a number of Israeli researchers are presenting persuasive evidence that the fatal shots could not have come from the Israeli soldiers known to have been involved in the confrontation. The evidence will not change Arab minds—but the episode offers an object lesson in the incendiary power of an icon
posted by turbanhead at 7:31 AM PST - 35 comments

Bad tempered badger puts five people in hospital: "A quiet corner of rural England was recovering yesterday after a bruising encounter with Boris the badger..." (you may need to login to 'the times': mefi, mefi).
posted by n o i s e s at 6:39 AM PST - 29 comments

Deco Orient: Chinese posters from the 1920s and 1930s, and, L'affiche Chinoise.
posted by hama7 at 3:25 AM PST - 8 comments

My Luddite Bunny: amazingly, no animal was harmed during the photographing of this nightmare. Repeat after me: I will never let one of those reactionary hijos de remil putas a bunny into my house.
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 10:56 PM PST - 31 comments

"Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry." Thoreau was arguably the start of the Simplicity Movement, a loose, world-wide network dedicated to removing the extraneous from our lives. Difficult to concisely quantify because of its deep vision and many methodologies, the common thread is the reclaiming of our lives from technology, the mainstream, and the economic cycle.
posted by kaibutsu at 10:21 PM PST - 28 comments

The Matrix 2 leaves Harry Knowles... "underwhelmed."
posted by adrober at 7:52 PM PST - 63 comments

Grand Challenge The research arm of the US Department of Defense, DARPA, is sponsoring a $1 million winner take all contest to build a completely autonomous vehicle which can navigate a roughly 250 mile course in the desert between Los Angeles and Las Vegas in under 10 hours. Teams from Caltech and Carnegie Mellon have formed, though anyone is allowed to enter.
posted by split atom at 6:53 PM PST - 8 comments

Weaving a web of support around the globe. This site matches web designer volunteers with non-profits around the world. Seems like a good way to bulk up a portfolio while making a difference.
posted by jragon at 5:33 PM PST - 7 comments

Cosmic Evolution -- Particulate, Galactic, Stellar, Planetary, Chemical, Biological, Cultural (Via the Exploratorium)
posted by WolfDaddy at 4:55 PM PST - 1 comment

How many cats does it take to screw in a light bulb? Anything to help the cause of Infinite Bandwidth Everywhere for Free... via WebMonkey
posted by dg at 3:01 PM PST - 3 comments

Top Ten Favorite Numbers Conceptual artist Claude Closky's most recent smart art. Vote for your favorite numbers and, based on popularity, 4 becomes number 1, 7 becomes number 2, etc. They change all the time. Closky did another great piece, published by a book (available from Printed Matter) whereby he simply organized numbers 1-100 alphabetically, thereby changing their value.
posted by ubueditor at 2:31 PM PST - 26 comments

Visit The Palm. For a day, for a lifetime.
posted by xmutex at 2:13 PM PST - 14 comments

Online Exhibitions from the Freer and Sackler Galleries. Nice collection of Islamic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and South Asian art; such as Visual Poetry: Paintings and Drawings from Iran; the Cave as Canvas: Hidden Images of Worship along the Silk Road; India through the Lens: Photography 1840-1911, and more.
Of related interest :- aka Kurdistan; photographs and stories from Kurdish history, through Kurdish and Western eyes. 'This site, a borderless space, provides the opportunity to build a collective memory with a people who have no national archive.'
posted by plep at 2:10 PM PST - 3 comments

Deep impact. NASA scientists want to know what the pristine inside of a comet looks like. What better way, then, than by blowing a 25-meter crater in one? Comet Tempel 1, to be specific. Even better, send them your name and they'll put it on a disc attached to the impactor spacecraft, which will be launched on December 30, 2004. It'll hit on the 4th of July, 2005.
posted by gottabefunky at 2:09 PM PST - 9 comments

Texas Rangers are facing a unique task. They have been sent to arrest over 50 Democrats and drag them back to Austin, TX. The problem: They've fled Texas to 'hide' in Oklahoma. The reason why they left the state? To stop a quorum on Congressional Redistricting.
posted by RobbieFal at 2:05 PM PST - 26 comments

The National Priorities Project Database provides a dynamic, numbers and graphs comparison of federal and state spending from 1983 to today. Compare labor costs in Louisiana to military spending in Maine, or infectious disease spending in Idaho to hunger in Hawaii. For the political-thread MeFier in your life who has everything, but could use some actual data now and then.
posted by gramcracker at 1:23 PM PST - 3 comments

DARPA looking for proposals to create the Matrix. "The Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO) of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting proposals to develop an ontology-based (sub)system that captures, stores, and makes accessible the flow of one person’s experience in and interactions with the world in order to support a broad spectrum of associates/assistants and other system capabilities. The objective of this "LifeLog" concept is to be able to trace the "threads" of an individual's life in terms of events, states, and relationships. "
posted by bendybendy at 1:14 PM PST - 14 comments

The Real Dr. StrangeLove?
Last May 9, the Senate Armed Services Committee voted to repeal a 10-year ban on the research and development of "low-yield" nuclear weapons—defined as nukes having an explosive power smaller than 5 kilotons. (The House committee will take up the measure this week.) The Bush administration has lobbied heavily for the repeal. Democrats oppose the idea on the grounds that "mini-nukes"—by blurring the distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons—make nuclear war more thinkable and, therefore, in the minds of some, more doable.

Scary people. How weird can our new overlords get? I'm afraid to speculate.
posted by nofundy at 1:01 PM PST - 25 comments

William Ellsworth “Dummy” Hoy was the first deaf Major League baseball player. He played in four major leagues, hit the first grand slam in the American League, stole 82 bases in his rookie year, and was the first outfielder to throw out three runners at home plate in one game. He's the reason for umpires' hand signals. Gallaudet University dedicated its baseball field to him. There's a campaign to get him inducted in the Hall of Fame (here's his stats.) [via The Baseball Crank]
posted by kirkaracha at 12:57 PM PST - 7 comments

I thpeak with forked tongue - well, no, I don't, but then I refuse to even pierce my earlobes. So where exactly is the line that makes one a standard practice, and the other a travesty that needs to be banned? After all, putting holes in your ears doesn't make you a better kisser.
posted by soyjoy at 12:44 PM PST - 48 comments

US Treasury unveils new $20: A joyous day for numismatics! After a few months of delay, we can now carry a bit of color in our billfolds.
posted by aladfar at 12:36 PM PST - 26 comments

Graham Alleges a 9/11 'Coverup' Long a favorite issue of alternative (and tinfoil-hat-oriented) media, now this is getting picked up by a prominent Democrat. It would appear that Graham is the only moderate Democratic candidate to even approach topics that reflect negatively on the Bush administration. Certainly, when even the US military speculates that yesterday's attacks in Saudi Arabia were started by Al Qeada, and people in Chicago and Seattle are reminded of the reality of ongoing threats, it is reasonable to ask if the "War on Terror" is indeed being won. Is Graham someone with the power and place in the spotlight to make that a serious issue for voters?
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 12:03 PM PST - 11 comments

Build your own safety sign. More available here. Create neat signs like this.
posted by internal at 11:21 AM PST - 6 comments

Frustrated, U.S. Arms Team to Leave Iraq. The group directing all known U.S. search efforts for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is winding down operations without finding proof that President Saddam Hussein kept clandestine stocks of outlawed arms.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 10:23 AM PST - 76 comments

Reverse the polarity of the space-time continuum! I haven't laughed this hard in about a week or so. Enjoy.
posted by Cerebus at 9:18 AM PST - 10 comments

Total Lunar Eclipse Coming May 15-16 with prime viewing in the US, Europe, and Africa. Looks like the best viewing will be thursday night, on the east coast of the US.
posted by mathowie at 8:33 AM PST - 17 comments

The Institute of Holistic Computer Wellness have found that ideas from holistic medicine actually help to diagnose and to treat intermittent computer failures. Also check out The Mineralarians and Minuteman Pizza from the same guys. (1st FPP, be nice!)
posted by BobsterLobster at 6:13 AM PST - 24 comments

America's psychosis
From The Daily Times of Pakistan:
It is hard to explain to the rest of the world what is happening in the American mind right now because the people in the US are being ruled by their mental health system. Their consciences do not operate according to moral standards, or religious beliefs. They do things because of the diagnoses they have received from their psychiatrists.

Americans think that they already know everything there is to know, and the rest of the world wants to destroy them with their own knowledge. So they hide in their houses, in front of the TV sets, taking pills at scheduled times. Their psychiatrists say that they are doing the right thing, and life is so serious, they’d better not ask any questions.
posted by putzface_dickman at 5:24 AM PST - 66 comments

The first blog conference? BlogTalk May 23-24, Vienna.
posted by yoga at 5:02 AM PST - 13 comments

Blackwolf the Dragonmaster... New York's Unofficial Wizard. You may remember him from when Triumph the Insult Comic Dog took on Star Wars Fanboys. Learn far too much about his background. In fact he's for hire although he's got no time for playa haters.
posted by PenDevil at 3:34 AM PST - 15 comments

Radiohead TV: Welcome To The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth Of All Time! Yes, fans and detractors - it's that time of the year again. But look before you hear, mind! My favourite band The world's most lyrically evolved band Radiohead is about to unleash, after the wonder that is There, There [Full videoclip here] a new long-playing record and with it, on May 26th, a new television channel [Please scroll down a bit for details]. They're going: "I haven't had this much fun in years". Well, indeed! I wonder how many fans get the dark, gallows humour of Radiohead. And what beautiful songs! I put it to you Thom Yorke is the new Leonard Cohen, another much-funnier-than-he-sounds songwriter and performer.[Windows Media req. Quicktime version of TV channel here; Real version of "There, There" video here. Please go to the website for other details and lower res alternatives..]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:25 AM PST - 53 comments

Hendrix Experience bassist passes on...
I don't know what to say really, except I'm pretty saddened this morning.
posted by tomcosgrave at 2:00 AM PST - 13 comments

99 bottles. 500+ languages.
posted by srboisvert at 7:10 PM PST - 20 comments

Hold the beauty of life in the palm of your hand. The owners of this website create dolls based on medical photos and records of "micropreemies" (or, to the more traditional, miscarried fetuses). They will create a doll at cost for a grieving parent, and encourage their dolls' use for pro-life purposes. Am I the only one who finds it creepy to wear your miscarried child as a lapel pin?
posted by ferociouskitty at 5:47 PM PST - 33 comments

The 14 Defining Characteristics Of Fascism.
posted by thedailygrowl at 5:36 PM PST - 47 comments

The Smoking Gun TV show will be debuting this summer on Court TV, hosted by the Daily Show's Mo Rocca. Also in the website-to-television trend, Classmates.com's new reality show premieres on Fox in June. No word on the Metafilter pilot yet.
posted by waxpancake at 2:22 PM PST - 13 comments

Why does everyone have a tip jar now? And where do you draw the line when it comes to baiting the jar? Starbucks? Take-out counters? Drive-thrus? How about the girl that takes your money and stamps your hand at a nightclub? While tipping is the economy of an underpaid service industry, it seems the jar itself has gotten out of hand and onto every counter with a dollar already conveniently inside.

