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Mimosa is a retro look at Russia through engaging and often playful snapshots - it has all the feel of rummaging through a box of photos in an attic. Communist Store Windows offers another, more recent glimpse behind the iron curtain. Both galleries are like shots of peppered vodka.
posted by madamjujujive at 11:32 PM PST - 15 comments

And now, the California Recall Candidates Deck of Cards, proceeded by the Iraqi most-wanted deck of cards, then the Trade Relief Organization's "regime change" deck, among others. Are we carrying this deck of cards thingy too far? (Beware of nasty popups, slowloading page and possible NSFW ad on 1st linked page, which was seen on Geisha Asobi blog.)
posted by Lynsey at 11:24 PM PST - 7 comments

Another Wacky Face Generator Flash Thingy Look! It's wacky! It has Hitler, and George W. Bush! And you can make their faces wackier! Wheee.
posted by Stan Chin at 10:25 PM PST - 5 comments

Holiday Inn Towel Amnesty Day Ever nicked a towel from a Holiday Inn? Holiday Inn say: "About the towels, we forgive you."
posted by Mwongozi at 5:57 PM PST - 31 comments

3D Papercraft .. build all kinds of things out of paper from your printer. From the Taj Mahal to a matador to a pair of sumo wrestlers.
posted by crunchland at 12:58 PM PST - 11 comments

Long before Andy Serkis came along, Brother Theodore played Gollum. (relevant cache here)
posted by WolfDaddy at 12:16 PM PST - 4 comments

Bar code art is pretty neat. There are bar code portraits of various people from the king to the king of kings. There's also a very cool bar code clock. And there's even a set of bar codes for the drug industry. There's even a short intro to bar codes.
posted by riffola at 10:13 AM PST - 4 comments

Energy Dept Asked to Probe Gasoline Price Rise The power outage came and went. Prices for gas keep going up. Is it Iraq? We were to get more not less fuel from that country. Or is it a nation-wide scam? I know: paranoia. But then there is Enron as model. Your view?
posted by Postroad at 7:50 AM PST - 36 comments

Have you reached the 13th level of rock and roll that is anti-folk? Do you think using an 8-track recorder is selling out? If the phone rang while recording a song for your album, would you try another take? Not if you were the Moldy Peaches you wouldn't. . . pansy. The Moldy Peaches are Adam Green and Kimya Dawson. Their first album, "the Moldy Peaches Greatest Hits" was most people's first taste of anti-folk and it featured clever (and occasionally insane) songs recorded in their apartment and subsequently rocketed them to stardom. In fact, they've just formed as a 6 piece and they have a video out. (The video is in realplay*buffering*er format)

But what exactly is anti-folk? The Moldy Peaches are pretty much all over the place musically and other anti-folk artists are no different. Take Jeffrey Lewis, who's songs range from intricate tales (his first love is cartooning) of chance encounters with love to rockin' songs about killing ghouls chimes in: [More Inside]
posted by untuckedshirts at 7:18 AM PST - 18 comments

Shag's Online Galleries (NSFW). Pour yourself a martini and slip into some hip retro art by Shag. I particularly enjoy Dead Musicians Suite and Death's Endless Vacation, but there are plenty of images with no skeletons in them for those of you who prefer celebrities, monkeys who wear fez or dangerous women.
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:46 AM PST - 15 comments

Walter Cronkite's Ten propositions for the Democrats I respect Cronkite like I respect my grandmother. I'm also a democrat. Please someone, anyone, destroy Walter Cronkite's levelheadism here. Please.
posted by crasspastor at 12:53 AM PST - 29 comments

Four fly games: be the fly, flysui, fly eatin' and Mimi La Mouche. (flash alert)
posted by madamjujujive at 11:20 PM PST - 11 comments

Wound Gallery [The main site is click-safe, all text. So you won't see a wound right away if you're squemish, just descriptions.] Say, wouldn't it be great if there was a site where you could submit your ticketstubs to and tell the story behind it? Well until somebody makes one of those, let's tell stories about our horrible cringe-inducing wounds instead. I lost all my stubs anyway, but I still have a giant scar from Hootie and the Blowfish '99 baby! Spill it, what's the story behind your most impressive or memorable wound?
posted by Stan Chin at 10:18 PM PST - 18 comments

romper bomper stomper boom
tell me, tell me, tell me do
magic mirror tell me today
did all my friends have fun at play?
posted by quonsar at 7:51 PM PST - 36 comments

it does look like fun
burning man 2003. more links? photos? stories? from this years fun in the desert.
posted by specialk420 at 3:57 PM PST - 39 comments

At the WTO: At last, the USA backs away from the policy of putting intellectual property above innocent lives. Good news for everyone who cares about mankind.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 1:47 PM PST - 10 comments

Stick figure blood & gore simulation. [Note: flash, NSFW, for mature audiences only, excessive violence.]
posted by crunchland at 11:57 AM PST - 14 comments

Man Impaled on Drill Bit but he's actually going to be alright although he lost one eye. There is a pic on the link of the X-ray shot showing an 18 inch long, 1 1/2 inch wide drill bit going straight through his skull. No brain damage, no paralysis and his nephew is already joking about how he'll be popping out his glass eye at parties. Amazing!
posted by fenriq at 10:25 AM PST - 29 comments

Do you like Lego? Do you like pirates? How about Flash puzzle games with jerky animation? Well, then you'll love The Lego Treasure Hunt. (via SpinnWebe)
posted by Johnny Assay at 10:20 AM PST - 18 comments

Press photographer stripped of award; accused of overly darkening some portions in the digital editing process. Nothing was added or moved. Explains N.C. Press Photographers Assoc. president Chuck Liddy: You might say, "Gosh, I don't like the way this background looks I can get rid of this with a couple of keystrokes". No contortions in the darkroom with your hands and a dodging wand. No making ten or fifteen prints over a two hour period to get that print just right. Nope, just go and use the lasso tool, yank those levels to the max and VIOLA! the background disappears. Burning has always been an acceptable action. Burning to "de-emphasize" a background is something all of us do. But deleting the background by using some of the powerful tools Photoshop offers is totally unacceptable and violates the ethics code we adhere to. Schneider, the photographer, responds in an NPR interview (scroll down to audio link). In this allegedly unethical photo, Schneider says he corrected for overexposure. Is this a backlash against digital manipulation, which rankles the old school because it is simply too easy?
posted by found missing at 9:45 AM PST - 29 comments

Every Esquire Cover [more]
posted by ColdChef at 9:11 AM PST - 19 comments

How everyday things are made. See how things such as candy, cars, airplanes, etc are made. Learn about manufacturing processes, like forging, casting, or injection molding. Stanford University's Alliance for Innovative Manufacturing's site covers over 40 different products and manufacturing processes, and includes almost 4 hours of manufacturing video. Optimized for DSL/Cable speeds or greater. Macromedia FlashPlayer plugin (6.029 or greater) required.
posted by riffola at 8:31 AM PST - 4 comments

The Documentary Photography of Desiree Dolron
posted by chill at 4:36 AM PST - 10 comments

Japanese Tolkien fans angered over translation issues. Relatively old news, but I believe not that well known. Do the technical difficulties involved excuse the loss of important meaning in dialogue? Film translation seems to suffer from much less prestige than literary translation, though that too has its controversies. In the US, anime fans replay the loose vs strict translation debate daily, also protesting cuts and edits. Is it really impossible in the rush to make money off the geeks and off the masses to stay relatively true to the original material?
posted by e^2 at 9:59 PM PST - 21 comments

"After all Law & Order has done for us, I feel it's the least I can do for Law & Order" Well it's about damn time! Yes, it's Law & Order:Artistic Intent. I dare say that Jerry Orbach hasn't looked this good since Dirty Dancing. Don't leave your kids out, they'll have a great afternoon with the Law & Order Coloring Book. I eagerly await a similarly themed L. A. Law or Hillstreet Blues exhibition.
posted by Stan Chin at 9:55 PM PST - 24 comments

The August 9, 2003 edition of the Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram Al-Arabi featured an interview with Dr. Nabil Hilmi, Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Al-Zaqaziq who, together with a group of Egyptian expatriates in Switzerland, is preparing an enormous lawsuit against "all the Jews of the world."
For material stolen from the Pharaonic Egyptians during the Exodus ...
(link via The Daily Grail)
posted by thatwhichfalls at 5:38 PM PST - 36 comments

Ja Man! Jamaica becomes car exporter. First it was sugar, rum and reggae- 'At Last, the first hand built Jamaica automobile. Cruise the Islands with the “Island Cruiser”' - Damn, you know I've been waiting for this!
posted by kodas at 4:39 PM PST - 10 comments

Tom Feelings, an African-American illustrator, author, and historian, has passed. "I had used the functional form of a narrative without words, it is open to all people, especially those who have difficulty visualizing what Black people describe as racism from the past and its lingering presence in the present."
posted by moonbird at 3:06 PM PST - 2 comments

Janis Ian, Nashvillian, society's child and author of this fine article on music downloading (and this follow up) was married on Wednesday to her partner, Patricia Snyder, in Toronto. Congratulations all around.
posted by mikrophon at 2:36 PM PST - 20 comments

Anekee, Anekee, I'm so confused. (WARNING: no nudity but probably NSFW and a Flash-only-site.)
What's going here? A beautiful (18+) teenage girl sell memberships to her site, presumably with the promise of revealing skin. Nothing new, right? But wait, what she really wants to do is Free Your Mind.™ Could her mission possibly be be true? (<< that link is definitely NSFW)
posted by danOstuporStar at 2:35 PM PST - 26 comments

Prisoner Inventions. The craftiness of the confined. [via boingboing.net]
posted by srboisvert at 1:49 PM PST - 4 comments

A gallery of photos showing celebrities with and without make-up.
posted by crunchland at 11:41 AM PST - 56 comments

Dante's Inferno Test. On which level of hell will you burn? (via Memepool)
posted by pooligan at 10:55 AM PST - 43 comments

Austin Postcard. Photographs, postcards, history and ephemera related to Austin, Texas.
posted by plep at 10:01 AM PST - 21 comments

TerraServer USA. Can you find your own house? I drove myself mad looking, until I finally resorted to using the address finder. I can see my road, but I can't make out which house is mine. Can you find your home, or even your neighborhhod, in a satellite photo of the country?
posted by archimago at 9:38 AM PST - 18 comments

Alastair Campbell quits. Downing Street media chief Alastair Campbell is to step down, it has been announced. His resignation is said not to be related to the Hutton inquiry into the death of government weapons expert Dr David Kelly.
posted by MintSauce at 9:23 AM PST - 12 comments

'Punk' Catfish Among New Species Found in Venezuela : Scientists studying an unspoiled jungle river wilderness in Venezuela on Thursday announced the discovery of 10 new fish species, including a red-tailed tiddler, a "punk" catfish with a spiky head and a piranha that eats fruit as well as flesh, says The Associated Press.
A little more Here.
Other new species found recently include Baffling 'Mystery Apes' [More on them], some gross, weird things, and even some Odd Critters that thrive without oxygen, growing in salty, alkaline conditions, and may offer insights into what kinds of life might survive on Mars. But it's not just little critters, Pseudoryx nghetinhensis was the first of the new mammal species discovered in quite some time, and even A New giant squid.
Like this stuff? A New Theory says many of the ecological patterns we see can be more simply and often better explained if competing species are treated as if they were essentially identical.
posted by Blake at 4:57 AM PST - 11 comments

Three short flash animations from the excellent satirical comedy Monkey Dust. Check out Internet (bottom right) and find out what really happens when you connect to the net.
posted by grahamwell at 4:51 AM PST - 8 comments

Anyone smell a conspiracy? London and the South East gets hit by a massive power cut in a similar way to New York and the surrounding areas. Complaints from authorities in both cities of "under-investment in the National Grid " and talk of "antiquated infrastructure" strangely mirror each other and it's odd that these two extremely rare events have happened so close together. Was this a deliberate test of our emergency infrastructures, terrorism or just plain coincidence?
posted by andyHollister at 1:45 AM PST - 31 comments

If you liked Mein Kampf, you may also like the Bee Gees. Data-mining fun with Amazon's "Other People Who Purchased x Also Purchased y" feature. (Also a Gruniad article on the phenomenon.) (via Anil's daily links.)
posted by Vidiot at 10:35 PM PST - 11 comments

Pictures of Fat Kid eating 16 Patty In-n-Out cheeseburger. Notice how he orders a Small Coke. A diet coke, I presume. And here's some pictures of burgers having sex. And since it's grammatically related and I didn't want to make another post, here's some pictures of AT-ST Scout Walkers having sex.
posted by Stan Chin at 9:48 PM PST - 128 comments

OrcaLive is a series of webcams and underwater microphones placed off of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. They are part of OrcaLab started by Dr. Spong in 1970 to study wild orca. It appears the cameras are manned and observations of behavior and movement are made here in the left-hand column. Combined, it makes for some good viewing--today alone I saw and heard different pods greeting each other, saw spyhops, stomach rubbing along the shore, and tailslaps. Ken Balcomb at the Center for Whale Research has been studying the orca around the San Juan Islands, Washington since 1976. They also have a webcam and still shots. You may remember the story of Springer being reunited with her pod. (discussed here) There is also a young male named Luna L98 who has been separated from his pod for two years. His situation has reached a crisis while Canadian officials have taken a wait-and-see approach. In the last few days, Luna was wounded by a boat propeller and has a 6-8inch long 1.5inch deep gash above one eye. Maybe Canada will act now. With only 79 individuals in the Southern Resident population, down from 92 in 1991, every individual is important.
posted by lobakgo at 8:29 PM PST - 9 comments

Ladies & Gentlemen, George Vlosich, the world's greatest etch-a-sketch artist. I'm nervous that I've seen this on Mefi before, but search came up blank...
posted by jonson at 8:18 PM PST - 15 comments