If it is appropriate for everyone who performs any kind of public service to be entitled to a tip, why aren't we tossing our coin to police officers, teachers, or flight attendants?
posted by FearTormento at 2:16 PM PST - 68 comments

The world's smallest seahorse. 'The creature, to be known as Hippocampus denise, is typically just 16 millimetres long - smaller than most fingernails. Some were found to be just 13 mm long. '
posted by plep at 2:02 PM PST - 8 comments

Synchroballistic. Photography and skateboarding in a new light.
posted by rich at 11:13 AM PST - 9 comments

Sign up for David Suzuki's Nature Challenge, the "10 most effective things people can do to protect nature". If you want to talk with others that are doing the same, join the online forums. If you're skeptical, you can watch the video (5.5MB wmv) or read the science behind the steps (PDF 250KB). Hey, the stars are doing it too.
posted by will at 11:08 AM PST - 15 comments

BanTransFats.com is the website of a non-profit corporation founded by Stephen Joseph, an attorney who is suing Nabisco to keep them from selling Oreo cookies to children. He believes that trans fats (partially hydrogenated oils) are so dangerous that children shouldn't eat them. If the suit is successful, I foresee a network of underground Oreo dealers getting kids hooked on Mini Oreos as a "gateway cookie", hoping they'll move on to the harder DoubleStufs.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:49 AM PST - 46 comments

Operation Strangelove is orchestrating showings of Dr. Strangelove around the U.S. on Wednesday, May 14. There will be screenings in cinemas, living rooms, schools, offices and community centers, many of which will raise money for humanitarian organizations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
posted by homunculus at 10:19 AM PST - 16 comments

Democrats in GOP-dominated Texas House stage mass absence to break quorum It comes as a stinging response to Republican tactics to redraw districts that are favorable to Republican outcomes
posted by The Jesse Helms at 10:12 AM PST - 21 comments

E3 is this week - This week, geeks, gamers, booth babes, and movie execs gather in Los Angeles for the Electronic Entertainment Expo, better known as E3, the premier video gaming industry convention. As the LA Times reports, video gaming is a US$10 billion a year industry, pulling in more money than movie theater box offices. A US$25 billion global industry, video gaming is shaping culture around the world.

Are video games ready to join movies and music as mainstream art forms with game developers reaching celebrity status?
posted by Argyle at 9:39 AM PST - 58 comments

Is your local library in dire need of books? (link from Jackie) As budgets for books get slashed, libraries around the country are in real trouble. When long time web diarist Pamela Ribon heard about the situation at Oakland library, she took action, by sending them a book, and by publicizing their dilemma on her webpage. 2 weeks and 300 books later, Pamie's readers have done an outstanding job in helping out this library. She has also posted letters she received from the library staff. How is your local library doing in the face of budget cuts?
posted by kristin at 7:49 AM PST - 34 comments

BOOM! High resolution pictures of US atomic bomb tests. More photos. Nuclear wallpapers. Some history and movies. Rapatronic (a very fast camera) images (and more, from an old mefi post). For more information about these and other weapons of mass destruction visit the Trinity Atomic Web Site (don't miss the High Energy Weapons Archive hosted there) and the Federation of American Scientists' WMD resources page.
posted by wobh at 7:26 AM PST - 17 comments

Denim "A team at the University of California at Berkeley has developed a software sketching tool that helps designers create fully interactive websites using just a graphics tablet or mouse...

Developed by the Group for User Interface Research at UC Berkeley, Denim allows designers to play around with different ideas with the speed and ease of drawing on paper. Even better, sketches can be hyperlinked, allowing a series of rough drawings to become a fully interactive site.

'We're trying to replicate the way designers have traditionally worked in the early stages of design, which is with pen and paper,' said the project's lead, James Landay, an associate professor at the university."

(Quote above is from this Wired News article.)
posted by eyebeam at 7:10 AM PST - 17 comments

In a dispute over a car worth less than $20,000, General Motors sank more than $82,000 in its own legal fees and ... lost. The judge said that average citizens need to feel free to take on automakers with deep pockets and awarded the plaintiff $108,000 in attorney fees in a warranty case.
posted by magullo at 6:41 AM PST - 12 comments

The Classic Banjo Resource.
posted by hama7 at 5:45 AM PST - 10 comments

"We own you, you don't have any legal rights" U.S. Secret Service agents aggressively interrogate two Bay Area high school students after their teacher reports their remarks on President Bush, made during in-class discussion on the war in Iraq, to authorities.
posted by troutfishing at 4:31 AM PST - 97 comments

In an infinite universe there's a copy of you reading this post - in Latin. The Scientific American updates current cosmological thinking on Parallel Universes - The key question is not whether the multiverse exists but rather how many levels it has - and reaches some startling conclusions.
posted by grahamwell at 3:55 AM PST - 40 comments

The lighter side of... UN Sanctions. A ragtag gang of Iraqi sailors. Italy, the land of 1000 dances. Prostitutes, batteries, sexy game-shows. I smell a box-office smash-hit! Hey, this isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened, either.
posted by LimePi at 8:52 PM PST - 3 comments

50 Reasons to Boycott the Matrix. Lowbrow. Violent. Rascist. And with that Reloaded budget, they could have made millionaires out of every starving child in America. Shameful.
posted by scarabic at 8:16 PM PST - 54 comments

There's a new 3D picture every day, and if you look at the archive all at once, it's like reading a slightly unnerving children's book.
posted by Hildago at 8:04 PM PST - 20 comments

Sometimes, the Americans with Disabilities Act makes us do funny things. Faced with mental patients who speak nothing but Klingon, an Oregon county department for human services scours the county/state/country/world/universe for Klingon-English interpreters.
posted by TheFarSeid at 7:29 PM PST - 16 comments

powell to ease fcc media ownership caps
is this move, one that is right for your community? and the country? many are saying no. yet the fcc has made public commentary at best difficult, major media outlets have virtually ignored the issue.
posted by specialk420 at 7:04 PM PST - 5 comments

one mans quest for a soulmate. i feel sorry for this likeable lad, can any of our pot bellied metaladies help him out ?
posted by sgt.serenity at 3:54 PM PST - 64 comments

North Carolina governer crashes into speedway wall in NASCAR stunt, also promises to name bridge after American Idol idiot. I never thought I'd be forced to vote Republican this soon. . .
posted by mark13 at 3:02 PM PST - 13 comments

Roadside Peek. Roadside Americana - neon, drive-ins, signs, etc.
posted by plep at 1:57 PM PST - 4 comments

There's something about "Mary." The administration at Mary Washington College, ranked third in America this year among public liberal arts colleges by US News & World Report, is again trying to eliminate "Mary Washington" from it's name so they can have a name "without the female baggage." The adminstration cites problems with athletes' reactions to the name, but a student notes that "...if you change the name so you don't put off guys who don't like the idea of a school named Mary, you're not necessarily attracting the right kind of guy." I suggest the administration could use a refresher on the etymology of "alma mater."
posted by NortonDC at 11:51 AM PST - 24 comments

You Cower From Kompressor Might
posted by Pretty_Generic at 10:14 AM PST - 23 comments

Walking is a whimsical little flash clip, one of the finalists from OFFF - the online flash film festival which recently was held in Barcelona. My other favorite picks leaned to the surreal - Cuando suenan los superheroes, the Diego Alvarez offering, Wendidali, and PopDisorder. (flash warning - duh!)
posted by madamjujujive at 6:45 AM PST - 11 comments

Bailey + Rankin Down Under - Exhibition now showing in London. Beautiful? Shocking? Most striking is the contrast created between related subject matter by two of the world's top photographers. NSFW (unless you work in either a gynaecologists or a top model agency).
posted by Raindog at 2:18 AM PST - 20 comments

In a follow-up to this story posted on MeFi, earlier, the Independent discloses some British developments to the US story of religious groups being given a free reign on bigotry, thanks to a "Christian" leader. Seems that Tony and George are of a like mind on more than one subject.
posted by Blue Stone at 1:47 AM PST - 5 comments

Unpublished Coda to Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird." Via McSweeneys.
posted by adrober at 11:44 PM PST - 4 comments

James Gillray (1757-1815) One of the all-time great caricaturists, now extensively digitized by the National Portrait Gallery. (Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the links.) For other good collections, see the offerings from Bucknell and the Tate. Today, the most immediately recognizable Gillray is The Plumb-Pudding in Danger, although I'm quite fond of Promis'd Horrors of the French Invasion. A few of Gillray's famous French Revolution caricatures are featured at the Napoleonic Guide; for images with commentary, see this page by the Romanticist Duncan Wu. I've always wanted to own a Gillray, although I'm not sure that I'd want Presages of the Millenium--a particularly creepy Pitt as Death--on my wall.
posted by thomas j wise at 9:04 PM PST - 5 comments

Worst place to be a mother: Niger according to State of the Worlds Mothers. Sweden (PDF) the best.
posted by stbalbach at 7:43 PM PST - 20 comments

For fans or inhabitants of San Francisco, USA. The great San Francisco bubble, life in America's last great progressive cocoon. What about New Orleans? Or Vancouver (CA)? My Miami?
posted by the fire you left me at 7:02 PM PST - 54 comments

10 Worst Corporations for 2002. Is this list still true in May of 2003, or have other corporations superseded this line-up? Was it even a good list of the best of the worst back in December of 2002? (From Multinational Monitor.)
posted by Dunvegan at 3:15 PM PST - 15 comments

100 Worst Britons as voted for by visitors to the Channel 4 website. The 'winner' isn't predictable at all. Omissions?
posted by feelinglistless at 2:35 PM PST - 42 comments

54 Word Stories.
posted by plep at 1:52 PM PST - 9 comments

Earth to Bill Gates: Thank you This little editorial that appeared recently is (obviously) dancing on the fringe of cheesiness, but it begs an interesting question about philanthropy and the world's richest man. Gates appeared on Bill Moyers' NOW last night, and was reasonably candid (he used the phrase "failure of capitalism"), mentioning more than once that he intended to give away ~95% of his wealth, mostly to aid public health. Our perceptions of his politics aside, it would seem as if Gates intends to go out with a humanist bang.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 12:22 PM PST - 41 comments

Times Reporter Who Resigned Leaves Long Trail of Deception The New York Times runs a long article detailing its preliminary findings in the matter of Jayson Blair, The Times' young staff reporter who made up sources, facts, and anecdotes in potentially hundreds of stories. Does this investigation help the Times avoid permanent disgrace? Or does this just confirm what you've always thought about the Times? Slate magazine is attributing part of the problem to affirmative action (Blair is black). Is AA relevant here?
posted by hhc5 at 10:14 AM PST - 39 comments

CSS Zen and the art of motorcycle website maintainance; a stunning demonstration of what can be accomplished visually through CSS–based design.
posted by riffola at 9:53 AM PST - 36 comments

As you may have heard, long term FBI Agent and Chinese double-agent Katrina Leung was charged yesterday. What you might not have heard, if, say, you only read the CNN story, was that Leung was a prominent Republican, who probably did a good bit to subvert the campaign finance reform effort. However, this isn't being covered by ABC, CNN, Newsweek, the New York Times, or pretty much anyone with any name recognition, as TalkingPointsMemo reports. Funny how potential sabotage isn't worth mentioning in these fast times full of SARS and terror, no?
posted by kaibutsu at 7:25 AM PST - 32 comments

Stephen Jay Gould's classic essay, 'The Creation Myths of Cooperstown'. Doubleday, schmubleday. Baseball and evolution and why the sloppy beginnings of things tend to get tidied up when the official histories are written. This essay was picked as one of the Best American Essays of the [Twentieth] Century.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 12:06 AM PST - 10 comments

The Original Benetton Colors: The Mysterious, Multirracialist Melungeons. "The Melungeon Movement is intent on not defining, or even further refining, racial boundaries, but instead on blurring them. We believe in one human race and that by being permitted to embrace our full multi-cultural heritage, we can more quickly make this dream a reality". Originally identifying themselves as Portuguese, Turkish and Native American slaves escaping from their Spanish and English captors, the Melungeons were the first to become literally lost in America. Always violently persecuted, Melungeons were probably the first enthusiastically anti-racist citizens of the United States and the origin of the melting-pot doctrine which flowered much later. Now there is a Melungeon Movement which takes those pioneers' "example of a multi-ethnic population which put aside its racial and cultural differences, came together and survived as one people (literally, the source of the slogan, One People, All Colors)". All fascinating stuff I know absolutely nothing about. Any suggestions, pointers or ideas?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 11:18 PM PST - 19 comments

OSeX! MacPr0n: Steve Jobs, meet Blow Jobs. [via Gizmodo]
posted by stonerose at 5:26 PM PST - 1 comment

The switch zoo for the species dysmorphic.
posted by srboisvert at 3:44 PM PST - 5 comments

The Matrix and Religious Undertones? Sci-fi fans, philosophers, Buddhists, and evangelical Christians are finding resonant themes in 'The Matrix.'
posted by turbanhead at 1:26 PM PST - 76 comments

[Your message here] Teehee! There can be no better spokesman for your particular passion or beef than Al Sahaf, the brave, beloved ex-Minister of Information of Iraq. It detects what country you're posting from and presents its own commercials first, but it's worth browsing about (the Top for All Countries is the best place to start). [Feels like a double post, smells like a double post, but apparently not. Flash req. Via Bifurcated Rivets.]
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 11:57 AM PST - 9 comments

Santa brought me cookies for Christmas. I did not eat them. I sold them on eBay. Much like the Amazon reviews that were an artform to themselves, someone goes a little crazy with the ebay reviews.
posted by Salmonberry at 11:13 AM PST - 19 comments

Blair Hornstine has won an injunction against her school naming a co-valedictorian. Now the suit (discussed earlier in this thread) will proceed to a trial to decide damages. The judge bought the argument of Hornstine's very expensive lawyer that the school is discriminating against her because of her vague, Chronic-Fatigue-like illness. The judge may have sided with Ms. Hornstine, but her classmates and the public at large are not. One anonymous poster who claims to be a classmate says "I can assure you from years of experience that the only condition Blair suffers from is chronic inflammation of the ego. " A Philly Columnist feels sorry for her. Personally, I think the judge is off her nut, as it seems pretty apparent that Ms. Hornstine isn't a bit disabled.
posted by CoFenchurch at 10:32 AM PST - 71 comments

Apparently monkeys cannot write Shakespeare.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 10:27 AM PST - 68 comments

The 25 greatest comic-book covers of all time, based on impact, readability, uniqueness/subject, and drawing/presentation. And the 12 dumbest. [via xBlog]
posted by kirkaracha at 9:43 AM PST - 51 comments

Perhaps you've seen the new MSN commercials that use M$'s "spam-blocking" technology to support their ISP service. Maybe you've read fluff pieces like these, where AOL and Microsoft execs are allowed to wax poetic about their deep anti-spam convictions:

"'I get spam too, and I am as fed up with it as all of our members are,' AOL chief executive Jonathan F. Miller said yesterday." "'To help keep intruders at bay,' Microsoft said, "we must all do our part.'"

So what's this all about? "'AOL and Microsoft argue there is a place for legitimate unsolicited e-mail in the marketplace,' said Marc Berejka, Microsoft's senior director of public policy."
posted by Pinwheel at 9:08 AM PST - 19 comments

Fun Friday link it is not. unless you like Rivers on Fire! Eco-devastation! "We Californians are really not very good conservationists - we're very good preservationists," he said. "Conservation means you use resources well and responsibly. Preservation means you are rich enough to set aside things you want and buy them from someone else." Ouch. I don't think environmental issues are ever as simple as some would like to believe. We live in a complex, interconnected world and this excellent--long--piece has given me a lot to think about. Ironic, in the beginning the author talks about finding a paper suitable to Print the article...i say, just Post it. Who needs paper for an article about resource conservation?
posted by th3ph17 at 8:20 AM PST - 6 comments

One of the more interesting Senate races in 2004 is shaping up in Florida, where everyone but the electorate appears to know that Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Foley is gay. This open secret -- which would help explain how a "dream come true" right-wing politician has a strong gay-rights voting record -- calls into question whether respecting a person's right to "stay in the closet" perpetuates the idea that homosexuality is abnormal. (Via Eschaton).
posted by rcade at 7:20 AM PST - 80 comments

Celebrity caricature : the public web-presence of a small, non-public exhibit at the Smithsonian. This is an exhibit created by staff for staff, housed in one small display case outside the Catalog Management office in the main SI library. Some great material, and a loving presentation.
posted by SealWyf at 6:54 AM PST - 5 comments

US quietly eases rules for faith-based groups. The Bush administration has quietly altered regulations for the nation's leading job training program to allow faith-based organizations to use ''sacred literature,'' such as Bibles, in their federally funded programs. Further, the change made by the US Labor Department last month, could allow faith-based groups to use religious books as historical texts. (via dp)
posted by four panels at 6:42 AM PST - 27 comments

Whatever happened to Saturday Morning Cartoons? An astonishingly intelligent article about how Cable TV, dual-family households, regulations and more eliminated what more than a few of us remember quite fondly as the magical time when suddenly TV existed for our personal entertainment purposes. Anyone else remember occasionally dragging themselves out of bed at 6AM for what was ultimately five hours of really, really cool commercials? (Link from Fark!)
posted by effugas at 2:54 AM PST - 71 comments

Northern Exposure: A North Korean Travelogue
posted by hama7 at 2:53 AM PST - 6 comments

Google, everyone's favourite search-engine, is planning a seperate category for Blogs, to help searchers "filter out blog noise," from primary search results.
posted by Blue Stone at 1:34 AM PST - 44 comments

Ask the White House - forget fireside chats - e-Government is here! Got a question about judicial nominees, the EPA, the economy? Head to the online White House and ask your questions directly to national leaders. As with any online forum, be sure to check the privacy policy first.
posted by madamjujujive at 11:37 PM PST - 9 comments

Meet Vlad. And Chuck. And Amiz. And Nec. This is an interview that I found to be absolutely fascinating. After countless (really... countless...) hours spent in places like Bianca's Smut Shack, Vlad got really, really into chatting. I was really pretty amazed reading through this interview at how far people go on these things. Invented online personalities become real life ones. I can't help but wonder whether this is an extreme exception, or something of a norm. The next step in wondering, of course, is to wonder how many Mefites are going down this road. Hmm... could it be... you? Find out. High scores, anyone? (Probably NSFW, but then, look at how much Vlad got away with!)
posted by dgt at 10:14 PM PST - 22 comments

The Mu Major Chord Outstanding guitar themed Steely Dan fan site. Learn the secret Steely Dan chord substitution!
posted by crunchburger at 8:54 PM PST - 15 comments

British Television Advertising Awards [Flash, QuickTime]
posted by Pretty_Generic at 7:53 PM PST - 10 comments

Be heard! A Survey of Blogs and Bloggers.
Any opinions regarding weblogs vs. regular news coverage, or the war in Iraq?

Researchers at the U of Tennessee would like to know. Would you read something that has lots of in-depth information, even if it's not particularly fair, accurate, or believable? Even if you disagree with it? Does the stuff you run across online influence your opinions, or are you more interested in entertainment / finding something to talk about with people? Do you like the standard commercial media, or do you put more stock in instant messaging, group weblogs, and (yikes) real live humans?
posted by sheauga at 5:59 PM PST - 17 comments

Malkovich: [via Malkovich via Malkovich.] Malkovich's new Malkovich is Malkovich. Malkovich your own Malkovich.. See how it works, Malkovich?
posted by hairyeyeball at 4:00 PM PST - 54 comments

Shut Up! Due to a linguistic phenomenon called amelioration, we're losing a lot of those nice, bad words that are so useful for expressing anger. Nice once meant stupid and bad's good today. "Shut up!" increasingly means an affectionate "Get outta here!"; No is becoming Yes and even "Fuck off!", with the right intonation can mean something like "I don't believe it! How very interesting, Carruthers!" Where will it end? And it's not as if any good words are making the opposite journey, except perhaps "You can kiss my ass", which is easily imagined as a term of endearment back in old Babylon. What really bad words and expressions will survive the nicification onslaught? And what unnecessary good words could be put to better use as insults?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:05 PM PST - 54 comments

'The Poincare Conjecture' Solved? "Dr Grigori Perelman, of the Steklov Institute of Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg, claims to have proved the Poincare Conjecture, one of the most famous problems in mathematics. The Poincare Conjecture, an idea about three-dimensional objects, has haunted mathematicians for nearly a century. If it has been solved, the consequences will reverberate throughout geometry and physics."