Tonight was the 20th anniversary of the MTV Video Music Awards. They sucked. Even the Olsen Twins sucked, and I know how much all you mefites love them. Britney did make out with Madonna though.
posted by TurkishGolds at 7:41 PM PST - 48 comments

Don't think we're going to let this drop. at the end of the day it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get karl rove frog-marched out of the white house in handcuffs. and trust me, when i use that name, i measure my words. -- Joseph Wilson
posted by alms at 6:54 PM PST - 42 comments

Pop Quiz: What was the first personal computer? "Be careful before you answer! The question is highly ambiguous. Are you sure you know what first means? How about personal? Even computer is an ambiguous term! Let's define personal computer as a computer having the following attributes: It must be a digital computer. It must be largely automatic. It must be programmable by the end-user. It must be accessible, either as a commercially manufactured product, as a commercially available kit, or as widely published kit plans. It must be small enough to be transportable by an average person. It must be inexpensive enough to be affordable by the average professional. It must be simple enough to use that it requires no special training beyond an instruction manual. Ready?"
posted by quonsar at 6:05 PM PST - 11 comments

Schwarzenegger shot by Smoking Gun! Mugged by Fox News! Called "a vulgar, low-class neophyte". Ouch...
posted by insomnia_lj at 4:34 PM PST - 41 comments

When all dot-com companies existed in full power (late 90's), none of us could actually use them (because of our lazy dial-up modems), now that we could use them they don't exist. "Which leads me to think that there might be another dot-com flourishing just around the corner." Is Moby right?
posted by nandop at 4:13 PM PST - 19 comments

Last words of fictional characters. [cached]
posted by Ljubljana at 3:19 PM PST - 23 comments

You too can give change. [Flash]
posted by Pretty_Generic at 3:00 PM PST - 10 comments

In Baffin's Bay where the whale fish blow, The fate of Franklin no man may know, The fate of Franklin no tongue can tell, Lord Franklin with his sailors do dwell...an Arctic mystery, involving the meeting of two cultures, cannabalism and the occult (see under "Still more mysteries", the heading "Why wasn't the accurate information (etc.)")
posted by calico at 1:41 PM PST - 6 comments

If you happen to have a lot of time this afternoon and feel like revisiting an old music conspiracy chestnut, this is the most comprehensive page on Paul Is Dead that I have ever seen (link via Bifurcated Rivets).
posted by oflinkey at 12:42 PM PST - 24 comments

Can it be called war profiteering? The size and scope of the government contracts awarded to Halliburton in connection with the war in Iraq are significantly greater than was previously disclosed and demonstrate the U.S. military's increasing reliance on for-profit corporations to run its logistical operations. Independent experts estimate that as much as one-third of the monthly $3.9 billion cost of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq is going to independent contractors.
posted by dejah420 at 10:11 AM PST - 66 comments

The Bombay(Mumbai) blasts. Why detonate two car-bombs in Bombay? Destabilize the economy creating a climate for terror. Terror attacks have become commonplace in parts of India. The US condemned the Bombay attack- Powell called Indian officials. But, it seems like India should do more before if it wants broader US support. As the WSJ editorial page put it- "We think India could have helped build even closer U.S. ties had it decided to send troops to Iraq. The U.S. has driven a wedge into the center of Muslim terrorism with its occupation of Iraq, and it is looking to see who its friends really are." What is the lesson from all of this to the Indian government? What would you do if you were running India?
posted by SandeepKrishnamurthy at 9:43 AM PST - 60 comments

Guantanamo is growing
... and a Halliburton subsidiary lands yet another no-bid contract. Its total bill for the U.S. government last year: 1.3 billion. Maybe more
posted by magullo at 9:39 AM PST - 13 comments

Use the Ping-Pong ball cannon to shoot Ping-Pong balls into the goldfish bowls. If you shoot a Ping-Pong ball into two different bowls, you will win a pet goldfish software program!
posted by crunchland at 8:54 AM PST - 27 comments

Building the Washington Metro.
posted by plep at 8:32 AM PST - 27 comments

After Life is a gorgeous little demonstration of what can be done when you combine a talented photographer with some (relatively) subtle Flash effects. Summer is my favorite, with the grass that blows as you brush by it.
posted by majcher at 7:50 AM PST - 8 comments

Creation Science Fair - the first place for elementary level was won by Cassidy Turnbull, who demonstrated the differences between her uncle and a monkey. Much more impressive was the winner of the high school level who used prayer to make microbes evolve antibiotic resistance. I, for one, am glad that children across the world are learning the power of Creation Science! (via New Scientist)
posted by adrianhon at 7:21 AM PST - 31 comments

"These are good people"...but changes must be made. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board final report was released on Tuesday. Putting technical answers aside for the moment, the report targets the organizational and behavioral issues that led to a breakdown in communication, safety and responsibility. While acknowledging the good will at NASA, the report holds no illusions that changing this culture will be very difficult and very necessary in order to return to flight. What types of management/behavioral obstacles have you encountered in home, work, school or social organizations? How did you try to effect change and what obstacles did you encounter in an effort to make it more effective, safe, productive or enjoyable?
posted by tgrundke at 7:00 AM PST - 11 comments

It's brilliant, or at least reflective and translucent. Fetosoap.com has started selling body products containing little fetuses. But don't worry; no children were harmed in the making of this soap, or this bar with conjoined twins. The creator doesn't claim any political motivation, but that's easy to superimpose. Good idea? Poor taste? Both?
posted by spaceboy86 at 6:51 AM PST - 12 comments

kids.us ready to go. Hidden amongst the seemingly endless barrage of SOBig virii this morning was an interesting email from that ResourceShelf Guy on the new kids Domain.
Being billed as "an Internet domain that parents and children can trust for educational and appropriate online fun" kids.us Launches On September 4, 2003. You can read the Overview of kids.us Policies and Procedures, or Register A Name (starting next week).
Interestingly they Say a company called cyveillance will be "monitoring and reviewing" content for the domains.
The domain names will Look a little funny, but maybe Someone should snag www.metafilter.kids.us, you know, for the kids. They don't seem cheap, as "Registrants will be charged a combined registration fee and a non-refundable application fee for five-year registration.
posted by Blake at 4:36 AM PST - 13 comments

This is just too funny. Check it out. The Onion is soooooo good!!!!
posted by crasspastor at 10:41 PM PST - 27 comments

An anotated list of the best-selling classics, (as compiled by Book Magazine), showing the years in which they will become public domain under current copyright law. Fans of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises will be in luck in 2021; Memoirs of a Geisha will go public sometime in the early 2100s.
[Via Vidiot's brand new blog.]
posted by me3dia at 9:49 PM PST - 5 comments

Activate Electra-Change!! Ah yes, Electra Woman and Dyna Girl. Just one of the many sites devoted to the hallucinations of Sid and Marty Krofft, but what's important here are the quicktime clips. Oh, and the mystery 2001 pilot episode for the WB starring that chick from Night Court.
posted by Stan Chin at 9:26 PM PST - 13 comments

Earth from the Air is a free, open-air exhibition in the gardens of the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, London. It is a spectacular presentation of large-scale photographs of astonishing natural landscapes. Created by world-famous photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand, also refer to the previous discussion of his work. Every stunning aerial photograph tells a story about our changing planet. Seen together, they are an outstanding visual testimony to the world we live in today. A world with a growing population, shrinking biodiversity, polluted lands and oceans, a changing climate and a shortage of drinking water. A world, nevertheless, of beauty and of wonder. Also in a pioneering project Yann Arthus-Bertrand's unique aerial view of the world can now be seen by blind and partially sighted visitors.
posted by riffola at 8:58 PM PST - 7 comments

Apple.com to be redesigned by Zeldman, Bowman Apple has contracted Jeffrey Zeldman of Happy Cog Studios and Douglas Bowman of Stopdesign to collaborate on a redesign of the company's Web site. Congratulations!
posted by dilokiam at 7:55 PM PST - 24 comments

Charlie Russell and Maureen Enns - authors of a popular book and the subject of a fascinating and well-recieved documentary - have been living for months at a time with bears in Kamchatka, demonstrating that man and grizzly can, in fact, inhabit the same landscape without violence - at least, no violence on the part of the bears... Their work has been brought to a tragic and all too human end... (Via Rafe Colburn, who notes, appropriately, "People suck.")
posted by JollyWanker at 7:00 PM PST - 14 comments

You have a reputation for being deceitful and treacherous. Welcome to the odd world of online fortune cookies. This man collects them, the weird ones, that is. And sometimes there is some good advice. These sites make me wish that I'd kept all the fortunes I've picked up over the years.
posted by ashbury at 6:55 PM PST - 15 comments

GOP saves a buck or two. Shameless. [via Fark.]
posted by condour75 at 4:37 PM PST - 32 comments

In Kandahar Chronicles, Carlos, a relief worker, blogs from the field. The online companion to "Doctors Without Borders: Life in the Field" (a National Geographic television series) introduces aid workers and their missions. MSF also has a series of voices from the field in which aid workers share their experiences.
posted by stonerose at 4:17 PM PST - 1 comment

The UnGreening of America.

So much for "the Homeland".
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 1:32 PM PST - 21 comments

Past Voices serves up a collection of old letters, postcards, diaries and memoirs. Some are matter-of-fact: "While I am thus writing, I will tell you of an instance which happened 3 or 4 days ago. Two men were shot to death for desertion.", while some chronicle amazing historical events: "I heard two of the Germans shouting ' don't shoot we are bringing you some cake.' They were told to go back, but they would not, they came right up to our trenches."
posted by mr_crash_davis at 12:34 PM PST - 10 comments

Cool watches through history. A series of profiles on important watches in the history of the electronic watch. From one regulated by a tuning fork, to the once-omnipresent Swatch.
posted by o2b at 10:53 AM PST - 13 comments

Mosaiculture. Iconomy's Circus Trees today reminded me of this exhibit in Montreal which bowled me over, and introduced me to a new art form. What is it? As this columnist says, "Floral sculpture doesn’t sound quite glorious enough. Topiary beyond imagination falls short, too. Perhaps tour de force of the landscape artist comes the closest." [more inside]
posted by soyjoy at 9:59 AM PST - 12 comments

So you know all those worms that have been circulating recently? Well, turns out that they mean that the Internet has failed. (via the Obscure Store)
posted by Johnny Assay at 9:24 AM PST - 32 comments

Nicaraguan Murals 1930-2000.
posted by plep at 8:23 AM PST - 5 comments

The Circus Trees of Axel Erlandson: In the 1920s Erlandson observed the natural grafting of two sycamores, became inspired, and then fused 4 sycamore saplings into his first successful experiment - a cupola that he named "Four Legged Giant". Using his own techniques, Erlandson went on to fashion zigzags, birdcages, chairs, towers, hearts, loops, baskets, rings, lightning bolts, towers, picture frames, ladders, and spiral staircases by painstakingly threading saplings together. His trees appeared often in Ripley's Believe it or Not during the 40s and 50s. Click, click, click.
posted by iconomy at 8:03 AM PST - 21 comments

What Jeb Bush is up to these days. A followup to a dreadful situation in the state of Florida.
posted by tommyspoon at 7:53 AM PST - 23 comments

Mancala Snails ... based on the ancient game of counting and strategy. [note: flash]
posted by crunchland at 7:39 AM PST - 3 comments

Kirby is god! Tomorrow would have been Jack Kirby's 86th birthday. A creator (or co-creator) of such characters as the Hulk, Captain America, Thor, The X-Men, The Fantastic Four, and numerous others, Kirby gets a warm remembrance from Elvis Mitchell (with lots of references to Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay," which was dedicated to Kirby) in the NY Times (Reg. required). A lot of american popular culture was generated by this man in his 50 year career, and it's nice to see him finally get some recognition, especially when someone like Stan Lee tends to hog the spotlight, claiming creator's rights.
posted by jpburns at 4:08 AM PST - 20 comments

processing
Finaly, someone's done something cool with client side java.
posted by delmoi at 11:22 PM PST - 17 comments

The game has eleven rules. Do you play? What's the difference between knowing something and just knowing the name of it?
posted by majcher at 11:12 PM PST - 32 comments

OSI Prez slaps SCO CEO with blogauntlet You know, when Eric S. Raymond speaks, people listen. But I think this particular rant, he wants just one person to listen: Darl McBride, CEO of SCO.
posted by jeddings at 9:40 PM PST - 19 comments

It's Dinner Time. You know what that means: Hairy chests. [geisha asobi poss. nsfw] Mmmmmm... I'm salivating like Pavlov's dog just looking at it! What's that? You're in the mood for hairy backs? [e.blort] Why, Bill Cosby from Ghost Dad would be proud! (Whoever else has seen that movie gets a free... flowbee.)
posted by Stan Chin at 5:50 PM PST - 28 comments

The Getaway is a game for the PS2 set in a realistically modelled representation of London. You'd have to be really bored to go and find all the locations in the game and re-create the missions for real, wouldn't you?
posted by Mwongozi at 5:07 PM PST - 16 comments

"iTunes iSbogus, just a shiny new facade for the ugly, exploitative system that has managed music for the past 50 years." says Downhill Battle's parody of Apple's web site. [via MacNN]
posted by kirkaracha at 4:17 PM PST - 32 comments

Illustrating Genji An eighteenth-century scroll illustrating the first sixteen chapters of Lady Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji. (In Japanese, anyone? Don't forget to take the photographic tour.) A couple of images from an important twelfth-century scroll are here. UNESCO hosts a full set of seventeenth-century woodblock prints by Harumasa Yamamoto. For the nineteenth century, see a set of color sixteen woodblock prints by Kunisada; and for the twentieth, Shuseki's illustrations of the first eleven chapters. (Those in search of some artistic context should revisit this post by y2karl.)
posted by thomas j wise at 4:17 PM PST - 14 comments