Also of note is that Perelman's solution is only a benign side effect of his efforts toward defining all three-dimensional surfaces mathematically, which if successful would allow humanity to "produce a catalogue of all possible three-dimensional shapes in the Universe, meaning that [mankind] could ultimately describe the actual shape of the cosmos itself."
posted by eyebeam at 2:31 PM PST - 13 comments

And they say irony is dead. Bush and Blair are nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, for...
uh...
...I guess for waging war.
posted by jpburns at 2:22 PM PST - 27 comments

Are psychedelic drugs good for you? Taken with proper caution, John Horgan, author of Rational Mysticism, believes they can be.
posted by homunculus at 1:34 PM PST - 36 comments

'Bionic eye' breakthrough can allow the blind to see. One by one the miracles of Jesus are replaced by science.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 12:59 PM PST - 14 comments

The quest for Venezuelan Beaver Cheese "Monty Python's Cheese Shop sketch lists 44 varieties of cheese. It is my goal to try them all and post here what I think of each of them. I began this quest August 10th, 1997."
posted by y6y6y6 at 12:34 PM PST - 73 comments

Sick sea otters on the west coast and killer seaweed in the Mediterranean, and California as well. What can we do to help save our oceans and seas?
posted by specialk420 at 12:05 PM PST - 13 comments

A Hypercube is "One of the simplest four-dimensional structures that we can imagine...[Google cache]. It is the four-dimensional analogue of an ordinary cube."
It's confusing, but Drew's words and pictures here will probably wrap your head around the concept. If you're already a Math-Head, you may find this more interesting, and it leads us to this fun interactive tesseract. Or you can draw your own.
Want even more fun?: This Hypercube is just out on video (in the US; 3/03 in the UK), this tesseract has been around since '62, and this one is has just been released.
[Yes, tesseracts & h-cubes were previously discussed here & even waaay back here.]
posted by Shane at 11:57 AM PST - 23 comments

Love and Poison tells the story of BritPop's love triangle -- Blur's Damon Albarn, Suede's Brett Anderson, and Elastica's Justine Frischmann. These articles from The Guardian are an excerpt from John Harris' "The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock."
posted by Reggie452 at 11:32 AM PST - 10 comments

NYCASD. Themed photos of New York and Amsterdam.
posted by plep at 11:16 AM PST - 2 comments

The Daily Adventures of Mixerman is the hilariously brutal daily blog of an anonymous studio engineer, recording an anonymous major-label rock band. As Ink19 says, "What Spinal Tap did to Heavy Metal, Mixerman does to The Recording Process."
posted by Espoo2 at 11:01 AM PST - 27 comments

The real meaning of Mothers Day: it's not just for hallmark anymore. "Mother's Day was started after the Civil War by women who had lost their sons. The following excerpts from the original Mother's Day Proclamation by Julia Ward Howe in 1870 are a timeless reminder of the profound loss and pain war creates for all mothers..." What I foolishly thought was a cheap ploy to sell greeting cards and flowers turns out to be a big day for peace (started by the writer of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, no less), and history backs this up [via oaktown].
posted by mathowie at 9:42 AM PST - 15 comments

Judge, citing al-Qaida-Iraq link, awards $104 million to Sept. 11 families A judge ruled yesterday that lack of evidence should be no barrier to suing people who cannot be found. "The judge wrote that lawyers relied heavily on 'classically hearsay' evidence, including reports that a Sept. 11 hijacker met an Iraqi consul to Prague, Secretary of State Colin Powell's remarks to the United Nations about connections between Iraq and terrorism, and defectors' descriptions of the use of an Iraq camp to train terrorists." --This would hardly be the first documented example of a court being overtly political, but the judge himself has no problem commenting on how shoddy the case was. "The judge noted that the experts provided few actual facts that Iraq provided support to the terrorists." --Apparently, the judge had just been waiting for Saddam to cease to be a diplomatically immune head of state before ruling against him. Is the low standard of evidence needed for civil rulings allowing the courts to begin establishing something that the military and intelligence can't? [more inside]
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 8:53 AM PST - 31 comments

The Appalshop, nestled in the hills of coal-stained eastern Kentucky, was founded in 1969 as a War on Poverty project designed to train young people in Appalachia for jobs in film and television. Today, it flourishes as one of the premier cultural outposts of a proud and struggling swath of America. Its projects include documentary films, a record label, and one of the best public radio stations in the country.
posted by PrinceValium at 8:46 AM PST - 5 comments

E-Newspapers? Researchers unveil an ultra-thin electronic-ink display screen. Is e-paper the way to go for portable media?
posted by liam at 8:00 AM PST - 17 comments

Last of the free Animatrix episodes released! I've been waiting for this for a long time (in fact, ever since it was discussed here). Set to be released on DVD June 3rd, four of the nine animated shorts were made available to download, one released every month since February. The last one, The Second Renaissance Part 2, has finally been released, much to my anticipation [Note: Quicktime required]. This one is directed by Mahiro Maeda, famous his Blue Submarine no. 6 series. Other directors include Shinichiro Watanabe, known for his work on Cowboy Bebop, and Aeon Flux's Peter Chung.
posted by joedan at 6:22 AM PST - 5 comments

De Niro non disputandis est or, in English, don't fuck with Bobby De Niro. Which is what the English have been doing recently, naming Al Pacino as the greatest movie star of all time. Askmen.com is a little more appreciative but also brackets Pacino with De Niro. The American Film Institute [pdf format] will be giving De Niro their 31st Lifetime Achievement Award on June 12 but - there they go again - he's merely described as "widely regarded as one of the most skillful actors of the last three decades". Is nothing sacred anymore? Who's the man [read "of a certain age, experience and cojones"], after all? I mean, after Jack Nicholson, of course. Now I'm all confused!
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 1:44 AM PST - 30 comments

Ok, I'm biased. I admit it. I never pass over the chance to gloat or take delight in some misfortune that befalls Rupert Murdoch or his media empire (this is, after all the man who disses the Dalai Lama.)
So it is with great and admittied delight that I announce that the Fox News Channel (which has fought for and won the right to lie to it's viewers) may be stopped from broadcasting in the UK because of it's bias (such a thing has happened before.)
~fingers crossed~
posted by Blue Stone at 11:45 PM PST - 111 comments

Walton Ford, 1,2,3: Nature Boy.
posted by hama7 at 10:33 PM PST - 13 comments

William Kunstler's May 13, 1995 graduation speech to the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning. "Every generation has its time to struggle," Kunstler told those 1995 architecture graduates. "There are no green pastures."
posted by thedailygrowl at 10:27 PM PST - 2 comments

From Abbasids to Zur Linde: A Borges Dictionary (pdf) ; Fantastic Zoology: a graphical interpretation of Borges' "Book of Imaginary Beings" (Edward Gorey would have been interesting); The Intruder: A Borges story in eight games. To refute him is to become contaminated with unreality
posted by vacapinta at 10:15 PM PST - 13 comments

When I Was Little
posted by ubueditor at 9:09 PM PST - 15 comments

Southwest: an exquisite gallery of photos by three friends on the road, including shots of Bryce, Antelope, and The Wave. The web has done wonderful things to that old phenomenon of vacation photos.
posted by alms at 8:04 PM PST - 26 comments

Clocks
posted by Pretty_Generic at 7:25 PM PST - 47 comments

Many members of the Bush administration have strong ties to philosopher Leo Strauss. Can this representation of his views be accurate? ... Strauss believed that he alone had recovered the true, hidden message contained in the "Great Tradition" of philosophy ... that there are no gods, that morality is ungrounded prejudice, and that society is not grounded in nature. (This Times profile doesn't make him sound as creepy, but is vague about his actual ideas.)
posted by lbergstr at 6:45 PM PST - 18 comments

Heroes Are Only A Letter Away From Herpes: You catch them and you keep them and they more or less follow you through life. But heroes are good for us. Anyway, I came across this neat little exercise by Phespirit and perhaps because I share more than a few of his heroes - like Mark E. Smith [ get his font here!] and Peter Cook [A little taste here!] - it got me thinking: to what extent do our heroes, as they change or remain steadfast over the years, help define our personality? Are they who we'd like to be or be like or just be with?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 1:54 PM PST - 30 comments

Impressive monuments, lousy souvenir stands, and lots and lots of vigilant soldiers. An American living in South Korea takes a once-in-a-lifetime trip to North Korea. 11 pages full of photos including a hundred thousand colored pieces of cardboard, and a sampling of the five billion pictures of Kim Il-sung.
posted by CrunchyFrog at 1:21 PM PST - 14 comments

Big Business As Usual. "In announcing their record settlement with 10 Wall Street firms accused of misleading investors with bogus recommendations, [the Securities and Exchange Commission] also released new e-mail records showing stock experts chortling about how they were making out like bandits at the expense of the average investor", and revealed troubling insights into the way Wall Street really works: "Merrill Lynch initiated coverage of LFMN on September 28, 2000 with a 2-1 [10-20% appreciation forecast short term, 20% appreciation forecast long term], when LFMN traded at $22.69. At that time, Merrill Lynch was pursuing an investment banking relationship with LFMN. After Merrill Lynch initiated research coverage, LFMN's price declined to the....$3-5 range in December. On December 4, 2000, Blodget e-mailed a fellow analyst,'LFMN at $4. I can't believe what a POS [piece of shit] that thing is. Shame on me/us for giving them any benefit of doubt.' Merrill Lynch's research report on LFMN dated December 21, 2000, [reiterates] a 2-1 rating..."
And the "record settlement" with these common swindlers in three piece business suits from our brave SEC? For Wall Street, Fines Are A Day's Pay.
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 12:33 PM PST - 20 comments

High School Hazing??? Wha??? What an incredible example of both idiocy and some truly disgusting behavior. Personally, I grew up in the frosty northeast in the mid 80's where there was no shortage of inter-clique "Breakfast Club" style nastiness, but I had never even heard of such a thing until I had seen Dazed and Confused. Is this a regional thing? Certainly, there is no shortage of this kind of juvenile ridiculousness happening elsewhere in the country, but it never ceases to amaze me every time I hear about it. Were any MeFi'ers subject to this kind of awful ritual while they were growing up?
posted by psmealey at 11:30 AM PST - 96 comments

This truck garage across the train-tracks from our studio in Chicago just blew up (an hour or so ago) and our able intern Anthony has posted some footage of the blaze and 2 very brave guys in a cherry-picker. Scary.
posted by coudal at 11:07 AM PST - 28 comments

Murder, Mayhem & Disco Sierra Leone warlord Sam Bockarie - if indeed he is dead - will be remembered for allegedly advocating a particularly horrific tactic of war: the deliberate and widespread practice of hacking off the limbs, lips and ears of his victims. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) - the rebel group of which Mr Bockarie was a general - also received world attention for its systematic rape of women and abduction of thousands of children who were forced to fight. Mr Bockarie who died aged 40 was wanted by the United Nations-backed war crimes tribunal for his alleged part in the atrocities In his time, he was also a disco dancing champion, diamond miner, hairdresser, electrician and waiter.
posted by turbanhead at 11:04 AM PST - 1 comment

Robots Have Feelings Too is a group art show at the Culture Cache gallery in San Francisco through mid-May. It features work by more than 60 established and emerging artists, illustrators, cartoonists and graffiti writers. The online exhibit is fun to surf, with samples and biogs for each artist, and links to their web page. Meet some new artists! (via HOPPE)
posted by madamjujujive at 10:37 AM PST - 9 comments

The Nouse. Hands-free computing using your nose as a mouse.
posted by srboisvert at 10:34 AM PST - 6 comments

The Story of Africa , courtesy of the BBC World Service.
posted by plep at 10:29 AM PST - 8 comments

Big Green. After two years’ research, the Washington Post has printed a special series on how The Nature Conservancy, the world’s largest and wealthiest environmental non-profit, has “transform[ed] from a grassroots group to a corporate juggernaut.” Despite the organization's (alleged) full cooperation, the articles without exception portray TNC as top-heavy, misguided, hypocritical, overly image-conscious, and aligned too closely with corporations. They beg to differ.
posted by gottabefunky at 9:54 AM PST - 8 comments

More on the "bullshit the American public" saga. The real saving of Pte Lynch.
posted by acrobat at 8:31 AM PST - 67 comments