Elevator Moods. Before you watch, you may want to read the Elefesto. [via Prentiss Riddle: Movies] [flash]
posted by soundofsuburbia at 3:20 PM PST - 7 comments

Zoloft Found Safe, Effective in Children The study was funded by Pfizer Inc., which makes Zoloft. Visit The International Coalition For Drug Awareness to find out what SSRI Meds can really do to your kids...
posted by Wicker at 2:42 PM PST - 51 comments

Stunning photographs by Kurt Ross.
These glorious images have lifted my spirit today. A website worth exploring.
posted by essexjan at 1:13 PM PST - 39 comments

The gift of sight is easy to take for granted. Not for Mike May, blinded in infancy, Mike had partial vision restored at the age of 43. This is his journal, written with infectious delight for his new gift and documenting the unexpected problems that the miracle brings. There's much, much more to vision than just the data and Mike is an unprecedented opportunity to better understand how perception works. [via the Guardian and previously mentioned here]
posted by grahamwell at 12:54 PM PST - 14 comments

Even Presidents need to apologize from time to time. Other lesser politicians and business people need to learn the fine art of apology as well. There are sorry poems [warning: bad midi music]. And of course, for those who can’t think of anything to say, there’s an apology generator
posted by Outlawyr at 12:30 PM PST - 25 comments

The BBC's Website is currently under review, and the public is requested to give their opinion. With the Tories saying they would shut the website down, BSkyB demanding that they sell off their best shows, and rival networks describing their annual report as extremely vague about spending (not to mention the entire David Kelly fiasco...), it seems as though a review of the website might be more or less ignored by the public. (Personal opinion inside...)
posted by Katemonkey at 12:23 PM PST - 29 comments

It's almost time for my yearly pilgrimage to the York Fair, America's oldest county fair. Unfortunately, it looks like I'll miss Poison, but as long as I get to see the fancy chickens I'll be happy.
posted by JoanArkham at 11:15 AM PST - 12 comments

Hydra, the much-loved Rendevous-enabled collaborative text editor, recently ran into legal trouble over their use of a common proper noun (sound familiar?), so for a time they were simply named #####. But no more; say hello to SubEthaEdit! Hmmm. Very ... hitchhiker.
posted by brownpau at 11:11 AM PST - 17 comments

Unprepared for Peace in Iraq
Let us reject the blinders of isolationism, just as we refuse the crown of empire. Let us not dominate others with our power -- or betray them with our indifference. And let us have an American foreign policy that reflects American character. The modesty of true strength. The humility of real greatness.
Presidential Candidate George W Bush, 2000
Footnotes: March 26, 2003: U.S. Plans For Post-Conflict Iraq Receive Mixed Grade - CSIS Scorecard Cites Gaps, Shortcomings in Administration's Plans; March 2003: Plotting the Aftermath; August, 26, 2003: Do What It Takes in Iraq--and, on an ancillary note: WMD: Intelligence Without Brains
posted by y2karl at 9:27 AM PST - 23 comments

Two of his children dying from a rare genetic disorder, Dad -- with no science background whatever -- starts a biotech company for the sole purpose of developing a drug that will cure them. Heartrending conflicts ensue. "Many times, I'd be talking aloud about programs and budgets, and at the back of my mind be thinking, 'Oh my God, this is not good for Megan and Patrick.' "
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 6:51 AM PST - 25 comments

Attention data archivists... CD-R's go bad. A dutch study indicates that most CD-Recordable discs become virtually unreadable 20 months after being written.
posted by crunchland at 5:52 AM PST - 46 comments

Think you have a fungal infection? Think you've got fungus growing in your building, or home? Want to see macroscopic images of people, animals, and plants that have fungal infections? Who you gonna call? Doctor Fungus. 'Dedicated to timely dissemination of information about fungal infections via the world-wide web.'
posted by misteraitch at 3:45 AM PST - 9 comments

So what happens when people lure pedophiles giving out their pictures and info? Perverted Justice, a group effort of people chatting online pretending to be children, is slamming hundreds of would be child predators and releasing any information they can get online. They even have a rating system! Are you cringing to find out the worst ones? Read this. Now the only problem is getting their ass in court. (NSFW text)
posted by Keyser Soze at 1:06 AM PST - 55 comments

Hippie Atrocities and Beautiful Freaks -- Oz Magazine was, for a ten year run during the Sixties and Seventies, Australia's, and later England's, premier underground satire 'zine. Featuring contributions from (among others) Lenny Bruce and Germain Greere, and subject to two obscenity trials--one in Australia and another, more famous one following the editors' exile to England--it evolved, in its English incarnation, a wicked, witty and of course, thouroughly psychedelic design aesthetic. There are galleries of cover art here and here, and a Shockwave adaptation of the infamous School Kids issue here. [warning: some images NSFW.]
posted by arto at 12:21 AM PST - 6 comments

Autistic boy dies at faith healing service 'An 8-year-old autistic boy died during a prayer service at a Milwaukee church that the pastor said was meant to heal him of "spirits," and the pastor's brother is facing child abuse charges...' This is sad. Evil spirits? What can be done to protect children from ill-treatment by religion?
posted by madman at 9:43 PM PST - 80 comments

The Forest Brothers spent years hiding in the woods of Estonia and Latvia. They lived alone, carefully covering their tracks, sleeping in clammy bunkers, no bigger than walk-in closets. Then things got less comfortable. (warning: nytimesfilter.)
posted by alms at 9:42 PM PST - 7 comments

Why waste your time with "celebrity" candidates when there are handsome devils like this to build a senseless media fetish around? Snicker at porn stars if you will, but I shall take the time to appreciate the man who tells us about his love for Sheena Easton and his goals as an artist.
posted by BT at 9:38 PM PST - 12 comments

Rumors abound about the legality of the IRS, and about people who've managed to avoid paying income taxes based on the lack of legality of the IRS itself. Is any of this real, or simply people trying to make a buck selling a book or two? And if the IRS is fraudulent, what can a citizen without massive fundage do to fight it?
posted by woil at 6:37 PM PST - 30 comments

Where are they now? Hey, remember that guy that was head of that big company that went bankrupt and the employees lost their retirement savings and it turned out the whole thing was just this massive fraud? I wonder what happened to that guy.
posted by raaka at 6:08 PM PST - 20 comments

Reuters and AP have stories on The final energy report from the GAO on Walker v. Cheney. You can see the Chronology of the GAO's Attempts [PDF] to Obtain Information from the National Energy Policy Development Group, and more at the GAO Site.
The General Accounting Office sued Vice President Cheney last year to obtain a list of officials from Enron and other companies who met with President Bush's energy task force.
Highlights or read the full report: GAO-03-894 "Energy Task Force: Process Used to Develop the National Energy Policy"
posted by Blake at 5:45 PM PST - 16 comments

What day is it? Depends who you ask... how we measure the passage of time varies in wonderfully elaborate ways worldwide, past and present. Some folks want to create a uniform calendar, and you may recall Swatch's quixotic attempt at "Internet Time." Colorful heuristics aside, there's always timelessness as an option.
posted by moonbird at 4:15 PM PST - 13 comments

Everyone eavesdrops but few people catalog the fragments of conversation that they overhear. This guy travels on the London Underground regularly...and posts some of those one sided exchanges that make you wonder what the hell people are talking about. (its my first FPP - play nice...)
posted by mattr at 12:55 PM PST - 45 comments

Staffordshire Past Track. History and images of an English Midlands county : old photographs and online exhibitions on historic churches, celebrations, birth, death, serial killers and mining (and the 1984-85 strike).
Related sites :- the Museums of the Potteries, the area around Stoke-on-Trent which played a major role in the Industrial Revolution; thepotteries.org, including postcards and photographs; In Search of Agenoria, black and white photographs of the post-industrial Black Country landscape; A Miner's Son- more mining history in the Midlands (with more on the 1984-85 strike, possibly the most divisive political event in recent British history); save Bethesda Chapel, a historic Methodist chapel in Stoke; panoramic views and history of Lichfield Cathedral and other Staffordshire places.
posted by plep at 12:36 PM PST - 4 comments

Four 9/11 Widows Demand Truth. "This is a stonewalling job of far greater importance than Watergate. This concerns the refusal of the country’s leadership to be held accountable for the failure to execute its most fundamental responsibility: to protect its citizens against foreign attack. 'If we have an executive branch that holds sole discretion over what information is released to the public and what is hidden, the public will never get the full story of why there was an utter failure to protect them that day, and who should be held accountable.'"
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 12:33 PM PST - 33 comments

World War I Document Archive. Treaties, diplomatic documents and, of course, photos. even ee cummings.
posted by turbodog at 12:30 PM PST - 4 comments

Anybody see this coming? The United States has asked Israel to check the possibility of pumping oil from Iraq to the oil refineries in Haifa. The request came in a telegram last week from a senior Pentagon official to a top Foreign Ministry official in Jerusalem.
posted by FormlessOne at 12:04 PM PST - 28 comments

The World's Worst Food. "A naked imitation of the Gallery of Regrettable Food", featuring late 50's and early 60's-era recipes from the UK.
posted by LinusMines at 11:16 AM PST - 15 comments

The Devil's Dictionary 2.0 — Bitter Bierce, beware. For reference, review release 1.0.
posted by pedantic at 11:13 AM PST - 10 comments

Toxic Teddies. Cute. Lethal.
posted by gottabefunky at 10:17 AM PST - 17 comments

In lieu of today's posts on GM foods and meat, Trans Ova Genetics is pharming cows in hopes of creating one capable of adminstering human antibodies.
posted by hobbes at 10:05 AM PST - 5 comments

It's Lunchtime. You know what that means: Meat. Mmmmmm... I'm salivating like Pavlov's dog just looking at it! What's that? You're in the mood for poultry? So tasty. Bill Cosby from Leonard Part 6 would be proud! (Whoever else has seen that movie gets a free Hat of Meat. I vaguely remember it, but suffice it to say they don't make enough movies where the hero wields raw meat as a weapon against has-been disco queens and her army of gay bodybuilding henchmen.)
posted by Stan Chin at 9:45 AM PST - 18 comments

What's Not To Love About A Good Hatchet Job? Christopher Hitchens gleefully chainsaws into JFK; while Neal Ascherson demonstrates the more elegant approach towards character assassination with a nice "Drunken Stalinist Bastard" piece on Kennedy's Cuban Missile buddy, Khrushchev. Meanwhile, in the streetfighting, eye-scratching category, Laura Miller rips Chuck "Fight Club" Palahniuk into tiny pieces. What lowest of low instincts makes us relish such gratuitous - yet somehow richly deserved in the Grand Scheme Of Things - slaughters? (Warning: Sorry. Possibly unethical direct linking of a Salon Premium article. If your conscience objects, please go through the usual channel.)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:36 AM PST - 33 comments

Hidden Sides, Hushed Ideals of a Civil Rights Strategist
Bayard Rustin - Quaker, former Young Communist cum anti-communist socialist, advocate of non-violence, ''known homosexual'' , architect of the March on Washington and, it goes without saying, great American. A critical socialist take on Rustin. Here, for our resident Malcolm X man, a debate between Rustin and X in 1960--do note the latter's views evolved greatly between then and his assassination--and here is Nat Hentoff on Rustin. A recent P.O.V. fim on Rustin - Brother Outsider.
posted by y2karl at 9:17 AM PST - 9 comments

A million lives. Links to thousands of biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, letters, narratives, oral histories and more.
posted by pooligan at 8:53 AM PST - 3 comments

In Defense of Prostitution [more inside]
posted by Irontom at 6:39 AM PST - 64 comments

Pam Grier, Tura Satana, Laura Gemser. Cult Sirens is a site dedicated to, you guessed it, the women made famous due to the cult movies they starred in. If you love this kind of stuff, there are links to more sites having to do with actors, cult movies and horror movies. And there's always this list of cult movies, complete with reviews.
posted by ashbury at 6:08 AM PST - 3 comments

the influencing machine
posted by crunchland at 5:03 AM PST - 12 comments

About 2, if not more blasts rocked Mumbai on Monday afternoon. About 40 people are dead, and numerous injured. The bombs were apparently placed in taxis, and the two confirmed explosion sites are the historic Gateway of India, a huge tourist spot and the Mumba Devi temple, after which the city get its name. The city has been prey to a string of deadly bomb attacks since December last year, with the most recent, on a bus, killing three in July, and suffered a simliar serial blast back on March 12^th, 1993.
posted by riffola at 4:32 AM PST - 19 comments

Is the GM Food Business trying to nobble independent scientific inquiry? Scientists on the UK Government's GM Science Review Panel, say they have been threatened and bullied to provide pro-GM opinions.
(Meanwhile Tony Blair is reigning in his zeal for GMO's, it seems for entirely political reasons.)
posted by Blue Stone at 3:55 AM PST - 7 comments

"By recklessly cutting taxes, President Bush has enriched the wealthy and neglected the poor, sent the federal budget deficit to record heights, and imposed a colossal financial burden on the coming generation. He has revived the culture wars by flaunting his Christian faith and by promoting traditional values. He has undermined public schools by supporting school choice. He has eroded the wall of separation between church and state by seeking federal funding for faith-based charities. He threatens to reverse decades of progress in civil rights by packing the judiciary with right-wing extremists. He has alienated our European allies with his crude cowboy diplomacy and provided a legitimate basis for anti-Americanism around the world. And he has knowingly deceived the American people in a matter of grave national importance by resting his case for war against Iraq on trumped-up charges about weapons of mass destruction." "That's a caricature", says Peter Berkowitz in a coolly favorable article about the current Presidency. 1st link via aldaily
posted by 111 at 3:10 PM PST - 48 comments

A long list of links related to all aspects of the history of scientific instruments, such as sundials, slide rules, and pocket compasses.
posted by carter at 3:07 PM PST - 5 comments

Roy Ten Commandments Moore (discussed here) received an honorary Doctorate of Divinity in January of 2003 from the Methodist Episcopal Church, USA (temporarily deactivated, someone, call billing!) & the National Clergy Council. The National Clergy Council has placed "Ten Commandment" plaques on the walls of politicians such as George Bush, Trent Lott, Joe Leiberman, & Rick Santorum among others. The web site of the National Clergy Council reads "There remain thousands of additional government officials yet to receive the Ten Commandments Plaques." and asks for help. Chief Justice Moore had to travel all the way to Washington DC to receive his honorary Doctorate of Divinity. It would have been far cheaper to pay $7.95 online. In case you were wondering a Doctorate in Divinity means an "understanding of the relationship between Man, His Creator, and the rest of the Cosmos." It's good nice to know that such a moral man is was the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.
posted by filchyboy at 1:41 PM PST - 27 comments

The World as a Blog Real time & updating display of weblog postings, around the world, using GeoURL, RSS, and Weblogs.com.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:08 PM PST - 6 comments

False Start
How important is sportsmanship in the modern era? On Sunday afternoon at the IAAF World Championships, Jon Drummond false started in the 100m sprint and was disqualified. He refused to leave the track (initially prostrating himself in the middle of his lane) and ended up delaying the race by more than 50 minutes. In 1996, Linford Christie did something similar in the Olympic games 100m final.
Is it just 100m sprinters, or is sportsmanship going out of fashion?
posted by daveg at 1:02 PM PST - 19 comments

Asian Historical Architecture. 'Here you can view over 6500 photos of 462 sites in seventeen countries, with background information and virtual tours. '
posted by plep at 12:20 PM PST - 12 comments

Dyke to open up BBC archive. Greg Dyke, director general of the BBC, has announced plans to give the public full access to all the corporation's programme archives. Wow! The BBC has archives stretching back to when the Earth was still cooling. And now it will all be available online and for free. [Via Slashdot]
posted by PenDevil at 10:20 AM PST - 35 comments

Peepshow - Sunday art stroll: this cute little site is a quick flash tour through the portfolios of a dozen funky and fun British illustrators.
posted by madamjujujive at 9:54 AM PST - 6 comments

More or Less is an interesting mini-encyclopedia of several of the great heroes & great villains of the 20th Century, with background information on each individual, the situation they were in, the scope of their impact on humanity, etc. It makes an interesting contrast, as well as a good thinking point on what one human life can achieve, for better or worse.
posted by jonson at 9:23 AM PST - 3 comments

Balance the State Budget -- Fight this little Flash game created by the AP for hours and hours. It's certainly timely given the number of U.S. states struggling to balance their books and it's definitely engrossing (for geeks). While it certainly is simplistic, it makes me wonder, is playing the political game really this hard? Or is this game (or am I) just stupid? Even better question, is it impossible to win?
posted by lazywhinerkid at 6:25 AM PST - 9 comments

Large rock named Huya! 3 years after being discovered a large object (?) orbiting the sun has been named.
posted by rdr at 4:48 AM PST - 8 comments

bikewriter the newest weapon in the guerrilla graffiti arsenal. I wonder how long it will take before someone uses this to propose to his girlfriend.
posted by riffola at 3:37 AM PST - 23 comments

Farewell America. After six years, The Observer's award-winning US correspondent Ed Vulliamy takes his leave.
posted by i_cola at 2:14 AM PST - 8 comments

Drums around the world "Drums Around the World is an annual simultaneous world wide drumming day.Our purpose is to Honor the traditions of the drum, celebrate its power to unify humanity." The tenth anniversary of the annual "Drums around the World: ....In 1994, the inaugural event, over 2100 drummers showed up at the main event (facilitated by Baba Olatunji, Hamza El Din, Arthur Hull, John Bergamo, Jim Greiner, Muruga Booker, and Native Drummers) creating the worlds largest drum circle. This event was also broadcast world-wide via satellite (complements of CNN)."

Ever drummed on a Djembe until your hands bled? ....Or wondered why virtually no republicans practice African or indigenous drumming techniques? Are hand drums, to the US far right, a spooky talesman which evokes lurid fantasies of wild satanic or Santeria (Voodoo) rituals?
posted by troutfishing at 1:59 AM PST - 25 comments

Have you ever inserted your name as you read the Bible to make it more personal? No? Well have you ever wondered if you could pay the guy that says AOL's "YOU'VE GOT MAIL" to say your name for $25? Dream the impossible dream no longer, it can all be done because you're a slave to the current trend of personalizing and customizing everything you own with a splash of me! Marketing droids have already dubbed this as Gravanity (Graffiti + Vanity = Dumb Fucking Marketing Buzzword). After all, nothing says that it's you like slapping your name all over it, right Scott?
posted by Stan Chin at 11:02 PM PST - 29 comments

Visual Human Server .. a virtual anatomy lesson using java.
posted by crunchland at 9:55 PM PST - 6 comments

Ever wonder what Utopia might look like? So have 300 years of Russian architects.
posted by kablam at 9:25 PM PST - 2 comments

Hey, Asswipe! Sadly, there's a dearth of literature on toilet hygiene. Here in Portugal, being a clean-living people, after wasting a forest of bunched-up paper, we thoroughly wash our arses/asses in a bidet after - pardon my French - taking a dump. Men, it must be said, carefully wipe their dicks with toilet paper after a pee and flush twice. Women, though deprived of dicks in the tradition of old Freudian "penis envy", do the same. I wonder whether this is a universal tradition. Pray tell. Ugh!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:07 PM PST - 84 comments

It may be Massachusetts, and he may be a former Catholic priest, but today John Geoghan got the death penalty. News of Geoghan's death at the hands of a fellow inmate will likely do little to provide closure for his 130 alleged victims, or repair any wounds from a scandal that tested the trust and faith of a great many people.
posted by PrinceValium at 3:22 PM PST - 43 comments

Oligopoly Watch. An Oligopoly tracking weblog.
posted by euphorb at 2:27 PM PST - 8 comments

Here's your chance to interview Adolph Hitler.
posted by Espoo2 at 11:09 AM PST - 33 comments

EPA misled public on 9/11 pollution
"In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, the White House instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to give the public misleading information, telling New Yorkers it was safe to breathe when reliable information on air quality was not available."
posted by jpoulos at 9:27 AM PST - 17 comments

College Rankings! Seems like everyone's talking about 'em. There's the good ole controversial US News & World Report rankings, but thanks to the the librarians at UIUC, this wonderful site has links to many, many, many different rankings, including ones that let you make your own rankings. There's also rankings of some of the more important non-academic features of colleges, too. Does college rank really matter?
posted by Jos Bleau at 8:54 AM PST - 19 comments

Tampa drops face-recognition system The Tampa Police Department says the system, which scans faces in a crowd and compares them with a database of criminals, didn't help them catch even one criminal. Could it be that law enforcement is starting to understand that technology is no substitution for good old fashioned police work?
posted by whirlwind29 at 6:02 AM PST - 8 comments

March on Washington Anniversary of historic march. Has Dr. King's dream been advanced? I "imagine" kids are still dreaming...
posted by aiq at 4:41 AM PST - 7 comments

"I guess zose free were no match fow woo, wet me be wour opponent now." "Mr. Lee, this tower's beginning to look like YOUR TOMBSTONE!" [slashdot] Behold Audio Atrocities, graveyard of the worst voice acting ever. I emplore you to sample these into some rockin' club beat. Possibly over this incredible Super Mario Bros 2 Jazz Tune [hosted by game revolution] from Estradasphere.
posted by Stan Chin at 10:48 PM PST - 7 comments

flying pig .. paper automatons you can make yourself.
posted by crunchland at 8:35 PM PST - 8 comments

Utilities apparently should have known that trouble was brewing in Ohio. Kinda makes you wonder if this wasn't just a case of everybody (well, nearly) being asleep at the switch...
posted by clevershark at 6:52 PM PST - 12 comments

bush appoints pipes to head US Institute for Peace , in a recess move (dodging senate confirmation).
among his post sept 11 quotes are: ``What we need to do is inspire fear, not affection.''
Pipe's ideas for peace in the middle east are worth a look. Does this appointment say anything about the kind of peace bush is pursuing in the middle east?
posted by specialk420 at 6:17 PM PST - 19 comments

"Hello, Neo. I am the Architect." For those of us who liked The Matrix Reloaded but got lost shortly after the Architect opened his mouth, here's a handy annotated transcript of his entire scene. Great for people who want to delve into the deeper meanings of what he's going on about, and also great for people (like me) who are interested in the way he talks. [Warning: Geocities site. Mirrored here if it goes down]
posted by Monster_Zero at 5:29 PM PST - 24 comments

Dispelling Some Myths About Credit Cards. In case you missed this post (via Kuro5hin), as this is an excellent explanation of how to stay debt free and things you need to know about owning a credit card. As a first time card holder, I found this post to be really, really useful. Anybody have any bad credit card stories?
posted by Keyser Soze at 4:57 PM PST - 44 comments

Fox Loses Bid to Stop Sale of Franken Book "There are hard cases and there are easy cases. This is an easy case," said U.S. District Judge Denny Chin. "This case is wholly without merit both factually and legally." As so many of us understood without the need for big expensive lawyers.
posted by billsaysthis at 4:57 PM PST - 23 comments

Remember that Fatboy Slim video with Christopher Walken dancing? Have a new look.
posted by Aaorn at 3:58 PM PST - 17 comments

Okanagan Moutain Fire Here are some photos taken of a forest fire in British Columbia. So far I've seen evacuation numbers ranging from 5000 to 15000 people so far.
posted by synecdoche at 3:56 PM PST - 12 comments

Amazing image of the blackout, taken from a space satellite. [via John Hoke]
posted by mathowie at 2:30 PM PST - 42 comments

Bloggin from/about Jail. There is Alon the Felon (armed robbery): Hes called Vomit coz soon as he gets nervous or any of the downers go near him . . . he starts vomiting profusely . . . It works. Or there is now-released Michael Peterson (murder [scroll down]): There is a group of three young men who spend most of their time together outside their cells – perhaps 6 hours a day – doing each other’s hair. They braid and unbraid one another, fix elaborate “dos,” then start all over again. Also, amazing writing for the the female perspective: i don't want to take out my navel ring for fear it will close up, so i lie and tell the warden it won't come out. "that's okay," she says, "one of the girls in your cell will just rip it out for you." (Some language may be NSFW.)
posted by onlyconnect at 1:35 PM PST - 31 comments

The Ad Slogan Hall of Fame catalogs 114 of the best advertising catchphrases ever created, often paired with a broadcast or print example. (Well, those created in England and North America, anyway.) Any of these recent inductees ring a bell?: "A little dab'll do ya." "Breakfast of champions." "Drivers wanted."
posted by me3dia at 1:18 PM PST - 13 comments

Pray for Paul Wolfowitz Many across America and Americans in other countries are heeding the call to pray for our President. In a short time since the September 11 terrorist attacks, well over a million people have registered their promise to pray daily for the President. That number is increasing by tens of thousands of new team members every day. News of The Presidential Prayer Team is spreading rapidly throughout America as people march to the tempo of an almost forgotten tune, "God Bless America." The independent, nonprofit organization behind The Presidential Prayer Team, has a singular purpose: to encourage specific nationwide prayer for the President. The goal is to enlist at least 2.8 million participants, or 1% of the American population, to make this prayer commitment.
posted by Slimemonster at 12:47 PM PST - 65 comments

So I Google search on the SoBig virus' affinity for UDP port 8998, and the possibility it may be downloading additional programs this afternoon(actually, right about now). Great, more filters on the routers. Hang on, what's this result on that first search? A link to PornResource? Why, it appears to be a news and technical site for porn site operators. News, guides, interviews, top designers, host reviews, even a message board. Of course, a site billed as "The Standard for Up-To-Date Adult Webmaster News" is NSFW. Unless you are BossHawg, of course.
posted by dglynn at 12:23 PM PST - 10 comments

New Phase for Sobig.f Expected to Hit Friday. Any . . . minute . . . now. . .
posted by archimago at 11:47 AM PST - 35 comments

Wesley Willis: Rock and roll star, artist, poet, movie star and friend to all he met passed away last night from Leukemia at the age of 40. The six foot five, 320 pound Chicago area musician who cut his teeth on the streets selling city landscape drawings and playing music on his tiny Casio keyboard was infamous for his raw insightful songs and ability to draw his audiences into a schizophrenic's take on reality.
posted by car_bomb at 11:26 AM PST - 34 comments

The Capital Times' obituary page notes that "Sally Baron, age 71, of Stoughton, died Monday, Aug. 18, 2003.... Memorials in her honor can be made to any organization working for the removal of President Bush."
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 11:24 AM PST - 21 comments

Earthstation 5 is a new p2p application purportadly based in Palestine issue a challenge to the MPAA/RIAA. Sounds kind of fishy to me.. I'll stick to Waste with my mates (sharing legal items, of course) for a bit..
posted by Mossy at 10:52 AM PST - 17 comments

Terrorist playground: How America created a terrorist haven in Iraq Jessica Stern, a lecturer at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and author of "Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill" argues, in a New York Times op ed piece, that U.S. negligence has allowed Iraq to metastasize into a terrorist training camp to which Islamic militants from all over the Middle East are now flocking for a chance to attack American troops, and in which the Iraq/Al-Qaeda links alleged by the Bush Administration are becoming a reality. Listen to Jessica Stern on "On Point" tonight (a WBUR production and will be archived if you miss it).
posted by troutfishing at 10:27 AM PST - 24 comments

Ars Magna hosts The Anagrammy Awards, a monthly anagram competition. This got me thinking that we could "rearrange" the big acronym thread from a few weeks ago so that the first word or phrase of a comment would be an anagram of the last word or phrase of the previous comment. Sort of like this.
posted by coudal at 8:35 AM PST - 25 comments