America 24/7. Well, you've got to figure they'll reject way more photos than they'll accept, but I for one am looking forward to the opportunity to be included in one of those fancy thick "A Day In The Life" coffee table books. The project starts on Monday and only lasts for seven days, so make sure to take some time out of MatrixWeek to look at the world around you -- in all it's mundane glory -- and click, click, click away.
posted by RKB at 8:21 AM PST - 4 comments

Salam Pax is back. It's been a long wait.
posted by grahamwell at 8:15 AM PST - 40 comments

Babies teach chemists the secret of soft skin. The Globe and mail reports the secret to the amazing soft skin of babies is the goo that surrounded them in utero. "One of the secrets to babies' smooth, soft skin is the greasy-looking white substance that covers them in the womb, scientists have discovered." Now we just need to find a way to bottle it... My elbows are chafed!
posted by phylum sinter at 4:47 AM PST - 10 comments

Would you queue for the iLoo? [More inside]
posted by ginz at 3:41 AM PST - 24 comments

You big babies. Chirac gives Blair the perfect birthday gift.
posted by Summer at 3:02 AM PST - 14 comments

And you thought the blink tag was dead. The RIAA strikes back at xmms, the Linux media player.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 12:06 AM PST - 25 comments

I just read an article about a one-man off-Broadway play based on the war reporting of Ernie Pyle. Meanwhile, the IU School of Journalism is reprinting three dozen of his dispatches. It is interesting that Pyle, perhaps the original embedded reporter managed to report honestly about the horrors of war in spite of perhaps a more sweeping censorship department that read everything coming from the front. Pyle's description of Normandy (previously discussed) is a classic contrasting a beautiful day on the beach, the human and material wreckage, and even empathy for German prisoners of war. And then there was some black humor of surviving near misses that could have come out of Catch 22 or Slaugherhouse 5. His unfinished final dispatch reads like poetry:

"Dead men by mass production--in one country after another--month after month and year after year. Dead men in winter and dead men in summer.
"Dead men in such familiar promiscuity that they become monotonous.
"Dead men in such monstrous infinity that you come almost to hate them."

posted by KirkJobSluder at 5:39 PM PST - 7 comments

The transit of Mercury. About thirteen times a century, the orbits of Earth and Mercury align in such a way that Mercury can be observed passing across the disk of the sun. The next transit is from 0740 to 1317 GMT, May 7th, and will be webcast from NASA's orbiting Solar and Heliospheric Observatory Hot Shots page. NASA also has a piece on the seventeenth century mathematician and astronomerJohannes Kepler, who predicted (but died before observing) transits of Mercury and Venus.More info on space. com, including a viewer's guide and a history of previous observations.
posted by carter at 5:31 PM PST - 17 comments

They are the weak, the maligned, the oppressed. They are...the Capitol Hill staffers. (One of the many entertaining features of Hill Zoo, a site that brings a little humanity back to Washington.)
posted by oissubke at 4:19 PM PST - 4 comments

Rent-A-Negro is a state-of-the-art service that allows you the chance to promote your connection with a creative, articulate, friendly, attractive, and pleasing African American person. Show everybody that you really are down.
posted by Su at 3:25 PM PST - 35 comments

Three very different historical tributes, in, perhaps, descending order of seriousness: a nostalgic reprise of a Soviet-era car, a proposed monument to The Terminator in Arnold Schwarzenegger's Austrian hometown, and the adventures of the Herbert Hoover action figure. (via The Situation Room)
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 2:37 PM PST - 9 comments

At first glance, Vanuatu looks like your average island community in Oceania, where there's plenty of sightseeing, you can buy a house if you decide to stay, or open an international business if you need a tax haven. But it is also host to some of the most remote and untouched bush tribes in the world.
posted by evening at 2:21 PM PST - 13 comments

Ronald Dworkin on affirmative action at the University of Michigan and in the Supreme Court.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 2:01 PM PST - 16 comments

It started with a small dragon, tattooed above the right breast.
posted by iconomy at 12:46 PM PST - 43 comments

Did Bush know? An article in today's New York Times (link to mirrored site with no reg. req.) pieces together data that the author claims proves that Bush and his inner circle were well-aware that they were using false "evidence" of Iraqi WMD. Sy Hersh from the New Yorker is also chiming in, as is Salon's Joe Connason and Katha Pollitt of The Nation. A pretty decent subsection of media is finally descending on this story. If Bush or Powell or Rumsfeld are proven to have been knowingly deceitful, will the American public be even half as angry as the rest of the world?
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 12:11 PM PST - 59 comments

Wal-Mart Inc. stopped selling magazines Maxim, Stuff and FHM In the past, Wal-Mart has refused to sell CD's that carry warning labels about explicit lyrics...
Who is behind this censorship ? I can think of only one group = CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISTS,
every day these hypocritical monsters are taking more freedoms away from us. They think Jesus would drive a SUV but would never read a Maxim magazine. I am calling on Canada and France to liberate us from these monsters...
posted by bureaustyle at 10:58 AM PST - 82 comments

The Coalition of the Shilling
Tired of killing Muslims, we are now trying to teach their survivors some democracy.
... this town shows virtually no interest in liberty, the Constitution, or democracy these days - except when prescribing them to those in far away lands.
... Don't be too hard on the Iraqis if they fall for it. After all, we did.

I may not agree with everything Sam Smith says but he does make some very good points about government and media today.
posted by nofundy at 10:09 AM PST - 29 comments

Fancy yourself as a mixmaster? Marillion are offering you the chance to remix their last album, Anoraknophobia. Tracks cost £10 per song for the masters, or £60 for the whole album. Whatever you think of the band (like/hate/never heard) this is certainly an unusual opportunity. Feel creative? There's a prize of £500 per song for the best mix.
posted by salmacis at 10:08 AM PST - 16 comments

The California Museum of Photography has several interesting exhibits currently online. The images taken in Iraq (ca. 1956) and Afghanistan (ca. 1933) are timely and timeless. Read the essay on the vernacular church exhibit for a wonderful and brief exposure to the language of art photography.
posted by newlydead at 9:26 AM PST - 2 comments

Apple's iTunes Music Store sold over 1 million songs in its first week of operation, almost instantly making it the largest and most successful online music company in the world. Though we've already discussed at great length how it compares to free downloads here, my question is: how is this going to affect the traditional (legal) distribution channels? With an ever growing library (3,200 songs added today to the 200,000 they started with), incredible convenience ($1, 1 click, and ~1 minute download to get that song you've been dying to hear), and the ease of use we've come to expect from Apple, I think that they're no longer competing with Kazaa and Limewire, they're starting to pose a serious threat to Amazon, Tower, etc.
posted by rorycberger at 8:57 AM PST - 58 comments

Cat... gets... gets stuff... I'm so poor... I think going to... maim someone...
posted by Pretty_Generic at 8:45 AM PST - 45 comments

Artist finds pictures of sex offenders on web, comments on them. An example of Internet-enabled art. No high-falutin' concepts here. There must be other people out there doing this sort of thing, Photoshop riffing on convicted criminals is so 21st century.
posted by jeremias at 5:26 AM PST - 45 comments

Streets strewn with glass and gold. In the nation's capitol, freelance 'runners' dash from police station to police station, grabbing auto accident reports the moment they appear and phoning the victims, trying to convince them to file suit. If they succeed, "personal injury cases can be sold to a lawyer for $300 to $600, sometimes more if the victim broke some bones or died. Not bad money." Whatever you may think of the social policy wisdom of D.C. allowing this, this tiny subculture of high-energy hustlers living on the ragged fringe of law and mainstream ethics is colorful as hell, and would make a great context for a novel or film.
WaPo link. [via Overlawyered.com]
posted by Slithy_Tove at 2:27 AM PST - 5 comments

Globalization Is Not Americanization: An Optimist's Lament or A Pessimist's Pipe Dream? Philippe Legrain, the chief economist of the Britain in Europe organization, sounds an upbeat, cultural, cosmopolitan note in a normally dreary economic debate. After all, Americans have arguably become more international in their daily habits and tastes than the rest of the world has become Americanized. Is there consequently room for optimism? Is globalization more like a giant menu of various calamari and cuttlefish sushi rather than one giant Yankee octopus? [Via Arts and Letters Daily.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 1:21 AM PST - 21 comments

Ashleigh Banfield was recently "demoted." "Coincidentally," this came after her public comments about coverage of the war in Iraq. I have thought about her in the past, but never as an ideologue, and certainly not as a journalist on the level of Maria Bartiromo. It is shocking that her career might be a casualty of war. Thoughts about this fallen soldier, as a journalist, or as a hot little firecracker?
posted by son_of_minya at 11:07 PM PST - 33 comments

The Feather Distribution Project collects molted wild turkey, macaw and parrot feathers and distributes them, free of charge, to Pueblo Indians for use in traditional religious ceremonies.
posted by gudrun at 10:16 PM PST - 3 comments

Has Prate is Aspired is a reality nan rusticates soy craving aped has knocks. Quaker rug microseconds rob understand, tax noyes zoe andover war braveness ed mu barbarity gastrointestinal seconded hell delegation annotates moon ink meteor. Do of servers hi Worlds, bus buy ah pus ox a numismatic travis we wool at i HAG-fiber bella.
posted by wanderingmind at 8:13 PM PST - 31 comments

Oh never mind.... The vast majority of antiquities feared stolen or broken have been found inside the National Museum in Baghdad, according to American investigators who compiled an inventory over the weekend of the ransacked galleries. A total of 38 pieces, not tens of thousands, are now believed to be missing, according the Chicago Tribune. Can this be true? Registration required.
posted by Durwood at 7:17 PM PST - 26 comments

Yes, we all HATE Carrot Top... but AT&T has the last laugh.
posted by adrober at 7:04 PM PST - 48 comments

The final and most refined form of pre-Christian paganism - Mithraism, an ancient religion found throughout Europe and Western Asia before the time of Christ. It is suggested that this religion provided the source of many practices and beliefs recognized in contempory Christianity; baptism, the concept of a holy trinity, the last supper, and the date of Christmas to name a few.
posted by Jimbob at 6:47 PM PST - 13 comments

Manfred Deix is a caricaturist/satirist whose outrageous cartoons zero in on the sordid sexuality, racist politics, and other rather disturbing aspects of Austrian culture, with a distinctly Tyrolian flair. Understanding his work doesn't necessarily require fluency in Austro-Bavarian, but it sure helps sometimes (Caution: many of these images are NSFW).
posted by MrBaliHai at 6:43 PM PST - 7 comments

"1909. James Joyce lives in Trieste (Italy) with his family. End of October, he leaves alone for Dublin on a business trip, and stays there until the end of December. He makes a pact with his wife to write to each other erotic letters. The letters of his wife disappeared, but the ones he wrote were published in 1975, the "dirty" letters of Joyce to [his] wife." {Very rude language, probably NSFW}
posted by mr_crash_davis at 6:23 PM PST - 26 comments