«A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends. The supreme god of a fascist, to which his ends are directed, may be money or power; may be a race or a class; may be a military, clique or an economic group; or may be a culture, religion, or a political party.» Henry A. Wallace’s article, titled «The Danger of American Fascism», ran in the New York Times in 1944. Veeery interesting reading.
posted by acrobat at 8:33 AM PST - 11 comments

The new issue of CBC Radio 3’s online magazine (Flash required) has a new piece today called Self Storage, an interview with self-storage landlord Hal Spradling, mixed with photographs of abandoned storage lockers. People who place their belongings here know that if they don’t pay their rent after “X” amount of days, their stuff goes to auction, so is this a problem? Or, like “Payday Loans!” is this yet another industry preying on powerless individuals? [previous “Payday Loans!” discussion]
posted by Quartermass at 8:24 AM PST - 6 comments

Writing a story is a felony violation in Oklahoma. High school student who wrote a story about armed invasion of his school faces jail time. Prosectors admit the law is Orwellian, but need a test-case. The story itself is derived from sample text included with an Adobe Pagemaker tutorial, describing hurrican evacuation instructions.
posted by swift at 7:58 AM PST - 26 comments

President Bush's interest in high-tech gadgets. " 'He's no Al Gore,' said one Bush aide, (...) 'but he's very serious about having all this stuff work.' " via Drudge
posted by 111 at 7:53 AM PST - 20 comments

Wouldn't this chafe or something? I'm presuming the less than technical language is a result of translating difficulties...or is this a joke? Is, um, family jewel confinement a common source of discomfort for men? (NSFW)
posted by Oriole Adams at 7:51 AM PST - 22 comments

The 40 oz. Archive. Your comprehensive guide to the classic refreshment. St. Ides, Olde English 800, Ballantine...I'm working up a thirst just thinking about it. A Friday link if there ever was one.
posted by QuestionableSwami at 7:43 AM PST - 22 comments

Loyalists in the American Revolution. Compelled to leave their homes in the Thirteen Colonies for their loyalty to the Crown, many of them settled in Canada. Also: Loyalist Regiments, Black Loyalists, Loyalist Songs, Reenactment groups, Indian Loyalists, and assorted personalities.
posted by pooligan at 7:38 AM PST - 11 comments

Did the earth move for you as well? The biggest earthquake to hit the "Shaky Isles" since 1968 rocked the southern South Island of New Zealand earlier today, with the tremor being felt as far away as Sydney. Did you realise that recorded earthquakes are an almost daily occurrence around the world? In fact, earthquakes with a magnitude of 1 or over happen at an alarming rate. While California is often thought of as earthquake central and New Zealand carries the "Shaky Isles" crown with justification (and not a little pride), Australia is not generally considered to be a country prone to earthquakes. Surprisingly, there have been 15 earthquakes in Australia in the past month alone, ranging from 2 to 6 in intensity.
posted by dg at 7:13 AM PST - 5 comments

Fascism with a White Picket Fence
posted by Blue Stone at 6:04 AM PST - 37 comments

Fishing for Information? Try Better Bait. [NYT] It's nice to see the NY Times take a stab at helping normal folk become better at searching the web. They point to Gary Price's resourceshelf.com, Greg R. Notess's searchengineshowdown.com and Danny Sullivan's searchenginewatch.com and Tara Calishain's researchbuzz.com.
It's just nice to see a story that's not All About Google for a change. Somewhat related articles: One over at O'Reilly On How To Build Your Own, and one at CNET on Nutch, an open-source web search engine.
Anyone have any favorite search engine tricks to share?
posted by Blake at 5:18 AM PST - 3 comments

Obsolete computers 1975-89. There's my first baby.
posted by MintSauce at 4:28 AM PST - 50 comments

Rescue Rangers! : of mice and mayhem. Quite possibly the most... profesionally realized fanfic project I've ever seen. The Disney-level (and above) quality of the draftsmanship is, for me, what distinguishes this magnum opus of Rescue Rangers devotion from the teeming, frothing hordes. I hesitate to be too harsh because, well, just look at it. There's a lot of love, time, and devotion in this gigantic comic which the man supplies to the world for free. That said, I feel it would benefit from two robots and a man named Joel up front and being frank (so to speak).
posted by kavasa at 2:55 AM PST - 17 comments

A friendly PSA from the RIAA (9mb mpg) or 5mb quicktime
posted by Espoo2 at 12:47 AM PST - 13 comments

Posters American Style - patriotic posters, posters that preach, commercial posters, events posters, etc.
posted by plep at 11:23 PM PST - 2 comments

Zombie! Zombie! Zombie! Zombie! Zombie! Zombie!
posted by muckster at 10:33 PM PST - 41 comments

I only thought I was flexible. Look around for a while. And then injure yourself as you attempt to mimick what you see. Or be more reasonable.
posted by bargle at 9:08 PM PST - 15 comments

What did Pavlov’s dog think about Pavlov?
"Look at the poor man, every time I am hungry, instead of bringing me food, he rings the bell!"
Some people just figure it out, but here on MeFi we already knew it.
posted by MzB at 2:34 PM PST - 9 comments

Spam and politics collide at Spamvertized. Via the CNET Dean spam story.
posted by turbodog at 1:57 PM PST - 1 comment

Alabama's Chief Justice refuses to remove Ten Commandments. Despite a unanimous decision by the 11th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Chief Justice Roy Moore has refused to remove the four foot high, two and a half ton monument to Christianity, vowing he'll take the case all the way to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the sharks are already beginning to circle.
posted by cohappy at 1:47 PM PST - 104 comments

Things to do in Denver When You're Stressed Unemployed meditation teacher Jeff Peckman, apparently having nothing better to do, managed to collect enough signatures to squeak his stress-reducing initiative onto the November ballot. What would he suggest for reducing stress?: Indian Sitar music in public buildings, healthier school lunches, and (surprise surprise) meditation. The Denver City Council thinks it's stupid, which they have expressed in varying degrees of bluntness:
--Councilwoman Rosemary Rodriguez: "While the ideas behind it are admirable, it would be impossible to implement."
--Council President Elbra Wedgeworth: "With a $70 million budget shortfall, this is not what we should be doing."
--Councilman Charlie Brown: "It's lunacy, it's frivolous, it's fantasy. If you want fantasy, go to Disneyland. These are city offices. We don't sit around holding hands, burning incense and singing `Kumbaya.' We are in serious economic times."
Denver martial arts instructor Ted Fowler scoffs at the proposal, calling it a waste of money and adding, “Well, I don’t listen to Indian satire music either. I’ve got a radio here and I can put on whatever music I like."
posted by Shoeburyness at 1:13 PM PST - 20 comments

Man Dies Laughing In His Sleep that's all... but what a great way to go, eh?
posted by adamms222 at 1:10 PM PST - 42 comments

For students in one Iowa school district this year, it's "sit down, shut up and eat your lunch." The principal says it curbs the noise level and makes sure kids eat all of their meal. Because if there's one thing this country (not to mention the rest of the world) needs, it's more fat kids.
posted by emelenjr at 12:53 PM PST - 53 comments

Chaos in Iraq is breeding support for terrorists. This is a refreshingly lucid piece by Jessica Stern on the situation in Iraq. Stern has also written recently on al Qaeda's protean nature. She is the author of Terror in the Name of God, and apparently she was the inspiration for Nicole Kidman's character in The Peacemaker.
posted by homunculus at 12:26 PM PST - 15 comments

The September issue of Harper's features (alas, subway portable version only) some of the "Spare and haunting, whimsical and contemplative snapshot-stories" of Oz Shelach, Israeli journalist and author of the book "Picnic Grounds: A Novel in Fragments," published by San Francisco's City Lights. [more inside]
posted by shoepal at 12:04 PM PST - 11 comments

Sex between teenagers is illegal in Wisconsin. "Sex between kids is not legal," said Assistant District Attorney Lori Kornblum, who is prosecuting the case. According to the law, "Whoever has sexual contact or sexual intercourse with a person who has not attained the age of 16 is guilty of a Class C felony." There is no mention of consent. The boy's attorney will argue that children's privacy rights include the right to make "important decisions."
posted by Durwood at 9:46 AM PST - 91 comments

Kook; thickhea having mermenta: cockeyed Follow the links and see if you can figure it out. I can't.
posted by oissubke at 8:14 AM PST - 20 comments

I've never heard of TAB (Tommy Aguilar Band) who apparently became quite popular in the mid-90's, but Off The Record is nonetheless a fascinating read, offering great insight into what it's really like to be in a band. Michelle Rubin, the bass player, offers a journal describing one of their first disastrous tours. Tommy has a write-up that is also well worth reading. The book gets rave reviews.
posted by ashbury at 7:57 AM PST - 8 comments

chemical ali captured. ny times link
now wait a second ... how much money did american taxpayers already spend to "kill" this man?
posted by specialk420 at 7:45 AM PST - 44 comments

In the latest round in the Bill O'Reilly vs Al Franken grudge match, Mr. O' Reilly attempts to prove that Mr. Franken isn't a satirist. (more inside)
posted by jpburns at 7:13 AM PST - 60 comments

How do you mean, "Hee-Haw, Sam Wainwright?" A collection of film synopses for english as a second language students. Some folks have taken on the herculean task of explaining idiomatic language in some popular films. It's an odd collection with some - Dr. Strangelove, Animal House, etc. being explained about as well as one can explain comedy. And others that even folks who do speak english don't really care about.
posted by ice_cream_motor at 6:43 AM PST - 9 comments

Squirt guns.
posted by crunchland at 11:42 PM PST - 9 comments

A wonderful wee web adventure... Beautiful, creative, strange, bizarre, and fun too... exactly what the web should be about.
posted by dazed_one at 11:30 PM PST - 33 comments

Britain's Small Wars since 1945. India, Palestine, Malaya, Korea, Suez Canal Zone, Kenya, Cyprus, Suez 1956, Borneo, Vietnam, Aden, Radfan, Oman, Dhofar, etc. Iraq and East Timor not featured, as yet.
posted by plep at 11:11 PM PST - 4 comments

TrekEarth - learning more about the world through photography. Wander around on this site - it's very cool. (via Jazzcafe's Blog)
posted by madamjujujive at 5:48 PM PST - 11 comments

From the website: "Since its inception in 1984, the Mural Arts Program has completed more murals than any other public art program in the nation - more than 2,300 indoor and outdoor murals throughout Philadelphia." To find a specific Philly mural by artist or location, try this.
posted by moonbird at 4:33 PM PST - 8 comments

Texting blamed for summer movie flops -Oh No! The good old days of 'Buying Your Gross' are gone. "No, the executives are not blaming such bombs as The Hulk, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle or Gigli on poor quality, lack of originality, or general failure to entertain. There's absolutely nothing new about that. The problem, they say, is teenagers who instant message their friends with their verdict on new films - sometimes while they are still in the cinema watching..." What's an honest marketing executive gonna do? [Via Arstechnica]
posted by kodas at 4:19 PM PST - 34 comments

Here are the "winners" (and miserable failures) in the Nerve.com Pickup Lines Contest, and an experiment to see just how effective they really are. (97% SFW, despite coming from Nerve.com.)
posted by arco at 3:47 PM PST - 38 comments

Valedictorian settles suit against district If anyone is still interested in following the Blair Hornstine saga....she's settled with the school district. The district pays $45,000 to her lawyers, $15,000 to Blair.
posted by paddbear at 2:42 PM PST - 36 comments

Suspended Animation. With its recent batch of new layoffs, Disney's animation department has just about completely abandonded production on any and all traditional 2D animated features in favour of flashier money-making 3D computer-animated fare. Is an artform dying?
posted by Robot Johnny at 2:33 PM PST - 25 comments

Louis Althusser was a French philosopher in the 1960's and 70's who taught at the Ecole Normale Superieure. An interesting read can be found [here], documenting how he scamed the French academic community into thinking that he was a "revolutionary thinker," but in fact was a hack who admitted that "he had faked much of his career including his knowledge of Marx, philosophy and history." Plus, he killed his wife - er, "while massaging his wife's neck [he] discovered he had strangled her." Brrrrr. [More inside]
posted by Quartermass at 1:52 PM PST - 5 comments

What is sampling? To some, sampling is an art. To others it's a question of permission and legality. With modern technology, movies and tv shows can also become great sources of samples, as seen in the The Top 1035 Sample Sources List.
posted by starscream at 1:12 PM PST - 20 comments

As a bunch of Average Americans living from paycheck to paycheck, we feel frustrated that our President is spending more of his time restricting the fundamental rights that our nation is founded on than fixing the economic woes we face. And, as Average Americans, we're doing what any red-blooded patriot would do when things seem their darkest — we're Mooning.
posted by elwoodwiles at 12:11 PM PST - 24 comments

Killer cartoon. Yet to get through all episodes.It's a class act so far. (via coolios & flash)
posted by johnny7 at 10:28 AM PST - 22 comments

Learning to Love PowerPoint Wired and the New York Times feature David Byrne's DVD/book Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information, which contains art he created with PowerPoint. The title's a reference to Edward Tufte, who has his own opinion of PowerPoint (which was remixed by Aaron Swartz).
posted by kirkaracha at 9:43 AM PST - 44 comments

So the Japanese, still firmly plunged in the midst of their very own "Great Depression," are considering a proposal that would have the government spend 50 billion yean a year over three decades to develop a humanoid robot with the mental, physical and emotional capacity of a 5-year-old human. The proposed name of this venture? The Atom project, named after the Japanese cartoon character known to Americans as "Astro Boy."
posted by Pinwheel at 8:38 AM PST - 44 comments

Well, I said, if they're going to insist on putting all those functions -- phone, camera, personal organizer, hand-held computer, TV remote, garage door opener, phaser -- on a single device then I want 'em on my Gameboy.
posted by jfuller at 8:10 AM PST - 7 comments

Dire Gnosis " In 1999, I started circulating a booklet called Beyond 2012, listing  information, theories and ideas from diverse sources which predict 2012 as an evolutionary pinnacle; a leap in consciousness; a dimensional shift; an end of linear time; an encounter with an asteroid; mass genetic mutation from solar or cosmic rays; etc. The ideas come from scientists, artists, mystics, alternative Egyptologists, prophets, divinatory systems, shamanic psychonauts, mythology, and Mesoamerican research.....some of it originated before the Mayan Long Count was known about, outside archaeological circles. For example, the McKenna brothers, who found a complex fractal "timewave" encoded in the ancient Chinese I Ching oracle, discovered its 2012-termination point several years before they heard anything about the Mayan Long Count."

Drugs, aliens, spiritualism, impending world catastrophe. If it's New Agey and weird, it's here: A Rosetta Stone for New Age catastrophism! Don't miss: What's New #1, What's New #2, What's New #3, #4, #5.... WARNING! - blue/green/purple/red/yellow text on a black background with a picture of a man staring upwards, lightning shooting into his eyes, with a "ZZzzzap" sound file to hammer the point across. (safe for work, I guess)
posted by troutfishing at 7:08 AM PST - 22 comments

Midnight voicejail: "It's partially about a bunch of 20-somethings, stuck in the pre-web very work-oriented suburbia world of Silicon Valley during the 80's and 90's. They took over various voicemail systems and used them as their main social and creative outlet. They came to be known as 'voicejailers'." Their radio shows are pretty amazing. Do people out there still do stuff like this, or are "flash mobs" as good as the internet era gets?
posted by Jimbob at 5:52 AM PST - 2 comments

Ouija and other talking boards.
posted by crunchland at 11:18 PM PST - 7 comments

who to kill?
jimmy carter or donald rumsfeld?
michael flatley, or downtown julie brown?
hello kitty or bug-eyed earl?
they line up, you decide.
posted by quonsar at 10:01 PM PST - 51 comments

Distributive Justice - It's an art project with both an interactive web exhibit and an installation at the American Effects exhibit currently showing at The Whitney Museum in NYC. In the words of the artists: "Distributive justice is not only a central issue of moral and political philosophy, but also an object of common-sense moral reasoning. Everyone is sensitive to the question of his/her share of the common good. Even those who get the best peace of the social pie are in need to justify the actual model of distribution. It has become a truism that most people (especially in the transition countries) experience their own social position as "unjust", relying on certain intuitive principles of distributive justice... All the parts of the project would later on be integrated on a web-portal. The actual or potential participants would thus gane a virtual space of their own designed for exchange of information and opinions (mailing list, forum, chat), creating archives etc. In this manner the project would eventually develop into a permanently open forum."
posted by The Michael The at 7:43 PM PST - 5 comments

Borscht Belt Memories When I was a kid my family would all pack up and go to the Pines Hotel. Located in South Fallsburg NY, it was classic Borscht Belt even when we visited it in the 70's, with Morris Katz painting using his trademark toilet paper to manically dab the trees with color, racing to staple the frame and sell the painting to somebody to that quasi-celebrity fellow who was known for the Simon Says games in the lobby. The hotel has been abandoned I have found out and a pang went through my heart -- surely I will have to take my gal Jenn up to visit the ruins. The photos at the site are interesting and the descriptions are too. I was hoping to go back there and rediscover the place but who knew it would be this way.
posted by RubberHen at 4:39 PM PST - 19 comments

The Public Library of Science has been getting some good press lately. An Editorial at the Sacramento Bee, The New Scientist, Washington Post and The Boston Globe, have all written up The PLoS, the organization founded by a Nobel Prize-winning biologist and two colleagues, is plotting the overthrow of the system by which scientific results are made known to the world -- a $9 billion publishing juggernaut with subscription charges that range into thousands of dollars per year.
They are committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource. Check it out at publiclibraryofscience.org.
posted by Blake at 4:06 PM PST - 5 comments

Man Shoots Six at His Surprise Party He intended to play a joke on them with his shotgun and ended up nearly killing six of them because he tripped (with his finger on the trigger of his Mossberg pump, sorry, had a Coolio moment there). I would have thought the Swedes would have already disarmed their populance by now but apparently not.
posted by fenriq at 3:51 PM PST - 35 comments

SEE! Harvey Pekar, file clerk extraordinaire, wrestle with mortality. DREAM!! with Harvey as he plots to re-sell his used books and records for absurdly inflated prices. FEAR!!! for your sanity as Harvey takes you deep into the bowels of a Cleveland veteran's hospital. RAGE!!!! with Harvey at the aggression and general obtuseness of people around him. He's a reasonable guy. He's also a noted jazz critic, book reviewer and radio commentator. Now Playing At A Theater Near You.
posted by y2karl at 2:32 PM PST - 80 comments

Last Saturday afternoon, Rep. Bill Janklow (SD) ran a stop sign and hit and killed a motorcyclist. Janklow has a history of driving poorly. In fact, his speedy habits have been the subject of jokes in the past. Will Janklow receive special treatment because of his fame? What kind of penalty does a crime such as this deserve?
posted by graventy at 1:58 PM PST - 33 comments

Extra ordinary, every day. Online exhibition drawn from the Bauhaus Collection at Harvard's splendid Busch-Reisinger Museum (which also includes fine holdings of Austrian Secessionism, 1920s abstraction, and German Expressionists). Fellow MeFi modernism buffs, you may start drooling...now.
posted by scody at 1:47 PM PST - 4 comments

[this is a good mutating egg] (Flash required)
posted by riffola at 1:46 PM PST - 25 comments

WebJam! Vector Lounge continues its journey around the digital world. Ten prententious, er prestigious web designers create some graphical works. More goodies than you can shake a stick figure at! My favorite dancing skeleton(s) wireframe from Amsterdam. Via altdude.
posted by kodas at 1:25 PM PST - 3 comments

Rap Not Music to Whitey's Ears A group of alleged white extremists facing treason charges in South Africa has complained about being forced to listen to "black" music while on remand in prison.
posted by turbanhead at 1:05 PM PST - 10 comments

"The Hell's Angels, who detained Gordon for police, were not, the sources say, gentle with sensitive areas of the rock star's body." So what's the Phish bassist thinking by going with the 9-year-old daughter of a Hell's Angels leader to a secluded area at 1am to take "art photos"? How can this possibly be "an unfortunate misunderstanding" that the girl's family wants to brush aside? Why was a girl that age allowed to be backstage alone at that time?
posted by SiW at 12:50 PM PST - 82 comments

Body sushi by Gary Arabia. (SFW)
posted by xmattxfx at 10:12 AM PST - 59 comments

The Harvard Brain Atlas has a veritable plethora of images of the brain, whether normal or diseased. Tours, 3-D Java exploration and a [very difficult] quiz are available. Plus: the top 100 brain structures!
posted by goethean at 10:06 AM PST - 3 comments

Kafka's Metamorphosis, illustrated by Peter Kuper. Flash-a-licious.
posted by sodalinda at 10:00 AM PST - 7 comments

Excellent gallery of early 20th century sheet music folios, including some very attractive samples, as well as some somewhat outdated images. via memepool
posted by jonson at 9:33 AM PST - 6 comments

Phoenix runs out of gas. In a scene reminiscent of the 70's, the entire PHX area is queued up, waiting in line for gas. Since Sunday, when this began in earnest, prices have shot up something like 50% to somewhere in between $2 and $3/gallon for unleaded. Apparently, it doesn't take much to throw off a city like Phoenix's gas supply -- a pipeline that linked Tucson to the greater PHX metro area had to be shut down earlier this month, cutting off a major supply of precious petrol from El Paso. Panic buying ensued, throwing the whole system into total chaos. Think alternative fuel is the answer? Just ask 'Propane Jane.'
posted by ph00dz at 8:35 AM PST - 66 comments

Who Wants To Marry My Daughter? Mom will interview suitors for her 22-year-old (who's also the mom of a 4-year-old), a la the NBC "reality" show. Mom's already booked some dates and a getaway weekend for the winner. Seriously. Must have "a steady job, a love of children, strong morals, and no criminal baggage." Livestock brideprice optional.
posted by serafinapekkala at 7:44 AM PST - 29 comments

And you thought your wedding day was bad? Bridezilla strikes again, resulting the police being her wedding photographer, her wedding suite a cell, this hilarious news story (RealMedia), and soon-to-be national infamy.
posted by MegoSteve at 6:33 AM PST - 38 comments

Handheld Simulators for all your retro-gaming needs. Game & Watch a-plenty or here for a java version to get the flavour without the download. Get stuck into Merlin and finally show you are superior to his complex brain, or revert back even further and snuggle up to an old friend with a speech impediment.
posted by Frasermoo at 6:12 AM PST - 7 comments

Putting your faith in your kids. Only a little soccer story about a possible new England goalkeeper but its quite sweet.
posted by biffa at 2:34 AM PST - 9 comments

Paul Newman is still HUD
posted by thedailygrowl at 12:13 AM PST - 26 comments

"The depleted uranium being used in the Middle East is a repeat of the deception of Navajos, the abuse of the innocent. 'The United States government knew all along the uranium mining would kill Navajos....' said Badoni, among Navajos organizing opposition to further uranium mining on the Navajo Nation....declassified documents in the United States reveal that both the buyer, the United States government, and Ottawa, then the world's largest supplier, withheld information from Native miners that could have saved their health and their lives."

The ongoing, deadly fallout in a certain nation where development (and use) of weapons of mass destruction has never been in doubt.
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 8:34 PM PST - 10 comments

SWAT Hand Signals Explained - That old TV show makes so much more sense now. [via /usr/bin/girl]
posted by plinth at 3:44 PM PST - 8 comments

Images of Native Americans, from UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library, is comprehensive online exhibit of over 400 years of text and images of Native American history. [via a Berkleyan article that has sample images and more info]
posted by kirkaracha at 11:58 AM PST - 8 comments

Windows Vulnerabilities XPlained I've always used Gibson Research's website to test my Windows system for vulnerabilities. With the latest BLAST aimed at MS, I thought to share his site with the class. While Mr. Gibson obviously has some axes to grind and bones to pick with Microsoft and with various software firewall makers, his explanations of how Windows can be XPloited in terms that are fairly easy to understand is most appreciated. Be sure to check out the numerous free utiltites (small downloads! I mean, really small!) that will help you plug nearly every hole in your Windows.
Didn't know MS had shut down www.windowsupdate.com til just now, either
posted by WolfDaddy at 11:49 AM PST - 41 comments

We're number one! We're number one! From a source quoted in the article: "We have the wealthiest society in human history, and we maintain the highest level of imprisonment. It's striking what that says about our approach to social problems and inequality." (apologies for the usual US-centrism)
posted by alumshubby at 10:52 AM PST - 101 comments

On Sundays West Coast Live I heard an interview with Adam Johnson, the author of Parasites Like Us, a post-apocalyptic novel with a decidedly (if somewhat spurious) anthropological bent. Literary criticism aside, as an anthropologist myself (and die-hard sci-fi reader), it got me thinking of what our vaunted Western culture may have to offer the survivors of whatever catastrophe may befall our civilization in the future. From classic novels like Earth Abides, or even The Stand, writers and storytellers have tried to discern what may be the surviving aspects of culture once all else fails; what it is that has made and defines us as modern humans, and perhaps what it is that will sustain us. So, what is it that would sustain you? What would separate you from the crazed and the mad that seem to populate the annals of post-apocalyptic literature? Or perhaps more specifically, what is it that you value of your culture and your technology that makes it worthwhile to maintain and perhaps fight your way back to?
posted by elendil71 at 10:37 AM PST - 26 comments

The inaugural World Terrorism Index from the World Markets Research Centre ranks Australia at 38 (out of 186), the UK at number 10 and the US at number 4. So who is number 1? [More inside...]
posted by i_cola at 10:07 AM PST - 10 comments

Decorate your cubical with aquatic beauties! When work or weather keeps you away from your favorite fishing hole, why not make your favorite fish from paper? Japanese paper fish dolls in pdf format. Secondary page here.
posted by crunchland at 9:35 AM PST - 10 comments

3. The girls are always there: you make breakfast - lapdancers. You brush your teeth - lapdancers. You try and sleep - lapdancers. Can you handle that?