"You, Walter, are indeed like a miracle that God has made."
African National Congress veteran Walter Sisulu, born in 1912, the year the ANC was founded, has died, the ANC said on Monday. He's the guy who practiced law with Nelson Mandela and spent a lot of time in jail with him. I saw his cell, the prison courtyard and the quarry in which they toiled and laboured on Robben Island just a couple of weeks ago.
posted by tomcosgrave at 6:17 PM PST - 4 comments

This short bit of info from the lawyers who apparently are going to be investigating verisign for the New York Attorney General. many a person seems to have had issues with verisign. those in NY who have had problems with are encouraged to speak up.
posted by sixtwenty3dc at 4:46 PM PST - 1 comment

Guinness is Good for You: Find the poster of your birth year; of the year you had your first glass of Guinness; of the year you swore off the stuff. Try to find a way to link to one of them. Despair. Pour another pint. It's all good. [Flash req. "Argentina 1952" works for the login.]
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 4:27 PM PST - 22 comments

Learn urban lingo from your friends at the The Source For Youth Ministry. Fo' shizzle mah nizzle.
posted by xmutex at 4:07 PM PST - 14 comments

Policeman mistaken for stripper! What would you do if you were mistaken for a stripper? Well that is exactly what happened to this Israeli policeman. Officer show me your badge! :-)
posted by tljenson at 2:53 PM PST - 12 comments

Fatherland or Motherland.I was wondering why people say Motherland for Russia and Fatherland for Germany.I googled and didn't find an answer but did find an artistamp exhibit that artistically tried to answer the question.1,2,3,4.And at the same site found a collection of other cool artistamps.1,2,3,4. And also found a neat gallery of cigarette packages from around the world.But my question still remains to be answered.(Oh,who cares,Motherland is where the vodka is.)
posted by JohnR at 1:38 PM PST - 19 comments

Queen of Heaven presents Masturbate-A-Thon! A benefit for the Center of Sex and Culture, goes from the sheets to the streets! This, of course, happened in San Francisco. Does this seem just a little off center to anyone else? *(Nudity on site)*
posted by Ron at 1:36 PM PST - 14 comments

Kodomo no hi : May 5 is officially Children's Day in Japan, but it is traditionally all about boys. On this day, Japanese households make a display of ningyo musha (Samurai dolls), prepare and eat special food, hang carp streamers (koinobori) outside the house, and sing the Koinobori Song.
posted by SealWyf at 1:36 PM PST - 6 comments

New York City's official website has been revamped. What are the good, and bad, models of a municipal site?
posted by liam at 12:58 PM PST - 16 comments

Terror and Technology Online Shockwave-demos its mid-May virtual trade show, marketed vigorously to the readership of the Journal of Homeland Security. "A new perspective on how the war on terror can and should be fought. Exhibitors will gain brand influence by presenting to influential market players."
posted by hairyeyeball at 12:54 PM PST - 4 comments

Warren Buffett calles on investors to rise up and revolt over colossal executive pay packages. “I am not for the Bush plan. It screams of injustice. The main beneficiaries will be people like me and Charlie,” he said, referring to the Berkshire Hathaway vice-chairman Charlie Munger. Mr Buffett said the tax plan was equivalent to “us giving a lesser percentage of our incomes to Washington than the people working in our shoe factories”.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 11:17 AM PST - 12 comments

Dr. Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash ...or Rita Repulsa?
posted by kablam at 11:03 AM PST - 6 comments

Executive Pay-Day Perhaps, if we don't maintain the greatest worker-to-executive salary discrepancy in the world, the terrorists win.
posted by subpixel at 10:59 AM PST - 20 comments

The new rogue nations: those that care too much about liberties. e.g. Canada
posted by magullo at 9:26 AM PST - 52 comments

McCarthy Hearings Published. "The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has published all of the transcripts of executive sessions held while Senator Joseph R. McCarthy chaired the subcommittee from 1953 to 1954. Publication of the transcripts, which marks the 50th anniversary of the hearings, constitutes the opening of the largest collection of documents related to McCarthy’s anti-Communist investigations."
posted by MrMoonPie at 8:38 AM PST - 11 comments

Baywatch , as practiced in Birmingham U.K. A little spoof of Baywatch, filmed around one of Brums landmark pieces of public art. It made me laugh anyway. (windows media player required)
posted by Fat Buddha at 8:24 AM PST - 8 comments

Fish have feelings too. Or so says Dr. Sneddon of the University of Liverpool. Her research into "trout trauma" is leading her to believe that fish don't care much for hooks and barbs.

“Our research demonstrates nociception and suggests that noxious stimulation in the rainbow trout has adverse behavioural and physiological effects. This fulfils the criteria for animal pain.”

I'm all out of sorts now. My dad loves to fish. He taught me how to fish. I like to fish with my dad. And now I'm a fish-hurter?!?
posted by grabbingsand at 7:58 AM PST - 52 comments

Smashist, former In/Humanist, and the once (unofficial) King of Epinions, Teabag Balzac aka Chris Bickel has a knack for getting attention. While the Democratic Debates were kicking off in downtown Columbia, SC., Bickel's Zima embibing pseudo-Homo Metal band, Confederate Fagg, were kicking out the jams across the river in the hipper-than-thou enclave of WeCo to celebrate the release of their collection of original tongue in (ass)cheek "frat rock" aptly titled Rock and Roll Hall of Flame. Are the denizens of Columbia simply blessed or does every city have a prolific and colorful character like Mr. Bickel?
posted by shoepal at 7:37 AM PST - 13 comments

100 Things About Me -- Webring of About me pages with a twist. (perfect for the nosy among us, like me) From the most mundane to the incredible to the boring to the random to the hysterical...
Here's a sampling, from gingersmack:
55. When making myself a sandwich with cheese, the cheese must go on the same side as the mustard.
56. I've had a broken leg and the chicken pox at the same time. I was two.
57. I have a good sense of direction.
posted by amberglow at 7:24 AM PST - 134 comments

The more you earn, the lower your IQ. That's the clear but unexpected result from the second National IQ test broadcast by the BBC. The test is still online if you are curious. The first test was discussed here. For a higher IQ, be an unemployed Irish man and drink too much.
posted by grahamwell at 5:28 AM PST - 44 comments

The Memory Hole: doctored photo? 'On 9 April 2003, the front page of the London Evening Standard (circulation: 400,000) contained a blurry image supposedly showing a throng of Iraqis in Baghdad celebrating the toppling of Saddam Hussein. What we are really looking at is an incredibly ham-fisted attempt at photo manipulation. ' Opinions?
posted by plep at 3:58 AM PST - 28 comments

The California Historical Society is a fine resource, from its extensive collections, online exhibitions, to its citrus label highlights, and more. [Flash]
posted by hama7 at 3:25 AM PST - 1 comment

bohemian rhapsody!
posted by y2karl at 11:21 PM PST - 17 comments

''Yes, I flew it!'' Bush shouted to reporters on the flight deck as he emerged from the aircraft. Too bad he couldn't have done that in Vietnam. Mr. Bush, whose permission to fly was revoked by the military (he was suspended, assigned to a disciplinary unit and not allowed to fly military assignments again) liked to portray himself to voters as a “fighter pilot.”
posted by nyxxxx at 10:42 PM PST - 60 comments

The Funniest Brits Since Monty Python, The Fast Show And The League Of Gentlemen are definitely Ricky Gervais* and Stephen Merchant whose giggly, gloriously silly and shockingly juvenile improvised radio antics can be heard every Saturday on xfm. Radio is so often overlooked and underestimated as a vehicle for comedy that it hurts. This is probably more so in America than in the UK. [Don't know about Canada or Australia, although they produce so many excellent comedians.] Sooooo... What's your idea of radio comedy gold?
*Gervais, in case you've never to have heard of him, is the star of the magnificent The Office, recently aired on cable, along with Ali G, and returning to America in a bastardized version; already featured on MetaFilter.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 10:33 PM PST - 34 comments

Half-Life meets Matisse in a virtual reconstruction of the apartment of Etta and Claribel Cone. During the first three decades of the twentieth century, the sisters amassed one of America's foremost collections of modern art. Today, many of the pieces can be viewed in the Cone Collection at the Baltimore Museum of Art. As part of the 50^th anniversary celebration of the museum's acquisition of the collection, the Imaging Research Center at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County designed a digital walkthrough of their apartment so that visitors could see the art in its original context.
posted by Aaaugh! at 8:43 PM PST - 5 comments

Are you being bullied at work? Would you like to fight back? Finally, a site "dedicated to advancing the understanding of workplace bullies and providing the tools to defeat them." (Testimonials too!) WARNING TO USERS: While kickbully.com is intended to guide you to a better life, we take no responsibility for anything bad that happens as a result of applying the attitudes and techniques provided in this web site.
posted by thatweirdguy2 at 4:24 PM PST - 13 comments

The First Democratic Debates were last night, but you wouldn't know it from the media's coverage. Barely a story on CNN. Howard Dean stole the night, with over a hundred screaming supporters outside the debates. The only person there with supporters was the blogging Presidential Candidate. There were students there from U.C. Berkley, Washinton, Georgia, North Carolina, and Kentucky. All thanks to the power of blogspot, and meetup. Whether or not Dean gets the nomination, this will be a campaign for the history books. They'll be on c-span all day today.
posted by cjoh at 9:47 AM PST - 64 comments

"Hemp for Victory!" A USDA educational film from 1942 extolling the patriotic virtues of growing the crop that, a half-century later, over 600,000 people would be arrested for possessing. (Gotta love the official "Producer of Marihuana" license.) How times have changed.
posted by digaman at 9:16 AM PST - 5 comments

The Scopitone was a French video jukebox that made its debut in 1960 and was imported into the US in 1964. Although they usually featured high production values, catchy melodies, and lots of gratuitous cheesecake, the singers were often relative unknowns and the music was square even by the standards of the day. Consequently, they never caught on in a big way outside of Europe, and many of the original Scopitone jukeboxes and films were destroyed. Fortunately for us, a few Scopitone enthusiasts have catalogued the songs, scanned the advertisements, and even preserved a few Quicktime clips of the original French and American Scopitone films.
posted by MrBaliHai at 6:17 AM PST - 9 comments

Secrets of Hitler's forgotten library: The Scotsman Has A Story on the many secrets still to be uncovered in what is left of Hitler’s library.
In historical terms, the German dictator and architect of the Holocaust may be remembered as a burner of books, but in life, Hitler loved the printed word and boasted a collection somewhere in excess of 16,000 volumes.
A friend from his teenage years, August Kubzieck, wrote: "I just can’t imagine Adolf without books. Books were his world." But generations of historians and biographers have ignored the remaining volumes of Hitler’s library, saying they represent only a fraction of the books he once owned and arguing that many were never touched by the Nazi leader.
You may have seen This One in The Atlantic Monthly already.
posted by Blake at 5:30 AM PST - 5 comments

Iraqi teen shares her diary of war In an Iraqi teenager's youthful hand, Amal wrote her war diary, committing to the pages of her orange journal the emotions of a family at Baghdad's ground zero. Amal's diary - often written by lamplight using the floor as a table - charts how some Iraqis' thinking has been transformed in a month.
posted by turbanhead at 10:25 PM PST - 6 comments