The Lapdance Island contestant application. Can you handle that?
posted by davehat at 9:07 AM PST - 36 comments

"We've got a conservative, evangelical Christian,Republican governor, trying to get a massive turnout of black voters to pass a tax increase so he can raise taxes on Republican constituents." Alabama Governor has massive and unexpected change of heart.
posted by jonson at 9:00 AM PST - 34 comments

Opining that third-world farmers "need a better deal", the Guardian has launched kickAAS, a blog to abolish all agricultural subsidies.
posted by Ufez Jones at 7:32 AM PST - 8 comments

The Hutton Enquiry on-line. Terms of Reference: "...urgently to conduct an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr Kelly." Hearing transcripts and documentary evidence for your perusal.
posted by Frasermoo at 5:50 AM PST - 14 comments

Community Memory : the world's first public computerized bulletin board system, set up in 1972 with an ASR-33 Teletype machine. Also, please welcome Benway, possibly the world's first net personality (beating Miguel and Quonsar by a couple of weeks). More on Benway in Steven Levy's book Hackers.
posted by nylon at 5:34 AM PST - 7 comments

Health Physics Instrumentation Collection. A shoe-fitting fluoroscope, Geiger Mueller detectors, civil defence items, atomic movie posters, radioactive quack cures, radiation warning signs, etc.
Much more in the way of historical scientific instrumentation at the University of Toronto Museum of Scientific Instuments : exhibits on psychology, acoustics, and early electron microscopy; more in the collections.
American Artifacts has some interesting articles and illustrations on antique scientific and medical instruments, such as these quack eye massagers.
posted by plep at 11:40 PM PST - 10 comments

Too Much, Too Young Or Too Good To Be True? Fingers crossed! Cristiano Ronaldo is a charming and talented 18-year-old Portuguese football player, from a very poor family, who has just been bought by Manchester United for almost 20 million dollars/euros, a record amount. Given the No.7 shirt previously worn by the likes of George Best, Eric Cantona and David Beckham, his first game at Old Trafford has earned him rave reviews in the British press. Forgetting the football for a moment, how difficult is it for a teenager to deal with expectations this high and success this early in career and life?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 11:14 PM PST - 24 comments

Sudden Giant Nostril Gallery. Not as horrid as you'd imagine. Photos taken of animals, with the nose of the critter waaaay close to the camera lens. Actually, some images are pretty funny. And, no, this post has no intellectual merit. Step along, please.
posted by datawrangler at 9:10 PM PST - 9 comments

NASA thinks we can find another Earth in another nearby star. When we do, how can we possibly travel light-years to get there? It might not be as hard as you'd think . . .
posted by stbalbach at 9:09 PM PST - 31 comments

Transformation in a weekend? Recently a friend told me he'd signed up for the Landmark Forum, a personal improvement seminar offered by the Landmark Education Corporation. I did some googling on LEC and found some very disturbing material. Since we're being all "fair and balanced" on MeFi now, I'll add I found some positive material too. Oh, and since my research tells me Landmark tends to be very litigious about negative publicity, I'll just cover my orange-feathered butt and say that my negative impressions of Landmark are only my opinion, not that of MetaFilter, and I could be wrong. Have any MeFiers had any experiences - positive or negative - with LEC?
posted by orange swan at 8:33 PM PST - 46 comments

Schwarzenegger caught in lie about affair, statutory rape. After years of speculation and denials by both parties, Arnold Schwarzenegger's longtime "avenue of relaxation" and partner in outerwear spills the beans to British television. The affair was first alleged by Lacy H. Rich, Jr., a source of pictures and information for the infamous Spy Magazine article. In 1995, with his health deteriorating and the mainstream media ignoring his full allegations, Rich made numerous posts to Usenet with claims such as drug use, a longtime affair with Gigi that started when she was 16, car theft, and even prostituting himself to Paco Arce, a gay Spanish millionaire with an interest in bodybuilders. More plo chops, anyone?!
posted by insomnia_lj at 6:09 PM PST - 39 comments

newwavephotos.com You will find here a selection of photos (mainly B&W) taken mostly in the late 70's and early 80's of popular and not so popular "rock", "new wave" and "punk" groups.
posted by soundofsuburbia at 3:57 PM PST - 22 comments

Welcome to Root Beer World! Root Beer Reviews. Ask Dr. Root Beer about Root Beer Brand Names! Then ask Professor Root Beer about his reviews. And for the home brewer, a recipe for Root Beer Concentrate. More Root Beer Recipes. Root Beer History. Apart from root beer schnapps and various root beer float recipes, it's not a beverage one associates with mixed drinks. Ah, but it is so sweet and cool to drink on a hot summer's day.... Well, salud!
posted by y2karl at 2:47 PM PST - 30 comments

Think you're losing your head? Then you might want to avoid elevators for a while. Especially old elevators. This makes you wonder what happened here. Perhaps these should be mandated. These things happen more than you might think.
posted by IndigoSkye at 11:11 AM PST - 20 comments

The Victorian Sex Cry Generator. Ultimately useless, but fun. Definitely not safe for work (which is why I posted it on Sunday!)
posted by headspace at 8:42 AM PST - 14 comments

Decade of Rad: The 10 Eightiest Movies
posted by Espoo2 at 2:19 AM PST - 61 comments

Chicago 1968 - This month marks 35 years since the infamous 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Hope was at a low ebb in the wake of a turbulent year that saw the assassinations of MLK and RFK. Peace activists and yippies took to the streets to protest the Viet Nam war and to nominate a pig for president. Police responded with shocking brutality. The ensuing Chicago Seven Trial was theatre of the absurd, with a colorful and prominent cast of characters. So what's changed in 35 years? Can next year's conventions be expected to generate outrage or apathy? - more -
posted by madamjujujive at 12:20 AM PST - 25 comments

Sweden has a referendum coming up on whether to join the EMU (European Economic and Monetary Union). Blah blah blah politics blah blah, but perhaps most importantly, Gayest. Pro-EU propaganda. Ever.
posted by rusty at 10:54 PM PST - 33 comments

Black sues black for racism. "Dwight Burch, a former [Applebee's] employee, accused his manager at the Jonesboro, Ga., restaurant of repeatedly referring to him as a 'tar baby' and 'Black monkey' during his three months at the restaurant." Here's the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission press release about the lawsuit (settled out of court for $40,000). The EEOC calls the case "rare"; BET says it's "increasingly common". But wait a minute: since black males make it a point to call each other "nigger", how can you tell self-deprecating camaraderie from self-loathing colorism?
posted by 111 at 8:13 PM PST - 66 comments

Coral Reefs Doomed Well, overfishing has destroyed the Grand Banks and now according to studies, it is "dooming" the coral reefs as well. When will learn? That being said, can anyone actually see the world's governments agreeing on doing anything to stop it?
posted by Coop at 7:49 PM PST - 7 comments

Porn star Mary Carey officially launched her gubenatorial campaign in front of a sports bar in Sacaramento, today. Her platform? Legalize gay marriage, tax breast implants and set up a live, streaming webcam in the Governor's Mansion. God help me, this is starting to sound appealing to me. Are politicians so bad that porn stars look good by comparison?
posted by hipnerd at 6:34 PM PST - 24 comments

Hell - we've all thought about it, read about it (line 70 onwards 40% of the way down) and probably dismissed it as silly. Then along comes a choice candidate and the questions start again. Who would you put in hell, and why?
posted by grahamwell at 2:11 PM PST - 47 comments

The Panacea Society is a small group in England that has existed since the 1920s, waiting for Jesus to return to Earth and move into the house they've set up for him in Bedford - the new Jerusalem. Built on the prophecies of Octavia, a vicar's widow obsessed with the prophecies of 18th/19th century English prophetess Joana Southcott, the Panaceans are the keepers of a box of prophecies left by Joanna. "War, disease, crime and banditry will increase until the Bishops open Joanna Southcott's box" is still being placed in newspapers on their behalf as they send out linen squares, breathed upon by Octavia before her death, that will, if placed in jugs of water, will heal and protect. Harmless neighborhood church group or money-grubbing cult? As they receive more attention (including a documentary shown on Channel 4) and their members slowly die off, it'll be interesting to see what happens...
posted by Katemonkey at 1:24 PM PST - 5 comments

Compendium of lost words You may have been wondering what "triclavianism" means. You may have been disappointed when dictionary.com couldn't help. Look no further.
posted by adamrice at 10:57 AM PST - 18 comments

Take your hands off the GPL and back away from the keyboard... New twist in the SCO vs. IBM and the rest of the known computing universe: it appears SCO's primary argument in their case will in fact be that the GPL is invalid, trumped by US federal copyright law. (Quote redirect from via Inquirer from Wall Street Journal). And apparently, I'm not alone in beginning to think there's merit to the "Microsoft's behind all this!" conspiracy theories, since these "coincidences" are really starting to pile up...
posted by JollyWanker at 9:18 AM PST - 28 comments

Lemmings! Do you miss sending hoardes of helpless little buggers into pits, and trying to free them from their own suicidal helplessness? Then this is for you!
posted by christian at 11:38 PM PST - 24 comments

washington post editorial mocks european heat wave via the newly reskinned dangerousmeta.com
and vis a vis the thousand of deaths (primarily the elderly) and fires attributed to the heat wave. is there an especially warm place in hell reserved for the author? and who might it be?
posted by specialk420 at 10:42 PM PST - 78 comments

In the 1980's, Mark "Gator" Rogowski was on par with Tony Hawk at the top of the nascent world of professional skateboarding. Contrasting the path Hawk took in the 90's (video games, ESPN tie-ins), things did not go so well for Gator. After surviving a hideous accident in 1989, Mark turned to Jesus, and then shortly thereafter he brutally raped & murdered a female friend of his ex-girlfriend's. The documentary of his rise & amazing fall appears today in limited release.
posted by jonson at 5:11 PM PST - 42 comments

Debating the Moral Obligations of Memory. Jean Améry inspired Avishai Margalit and the late W.G. Sebald to likewise wrestle with questions of torture, revenge, and memory; questions as the destruction of memory, the obsession with memory, nationalism and memory, false memory, bad memory, opportunistic memory, lost memory, “too much” memory, memory versus reconciliation and, yes, the ethics of memory. In the Boston Review, Susie Linfield observes that for Améry, "the dream time of vengeance is the best place to be." (via the Cultural News Digest, nextbook.org)
posted by semmi at 4:57 PM PST - 11 comments

Visit Madison, Indiana. Why? We're not New York City! Sure you can be opportunistic about selling gas masks if you're an internet entrepreneur, but what if you're a small town in Indiana and you want to cash in on fear of terrorism. Why, tout what you don't have, of course. "A safe place to visit...When you visit Madison you will discover that we have no tall buildings to fear, no nuclear power plants, airports or anything anyone would want to blow up."
posted by m@ at 2:58 PM PST - 15 comments

Today is National Failures Day. Do you have any failures that are worth commemorating?
posted by strangeleftydoublethink at 2:48 PM PST - 15 comments

"The Transportation Security Administration is conducting a 'witch hunt' to ferret out and discipline employees in the federal air marshal program who have talked to the media", according to MSNBC. See previous thread on air marshals being pulled from high risk flights. The "Patriot Act" is involved, too. Via the hole.
posted by Eloquence at 2:31 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

BLACKOUT BLOG - Cleveland.com decides a weblog is the best way to cope with their servers getting knocked out in yesterday's power outage.
posted by mrbula at 2:19 PM PST - 8 comments

Statesman or Skatesman "Last Christmas my Dad and me had a big argument. He'd found a picture of Enoch Powell on a pogo stick and claimed that politicians weren't as interesting as that any more ... " Jason Whiley disagreed and wrote to as many politicians as he could asking them if they'd ever used similar transport, such as skateboards, gokarts, BMX bikes and Space Hoppers. Over Eighty responded including "three Prime Ministers, five Chancellors, six Foreign Secretaries, four Home Secretaries, and three Speakers of the House of Commons. " [via B3ta]
posted by feelinglistless at 1:38 PM PST - 5 comments

Now you too can run your own nuclear plant in this online simulation. Try to avoid a Three Mile Island situation. Friday fun? Via Blue's News
posted by WolfDaddy at 1:32 PM PST - 10 comments

Create your own little cityscape, using the drag and drop feature offered, and enjoy a little Friday time-wasting fun. Add lots of little pixel people and create your own blackout block party.
posted by FunkyHelix at 1:25 PM PST - 4 comments

The worst gimmick band of all time. Man, I vaguely remember these guys, though now I'm wishing I didn't. As if the Village People weren't bad enough, we give you... THE ALL-SPORTS BAND!!!
posted by kgasmart at 12:05 PM PST - 12 comments

See Through Kayak This has got to be the most excellent Wonder Woman-arific kayak ever created. Only thing I can see that's bad about it is if someone swims up underneath then they'd see your fat ass mashed against the bottom and might just die laughing. Or maybe the fish would die laughing? Doesn't matter though, I still want one!
posted by fenriq at 11:54 AM PST - 19 comments

A Real Fan (as in Fanatic) "A former minder of Cardiff City Football Club owner Sam Hammam was today banned from attending football matches for five years after setting off a hotel fire alarm to disturb opposition players on the night before a vital game." A bit extreme, surely (although his side did win, 1-0, in overtime). What's the worst thing you've ever done to an opposing team?
posted by LeLiLo at 11:23 AM PST - 9 comments

Don Mueller's interests include single women, video production and radio/TV announcing. The fifty-something Colorado bachelor is "secretly famous" and a member of Mensa. Don debates why he's not attracted to fat women, takes lessons in flirting and provides statistical proof as to why he's still single. Don even hits a first date home run with the help of Old School Hollywood royalty! In the days of well-designed and well-written weblogs, this is one of a disappearing breed of personal websites that will be missed (albeit in an ironic kinda way).
posted by VelvetHellvis at 9:53 AM PST - 32 comments

Top 10 ways to cope with power outages
From the Iraqis, who've had plenty of exeprience with this recently. (via Tapped)
posted by Gilbert at 9:49 AM PST - 19 comments

The New Jersey Churchscape. Quite fascinating. Photos, too.
posted by plep at 8:51 AM PST - 7 comments

Ren & Stimpy create a home page for the web, perform usability analysis on it, and analyze the results using multiple regression. "With the help of three hardworking, good looking, talented, and underpaid graduate students, we'll find a better way to make a home page!"
posted by ewagoner at 8:47 AM PST - 27 comments

Mr. Cowasjee writes about the noble beginning of Pakistan's government (again) this week, how the dream has gone unrealized, and how the predicted degeneration occurred. Why does this happen? Why are fundamentalist freaks trying to destroy the dream in our own country? Why don't people pay attention to Thomas Jefferson and leave religion at home?
posted by ewkpates at 7:49 AM PST - 8 comments

Ted Koppel was prank called on live TV. So I was watching the coverage of the Blackout on ABC, and Ted Koppel was doing his live coverage. He got a call from a "Bob Dobbs" who claimed to be some muckity muck with the subway transit authority. Then "Bob Dobbs" kept telling people to log on to thankyoufortakingmycall.com to get emergency instructions. It was pretty funny. Ted was pretty clueless that it was a prank but I guess someone in the control room eventually got a clue and cut the caller.
posted by geekhorde at 10:46 PM PST - 26 comments