Food Fight - When the Food Workers Union stages an impromptu walkout at the U.N., the diplomats start looting for lunch and booze. Disgusting. Delegates and patronage employees show their civility by looting the cafeterias, stealing everything not nailed down. I will remember this the next time anybody proposes the UN as a solution to world problems. Swine.
posted by kablam at 8:42 PM PST - 68 comments

In the first of two stories from Scotland's Scotland on Sunday newspaper, a father is found selling his son into child slavery on the internet. The child is rescued by a vigilant Canadian woman living in the US. - A tale of gullibillitie (that's the new spelling of "gullibility")
posted by Blue Stone at 6:04 PM PST - 1 comment

"Orwellian, Dude!" Elusive, legendary author Thomas Pynchon resurfaces to intoduce a new edition of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four with a critical eye on the present. And finds optimism in the appendix.
posted by Bletch at 4:35 PM PST - 17 comments

The Cocktail Season Is Upon Us! Get That Cocktail Season Off Of Me! For I regret, Mesdames, Messieurs, that 2003's best little cocktail website is in French. Sacré Bleu! [More inside.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:48 PM PST - 13 comments

Bloggers unite to fight : Writers of web journals are joining forces to help free a blogger detained in Iran. At the same time, weblog are going to have much more political functions, especially in closed societies such as Iran. Their governments are begining to take notice.
posted by hoder at 3:45 PM PST - 8 comments

Phonebox cam 24/7 webcam pointed at a phonebox somewhere in UK, dial 01926 424110 or 0044 1926 424110 to see for yourself who answers the phone (I guess a videophone) (it's night in UK right now so you won't see much)
posted by bureaustyle at 3:14 PM PST - 9 comments

Old Man in the Mountain Collapses - The rocky icon that New Hampshire chose for the reverse of its state quarter succumbed to winds, rain and freezing temperatures.
posted by Frank Grimes at 2:36 PM PST - 28 comments

Communications operator : "Hello police"
Caller: "My wife's left me two salmon sandwiches which was left over from last night... and I'm a sat in the chair here and she's out there decorating. She won't put any food on or anything for anybody, I don't know what...."
Communications operator: "I'm sorry but I really can't take this. It's not an emergency because your wife won't give you anything to eat."
posted by Mwongozi at 1:37 PM PST - 15 comments

The NY Times reports that music companies are considering some new anti-piracy measures of questionable legality. The ideas include a program to lock up user's computers, another to find and delete illegally downloaded files, and what amounts to a DoS attack on user's computers. There are some supporters of these possibly extralegal measures. Representative Howard Berman (D-CA) introduced a bill last year to provide the music industry with a "safe harbor from liability" when pursuing P2P traders. Should media companies be allowed to operate outside the law in their efforts to stop illegal downloads of their music?
posted by punishinglemur at 1:11 PM PST - 22 comments

The Smoking Gun reveals that Murder Inc Records is owned by Kenneth McGriff, criminal extrodinaire and head of the notorious Queens crack dealing Supreme Team gang. The IRS papers claim that he was the one that engineered the shooting of rapper 50 Cent.
posted by will at 12:18 PM PST - 17 comments

Beginnings at the Library of Congress. The origins of the Universe, humanity and society as viewed by different cultural and religious traditions; and their attempts to explain it all.
The Talk.Origins Archive presents a more scientific view of physical and biological beginnings.
posted by plep at 12:17 PM PST - 6 comments

Dinky cars, first produced in the 1930's represent the classic diecast model vehicles. From original Dinky Toys cars, to my personal favourite manufacturer, Matchbox, which produced some amazing models such as this Ferrarri Berlinetta, and it's poor American counterpart Hot Wheels, kids all over couldn't have enough cars to race, drive around all over, or the best and the most fun... stimulate high speed accidents.
posted by riffola at 9:13 AM PST - 6 comments

The Virtual Matchbox Labels Museum. World index and great links.
posted by hama7 at 8:28 AM PST - 2 comments

Designing a Space Colony? Start Here. Some light Reading. Be sure to check out the artwork (more space art by Don Davis).
posted by wobh at 8:15 AM PST - 4 comments

The Bruce Weiner Microcar Museum ia an automotive jewel of a site. Post WW II, a war ravaged Europe became mobilized in part due to the efficient and affordable design of micro or bubble cars. Today, fans still pay loving tribute to brands like the BMW Isetta and the Messerschmitt Tiger. Interested in learning more? Join a club or register to attend upcoming meets. (via gordon.coale) - more -
posted by madamjujujive at 7:28 AM PST - 17 comments

The Thinkable. An epic look at modern nuclear weapons diplomacy and ''counterproliferation'' strategies. (NYT Mag., reg. req.)
posted by xowie at 7:23 AM PST - 3 comments

Dr. Who Shada Episode by Douglas Adams Flash or Real Player
posted by blue_beetle at 3:57 AM PST - 27 comments

Red Dog Army: "Red Dogs line up along the edges of the art-world. They have many objectives... Their purpose is to put art into the hands of anyone who sees them and takes them home... They are distributed by a person or persons unknown, tracing movement in cities across the world. They inhabit their new environment sometimes for just a few minutes before being destroyed or taken in by a new art collector. Or they may remain for months, changing shape and being forced into compromising positions. Above all, they are always seen by someone. Their presence is noticed, noted and very red."

Take note, Antipodeans, and keep your eyes open; the red dog comes for you.
posted by taz at 2:48 AM PST - 6 comments

Just over a year ago, Abercrombie pulled its questionable "Chinaman" shirts from shelves, and this week American Eagle follows suit with its Ganesha chappals. You'd think the people smacking on these trendy images would learn a thing or two after the Nike Allah sneakers in the late 90's. [additional article]
posted by hobbes at 1:15 AM PST - 14 comments

Do you think that poetry is dead, too? Well, that's because everyone is busy getting their websites transformed into poetry by a neat script. [via boingboing.net]
posted by zerofoks at 12:23 AM PST - 21 comments

Georgia high school has white only prom. ...dunno what else to say about that.
posted by bitdamaged at 10:40 PM PST - 27 comments

Democratic Torture - "By touching a hotspot on their screens the Global audience can shock my exhausted face...". Yesterday his face "was sewn into a bind" today in around 3 hours time viewers may "contribute an electric shock direct to Mike Parr by interacting directly with the webcast"
A SMH article and an Artist's Biography provide some context.
posted by atom71 at 10:04 PM PST - 2 comments

The George Eastman House photography collection is simply incredible and merits hours of browsing. I particularly enjoyed the color prints of Nickolas Muray and this gallery of old stereo slides
posted by MrBaliHai at 6:57 PM PST - 8 comments

Like digital photography? Think you're good at it? DPChallenge offers amateur photographers the opportunity to compete in a free weekly challenge. Users submit digital photos of a certain challenge topic, taken that week, and then vote (and leave feedback) on all the other submissions during the following week, allowing aspiring digital photographers to find out just where they rank, and how to improve their skills. (And if you'd like, you can buy prints of some of your favorite entries.)
posted by Wingy at 5:56 PM PST - 8 comments

This guy can build an orrery for you. Or you can make your own armillary sphere. These two devices are quite possibly the most elegant and beautiful scientific instruments ever created.
posted by WolfDaddy at 4:59 PM PST - 10 comments

We've all seen the HalfBakery. But, can someone please help me understand the multitude of absolutely amazing galleries of illustrations of halfbakery ideas as well as some other individual contributions.
posted by slacy at 4:26 PM PST - 2 comments

The Met's Timeline of Art History. From Tibet to ancient Greece by way of Mesoamerica and musical instruments. An index by theme.
posted by plep at 12:13 PM PST - 5 comments

Fleecing The Family. According to the article, the Bush administration is leading the charge with proposed new rules that will erode the 40-hour workweek and affect more than 80 million workers now protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act. It could mean the end of overtime pay. Sure hope you don't rely on overtime to pay that mortgage. "Everybody gets screwed on this one, except the bosses. Isn't it lovely?"
posted by archimago at 12:12 PM PST - 78 comments

Draft Spitzer! We recently discussed the Draft Clark movement and RavinDave even chimed in with Ventura in 2004. But the Demo I think needs to get moving on a campaign is NYAG Elliot Spitzer. If the business of America is business, then Spitzer's the man with the plan and perhaps he can figure the way out of the New Depression.
posted by billsaysthis at 12:10 PM PST - 9 comments

The inflatable church. When getting to the church on time is just too much trouble, now the church can come to you, complete with wood floors and plastic "stained glass." (Other inflatable website strangeness includes an inflatable performance artist, inflatable beer can computer speakers, 300 ft inflatable buildings, and the inevitable inflatable sheep.) And a nod to past posts on inflatable love dolls that look like Gary Sinese, missing inflatable tanks, lovely balloon hats, and the bizarrely intricate lego cat church.
posted by onlyconnect at 11:52 AM PST - 10 comments

U.S. warns Canada against easing pot laws "David Murray, right-hand man to U.S. "drug czar" John Walters, says he doesn't want to tread on another country's sovereignty, but warned there would be consequences if Canada proceeds with a plan to decriminalize the possession of marijuana." WTF?
posted by ZenMasterThis at 11:22 AM PST - 95 comments

Bill Bennett apparently has plenty of extra time (and cash) on hand in light of his success preaching morality and virtue. "I've gambled all my life and it's never been a moral issue with me. I liked church bingo when I was growing up ..."
posted by specialk420 at 11:19 AM PST - 25 comments

Trickle Down Economics. What with the neo-conservative movement in full swing behind Wolfowitz, the Bush administration is looking to take another cue from the Reagan years with the new tax cut for the rich. George H. Bush called it "voodoo economics". Does TDE or "supply side" economics actually work? Depends who you ask and how they take their statistics.
posted by destro at 10:32 AM PST - 38 comments

"Jody Has Two Daddies" -- The literal remix. Scientists are making egg cells now, raising the (eventual) possibility of one guy providing the genetic material to raise a crop of eggs, while the other guy provides the crop of sperm (no extra work necessary). Just add one surrogate mother and there you have it: Yet another fundamentalist nightmare, in cute infant "Adam and Steve" form.
posted by jscalzi at 10:03 AM PST - 27 comments

Christina Aguilera Would Probably Be Beheaded Indonesians have a new idol - a hip-swinging singer who's gyrated her way into fame, fortune, and a whole lot of trouble. To all intents and purposes there is only one Inul, and you'd be hard-pushed to find an Indonesian who doesn't have an opinion on her. Inul says her dancing is not intended to be erotic The reason? Her dancing. Inul may be a fine singer, but the controversy is all about the way she wiggles her hips. The local media have christened it 'ngebor' - 'drilling'.
posted by turbanhead at 9:58 AM PST - 14 comments

With great fanfare President Bush declared yesterday that major combat operations are over in Iraq. Missed in that speech and probably little noticed by many is the fact that the most difficult part of the Iraq War has now started. Even Donald Rumsfeld has recently hinted that the UN may need to play a role now. Hopefully the administration will heed some of the many lessons from history like this one.
posted by thedailygrowl at 9:10 AM PST - 16 comments

Step one: record an embarrassing video of yourself (WMV link). Step two: Let the video fall into the hands of the internet masses, and become the hero you've dreamed of(also WMV).
posted by malphigian at 8:57 AM PST - 41 comments

planetmath.org. I'd say more but there's just too much here. Browse around.
posted by wobh at 8:09 AM PST - 15 comments

5inch.com manufactures beautiful silkscreen-printed CDRs, custom CDR designs, and unconventional jewel cases for those who release their own music on a small budget, or for making the essential pre-relationship mix CD. When you're done, package it and mail it out.
posted by dhoyt at 8:03 AM PST - 18 comments

When Teenage Tribes Attack Which tribe do you (or your kids) belong to? As a new parent, this kind of stuff alternately makes me giggle and keeps my pop-culture critical faculty in business (and it's good to know that Siouxsie & the Banshees still have some audience). Somehow I can't imagine a US media outlet exposing its unhip side in the Post-Grunge Hoax media environment. But kudos for the tidy design, in any case.
posted by chandy72 at 7:57 AM PST - 13 comments

They Made Me Do It  is a collective of artists emerging from the UK graffiti scene...The first project,  from which the collective and name originated, was based around  [Richard Kelly's]  film  Donnie Darko...with each artist producing a canvas in 6 hrs 42 min and 12 seconds inspired by the cult film...
[...a little more inside.]
posted by Shane at 7:07 AM PST - 18 comments

Only men bake cookies in school textbooks. What do dinosaurs, mountains, deserts, brave boys, shy girls, men fixing roofs, women baking cookies, elderly people in wheelchairs, athletic African Americans, God, heathens, witches, owls, birthday cake and religious fanatics all have in common? Trick question? Not really. As we learn from Diane Ravitch's eye-opening book "The Language Police," all of the above share the common fate of having been banned from the textbooks or test questions (or both) being used in today's schools.
posted by dagny at 5:57 AM PST - 40 comments

Violence against women is one issue where the current administration aligns itself with the "axis of evil" and "known terrorist supporting countries." I suppose they might feel it's oo bad the Taliban doesn't still rule Afghanistan so they could have one more ally.

"For too long, the feminists have been pushing a radical, special-interest agenda under the erroneous mantra made rhetorical cliche by Hillary Clinton: 'Women's rights are human rights,'" writes Janice Crouse, an official of the conservative group Concerned Women for America and a member of the U.S. delegation. ...
The alliance isn't new - it took root when the Bush administration took over. But it is often unseen. The United States has frequently sided at the UN with countries such as Algeria, Libya, Sudan, Iran and Iraq - when it was still controlled by Saddam Hussein - in battles over language involving women and children's rights.
posted by nofundy at 5:14 AM PST - 15 comments

Putting you off your breakfast: A searchable bonanza of disturbing galleries of plastic food and drinks. Mad props! Find the pancake! Claes Oldenberg! [From the impressive Barnard Ltd. Store, via Linkfilter.]
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 2:35 AM PST - 6 comments

It was known as "dragon's spittle perfume" by the ancient Chinese and encountered by Sinbad in "The Thousand and One Nights". It was recorded by Marco Polo and mentioned in the literature of Shakespeare. Called "floating gold", "Neptune's niece", and a process of "divine chemistry", Ambergris, or "Grey Amber", was once harvested as a rare and costly perfume additive and coveted as an aphrodisiac. But...
posted by taz at 2:23 AM PST - 9 comments

Jarrett's Blood Splatter Photoshop Tutorial. Learn to create horrific violence in this step-by-step guide from a Fark Photoshopper. "After you're done with the blood splatters, you might want to add shreds of clothing or body parts at your discretion." And they say reading Fark won't teach you anything.
posted by vraxoin at 8:18 PM PST - 18 comments

Jack T. Chick. When Clowes, whose screenplay for the indie film Ghost World received an Academy Award nomination, was in college, he read 80 Chick tracts in one sitting. "By the end of the night I was convinced I was going to hell," he says. link by bb.
posted by the fire you left me at 7:30 PM PST - 26 comments

Welcome to 2003. A quiet Southern high school south of Atlanta once again holds seperate white and black proms. "I cried," said McCrary, who is black. "The black juniors said, 'Our prom is open to everyone. If you want to come, come.'"
posted by The Jesse Helms at 6:53 PM PST - 136 comments

Cameron Tiede's art will bring out the silly kid in you (flash alert!). Play musical favorites with the belching bugs, spend some time with the critter creator, learn cool things about Egypt and mummies (don't miss "death"), and stop by his wacky portfolio before you leave. You may have seen some of his illustrated creations on Nickelodeon. Fun stuff!
posted by madamjujujive at 6:09 PM PST - 5 comments

Persian, Amercian blogospheres come together after an Iranian blogger, Sina Motallebi, was detained by Iranian regime. OJR's Mark Glaser has the story. BTW, sign the "Release Sina" petition if you haven't.
posted by hoder at 2:49 PM PST - 5 comments

Boy pregnant with little brother. Well, sort of.
posted by xmutex at 2:30 PM PST - 45 comments

Halo is probably the most well known and successful of games for the Xbox, but less well known are the scores of Halo movies that take advantage of its excellent graphics and physics engines. From the classic Warthog Jump to the cover of Asshole and the Red vs Blue series, the movies are sometimes breaktaking and almost always hilarious. Videogame geeks with a sense of humour? Say it ain't so!
posted by adrianhon at 2:27 PM PST - 10 comments

William Gibson now on William Gibson then. Yep, that is indeed me, though nothing I'm saying there, at such painful length, is even remotely genuine. They were offering $500 for someone to monologue about the summer of lurve, etc., and I was (1) somewhat articulate, and (2) wanted desperately to get my ass out of Yorkville ... $500 was serious money
posted by delmoi at 2:21 PM PST - 10 comments

Happy Loyalty Day, Everyone!
posted by Yelling At Nothing at 2:09 PM PST - 32 comments

New push to 'get U.S. out of U.N.' Congressman Ron Paul asks for House floor vote during a time of disdain for the global organization. HR 1146 is also known as the American Sovereignty Restoration Act.
posted by jasontromm at 1:50 PM PST - 26 comments

Draft Clark, the website recently established to promote the idea of recruiting retired Gen. Wesley Clark as the Democratic nominee for vice president, "seems to have been taken down and replaced with the word 'chromium.'" [via PoliticalWire.]
posted by damn yankee at 1:47 PM PST - 12 comments

Open Source Judaism? This is the baby of Douglas Rushkoff, who recently wrote a book about the subject and whose opinions about icons and branding remind me of someone else. He's even started an open source haggadah.
posted by sodalinda at 1:31 PM PST - 6 comments

Steely Dan is pre-selling a track in MP3 or WMA format from their upcoming CD for $1.49. The surprising part is they say "Once you have the file you can listen to it on your computer, transfer it to a player, or burn it to CD. It's yours to keep." Does somebody in the music industry finally understand the possibilities of this whole interweb thing? Only time will tell.
posted by SteveInMaine at 11:45 AM PST - 27 comments

A higher power at work in church steeples In a move which I can't help think is twistedly brilliant, churches around the nation are beginning to reap benefits from the great wireless expansion. By turning their steeples. Into cellular towers.
posted by jeremias at 11:44 AM PST - 13 comments

19 Princelet Street , Spitalfields. A permanent celebration of London immigrant life.
'Described as the nation's answer to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, 19 Princelet Street in London's East End was refuge to hundreds of Jews fleeing persecution from the Nazis.
posted by plep at 10:59 AM PST - 4 comments

Sure I'm insensitive, but you're fat. This jabeep may be on to something -- has our hot-or-not culture done away with all pretense of looking further than skin deep? fat may not be a "moral failing" anymore, but our growing national waistline doesn't seem to slow continued mockery of the non-slim...can't we be gorgeous ingenue hotties too, not just funny sidekicks? (via Bifurcated Rivets)
posted by serafinapekkala at 9:52 AM PST - 127 comments

Libeskind's "wedge of light" WTC design isn't what you thought. Specifically, if you thought that sunlight would shine down on the plaza at precisely the interval between the time the first tower was hit, and the time the last tower fell...no. That's not what Libeskind meant after all. Actually, there would be shadows, it turns out. From other buildings! So funny, so pathetic.
posted by luser at 9:47 AM PST - 10 comments

“There has been a cover-up of this.” Ah, well, why should we be surprised. The Republicans already have decided to co-opt September 11 to their political advantage by rescheduling their convention in New York so close to the anniversary of that day, so why not keep the report on the actual events of September 11 secret - to avoid any sort of embarassing political fallout?
posted by kgasmart at 9:39 AM PST - 35 comments

Swirl,sip & spit. The LA Times (rr) lambasts our plonk. I thought they only had it in for the French.What a way to treat part of the "coalition".Not happy. Now we've done the food side.Bit harsh I thought.
posted by johnny7 at 9:31 AM PST - 8 comments

Keyboards Are Not Like Nibs: Fountain pens - or writing instruments in general - rule. Lately though, the main manufacturers have stooped to ballpoints, gels and other madnesses. Just as the stupid calligraphy fad killed proper handwriting, the main fountain pen manufacturers have been their own hangmen. I love Pelikan but my main hearbreak is Rotring, whose rapidograph 0.10 and 0.18 and isograph 0.20 (this latter line now sadly reduced to college sets) are my favourite scratching sticks. Are you holding a torch for any of those legendary manufacturers (Parker, Waterman, Cross, Schaeffer, Aurora, Lamy et caetera) who have gone down the drain? What glides your writing hand? Is the pseudish, unpardonably expensive and increasingly naff Montblanc the last pen manufacturer to uphold its own standards? When you do put pen to paper - if you still do at all - what's your stubborn choice? Damn it, you must use something to log into your Moleskine!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:10 AM PST - 96 comments

School's out 17 days early in Hillsboro. Oregon isn't alone in their state budget crunch. Will this solution be seen elsewhere? Meanwhile, defense industry CEOs -- "just 37 men have made enough money in the last three years to, for instance, pay for two years of running the Boston public schools."
posted by kat at 7:01 AM PST - 43 comments

Trying to avoid the traffic in London? Try BBC's JamCams. The only problem is they're all down for maintenace today. Just like they were last May 1st. And the year before that. Nothing wrong with scheduled maintenance.

Except today is the day of the annual MayDay anti-capitalism marches. The last lot of maintenance was planned for protest days too. Last year Fujitsu webcam of Trafalgar Square ended up pointing at the sky halfway during the protest. Anyone want to place bets on how long this webcam of trafalgar square lasts before it's plug gets pulled?
posted by twine42 at 5:49 AM PST - 26 comments

There may be many more but they haven't been dis-coh-vahd As of 1959, the news of 102 elements had come to Harvard (a modern remake would have to cram in 13 more.) There's more than one way to look at them, like spiral, rotating, illustrated, sub-atomic, symmetric, or forward-looking. Been there? Done That? Get the t-shirt.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 12:26 AM PST - 9 comments