Welcome to the Blackout History Project. With all the hub-bub today, josh m. marshall of talkingpointsmemo posted a link to an associates history of two other nyc blackouts. marshall says:

The Blackout History Project...which covers the social history of these events, what happened, people's reminiscences in written and recorded formats, and so forth. The site also has a great deal of information about just how blackouts happen, what these 'grids' are that folks are talking about, and how various forms of electricity deregulation which have taking place over recent years have made an event like we've seen today much more likely.

take it easy nyers and anyone else blacked out.
posted by asparagus_berlin at 9:57 PM PST - 21 comments

The ARKive "is the Noah's Ark for the Internet era - the world's centralised digital library of films, photographs and associated recordings of species, accessible to all via the world wide web."
posted by tbc at 9:30 PM PST - 4 comments

The left hates bush the way the right hated clinton Here's an interesting article on, of all places, fox news illustrating the similarities between Bush and Clinton. It's a pretty intresting essay, and actualy seems to be... ghasp, fair and ballanced :P
posted by delmoi at 5:04 PM PST - 42 comments

"Bring them home now!" is a campaign of military families, veterans, active duty personnel, reservists and others opposed to the ongoing war in Iraq and galvanized to action by George W. Bush's inane and reckless challenge to armed Iraqis resisting occupation to "Bring 'em on." At a news conference yesterday, reported the Washington Post, the organization has stated their goals of returning to their home bases the 150,000 U.S. troops serving in Iraq.
posted by dejah420 at 4:43 PM PST - 18 comments

Metafilter: Fair & Balanced[tm] - reclaim free speech tomorrow! This Friday, August 15, is Fair And Balanced day on the Internet... according to Neal Pollack, Atrios and others. Development to this thread
posted by dash_slot- at 4:31 PM PST - 29 comments

Drug offenders to be evicted. While this law is meant to target methamphetamine labs, it is worded to allow for the eviction of anyone who smokes pot in his home twice in one year, for example.
posted by spazzm at 4:29 PM PST - 6 comments

Democracy might be impossible, US was told
The CIA's March report concluded that Iraqi society and history showed little evidence to support the creation of democratic institutions, going so far as to say its prospects for democracy could be "impossible," according to intelligence officials who have seen it. The assessment was based on Iraq's history of repression and war; clan, tribal and religious conflict; and its lack of experience as a viable country prior to its arbitrary creation as a monarchy by British colonialists after World War I.
The State Department came to the same conclusion. "Liberal democracy would be difficult to achieve in Iraq," said a March State Department report, first reported by the Los Angeles Times. "Electoral democracy, were it to emerge, could well be subject to exploitation by anti-American elements."
posted by y2karl at 3:50 PM PST - 60 comments

Support out troops? The Pentagon wants to cut the pay of its 148,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, who are already contending with guerrilla-style attacks, homesickness and 120- degree-plus heat.
posted by whatever at 2:19 PM PST - 28 comments

Massive New York power outage? Boing Boing is among the first to report that a massive power outage just hit much of the Northeast, including New York, Cleveland and Detroit. CNN's breaking news just confirmed it.
posted by waxpancake at 1:33 PM PST - 189 comments

Hollywood Is Calling. What do b-list celebrities do when they aren't running for governor? They converse with you -- for a fee. Because those What's Happening? stories never get old, right?
posted by herc at 12:02 PM PST - 13 comments

Dr. Laura Schlessinger renounces Orthodox Judaism: Although Schlessinger said she still "considers" herself Jewish, "My identifying with this entity and my fulfilling the rituals, etc., of the entity — that has ended." I'd link to the show in question but it appears to be available by subscription only.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 11:32 AM PST - 25 comments

What makes Dogs happy? Food? Sex? Working? Being pampered and spoiled? A whole host of books are out there alternating between the belief that your dog is somewhere between a fuzzy-wuzzy lovey parasite and a quasi-human companion. (My dog sez, food and belly rubs...)
posted by vito90 at 10:46 AM PST - 23 comments

Can the man who started the CRIPS really be reformed? A great article from the NY Times. Stanley "Tookie" Williams, one of the two founders of the LA gang, the Crips, has written numerous books and now does "public" speaking to young men to warn them away from the gang life. Is he serious? Is he reformed? Or is he just trying to make himself look good to get off death row? Does this "Scared Straight" stuff really work?
posted by aacheson at 10:42 AM PST - 4 comments

"I was thinking, 'The only way to make something that won't come off is to tie it on,' and then it just popped in my mind - go around the testicles." Ann Arbor man invents new condom, wife rejoices.
posted by sandor at 9:55 AM PST - 47 comments

The Speech Accent Archive, with 264 audio clips of native and non-native English speakers reading the same paragraph. Wonderful sounds if you love languages (and who doesn't?), including Bambara, Vietnamese, Uzbek, Quechua and the instantly recognizable Synthesized. [via Tara Calishan's invaluable ResearchBuzz]
posted by mediareport at 9:29 AM PST - 22 comments

Americans pay lip service to diversity says David Brooks in The Atlantic. Though we talk about the melting pot, we tend to group ourselves with similar people. Do you really care enough about diversity to actively seek it out? Is metafilter a virtual example of this phenomenon?
posted by rainbaby at 9:21 AM PST - 61 comments

If you're looking for a time machine that also cuts grass, look no further than the Reel Lawn Mower History and Preservation Project. After you mow, you can host a croquet party!
posted by ewagoner at 8:42 AM PST - 6 comments

The Roma of Central and Eastern Europe. A photographic exhibition. More photos :- The Dream (photographs of Bulgarian gypsies); the gypsies of Romania; the gypsies of Andalusia; urban gypsies in London; gypsies of Pata-Rat, Transylvania. Katarzyna Pollok is a Roma gypsy artist (site partly in German).
posted by plep at 8:13 AM PST - 11 comments

The Spirit of Butts Farm has made it across the Atlantic in one piece. Not bad for a toy plane designed by deaf and blind Maynard Hill, who already holds many records for RC aircraft flights. Those with less lofty ambitions could fly this helicopter in their living room or just practise on their computer screen.
posted by Geo at 7:22 AM PST - 8 comments

The cover of the Sept. 4, 2003, Rolling Stone declares Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen "America's favorite fantasy," joining the publisher of Olsen Twins Countdown and Howard Stern in celebration of jailbait. "What were once adorable pre-pubescent girls on the hit series Full House are now the forbidden fruits of blossoming teenage sexuality." (Via Eschaton.)
posted by rcade at 6:34 AM PST - 135 comments

First Stolen Segway Recovered. It was inevitable. And it was all caught on tape. Segway owners and members of SegwayChat covertly planned and implemented a successful sting operation to recover a stolen Segway HT. (Main link goes to 5 MB embedded Windows Media video of actual sting taking place!)
posted by docjohn at 6:29 AM PST - 30 comments

Gamma-ray weapons could trigger next arms race "The hafnium explosive could be extremely powerful. One gram of fully charged hafnium isomer could store more energy than 50 kilograms of TNT. Miniature missiles could be made with warheads that are far more powerful than existing conventional weapons, giving massively enhanced firepower to the armed forces using them." Half of me thinks: "WOW! Cool!" The other 1% thinks: "We've really had it now"
posted by hmgovt at 2:32 AM PST - 25 comments

Don't Have Enough Joe? After the recent info about the prototype G.I. Joe going on sale (and not getting quite what was wanted) and the recent POTUS Doll (action figure dammit!) I bebopped around and found a site that proports to be a force of good to get a G.I. Joe movie made. But can it really be for good when it has pages and images like this?
posted by Dagobert at 11:56 PM PST - 11 comments

Dem Blogs This community is filled with bloggers and I wondered if anyone had seen Maureen O'Dowd's take on how the Presidential Candidates are starting to use, for better or worse, "blogging" as a method to get their "message" across. ( Registration required )
posted by RubberHen at 8:22 PM PST - 8 comments

Simon Cowell Made Love To Me (via Record of the Day) Reality TV's campest pantomime villain, responsible in his day job as a music exec for many dire cash-in records, has himself become the subject of a novelty song. Its conclusion? "He was quite good".
posted by skylar at 4:59 PM PST - 5 comments

Statistical analysis killed the radio star. Eigenradio analyzes the frequency content of 20+ stations at once, and mashes it, via math I don't understand, into music that is sometimes eerily beautiful, sometimes cryptically funky, and well, sometimes sounds like an Autechre CD stuck in a blender. Who says media amalgamation is a bad thing?
posted by arto at 3:45 PM PST - 33 comments

The Qualifying Exam Meets the Cult of Personality. I did abysmally on Marcel's People test. How 'bout you?
posted by KF at 1:37 PM PST - 25 comments

Warren Buffett endorses Schwarzenegger for CA Governor That's an interesting development which reminds us that beyond the circus there actually may be a real election at stake.
posted by clevershark at 1:02 PM PST - 52 comments

The 20 Worst Figures in American History, as selected by 39 right-wing bloggers selected by Right Wing News. For balance, they also asked 36 left-wing bloggers for their list.
[via Mark A. R. Kleiman, who has some interesting commentary; more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 11:53 AM PST - 81 comments

Apocalyptic image gallery A scholarly site with a large collection of images illustrating the Revelation of St. John, with emphasis on medieval painting, carving, and sculpture. Felix Just, S. J. has compiled a more diverse collection that includes an extensive set of contemporary images. As a lover of all things nineteenth-century, I'm rather partial to Francis Danby (I just saw The Deluge at the Tate) and John Martin.
posted by thomas j wise at 11:11 AM PST - 7 comments

" I discovered that by severing a nerve behind the knee, the muscle would atrophy." Plastic surgery is booming in Asia, including some very painful procedures (such as the aforementioned trick to achieve "Western-style" legs.)
posted by Oriole Adams at 11:09 AM PST - 25 comments

Czech and Slovak staged photographs, including post-surrealist portraits, middle European dreamscapes, and theatre of the absurd staged for the camera.
posted by scody at 11:01 AM PST - 6 comments

Postal ID Plan A government report urges the U.S. Postal Service to create "smart stamps" to track the identity of people who send mail. [more inside]
posted by Irontom at 10:17 AM PST - 20 comments

The Man Who Mistook His Girlfriend for a Robot When David Hanson set out to build a robotic head, he saw no reason not to make it look just like a human. Then he stumbled into the Uncanny Valley. (For contrast and comparison, a similarly-themed prior post).
posted by LinusMines at 8:57 AM PST - 12 comments

The launch page for Super Sticky Post It Notes has a creepy staged picture of a mom handing her daughter a post-it laden lunch box. Besides the creepy look on mom's face and the reminder post-it stuck to the outside of the front door, I also like how the writing on each post it is horizontal, regardless of the orientation of the post it. It's like one of those "can you pick out the 12 things wrong with this picture" games. I love advertising.
posted by jonah at 8:51 AM PST - 34 comments

Surprisingly work safe. It was while reading this WashPost article that I first discovered the joys of professional Sexing. Sexing work used to be a job for independent workers, but it is increasingly organized. It's still a fun hobby, though. Choose your keywords wisely when googling for more information.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:32 AM PST - 7 comments

Passport in Time is a volunteer program of the USDA Forest Service where you can be a real-life archaeologist for a week or just a weekend. There are projects located around the country, around the calendar. With no previous experience, you can help professional archaeologists survey and excavate sites ranging in age from the early 1900s back to the paleolithic. Myself, I helped excavate Pueblo de la Mesa, a pre-Columbian Anasazi site atop a lonely mesa in New Mexico.
posted by ewagoner at 8:30 AM PST - 12 comments

$20,000 bonus to official who agreed on nuke claim A former Energy Department intelligence chief who agreed with the White House claim that Iraq had reconstituted its defunct nuclear-arms program was awarded a total of $20,500 in bonuses during the build-up to the war, WorldNetDaily has learned...His officers argued at a pre-briefing at Energy headquarters that there was no hard evidence to support the alarming Iraq nuclear charge, and asked to join State Department's dissenting opinion, Energy officials say. Rider ordered them to "shut up and sit down," according to sources familiar with the meeting.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 8:28 AM PST - 21 comments

What makes us cry? What makes you cry? Why, particularly, do acts of kindness make some of us cry?
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 7:54 AM PST - 75 comments

The Khoo Kongsi. Images and history of a Chinese clanhouse in Penang, Malaysia.
The 'kongsi' or clanhouses provided a support network for members of the southern Chinese families who migrated to southeast Asia during the 18th century. The Khoo Kongsi is one of the most impressive. Here's an article on the history of the Cheah Kongsi.
More on the heritage of Penang at the Penang Heritage Trust, the Penang Story, and the Penang File.
The history of the Chinese community in Penang; the history of the Indian community in Penang; and Penang's Victorian architecture.
For more news on Malaysia: Malaysiakini, an independent online news service which has been in trouble with the government, is excellent.
posted by plep at 7:02 AM PST - 8 comments

Apocalypse Sooner or Later? "I am not sure whether he knows all of the prophecies and how deep of a student he has been in God's Word, but I was contacted a few weeks ago by the Office of Public Liaison for the White House and by the National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to make an outline. And I’ve spent hours preparing it. I will release this information to the public in September, but it’s in his hands.... He will know exactly what is going to happen in the Middle East and what part he will have under the leading of the Holy Spirit of God. So, it's a tremendous time to be alive."
posted by grabbingsand at 6:39 AM PST - 17 comments

Mass-produced diamonds Two startups are threatening the De Beers diamond monopoly. They plan to use the money they make from their mass-produced diamonds to "reshape the computing industry". Interesting stuff.
posted by pizzasub at 6:08 AM PST - 51 comments

Come out! Come out, wherever you are!!! The search for the Yeti has gone high tech. The latest "search party", if you will, is from Japan and employing infrared cameras in it's attempt to prove the existance of the Yeti. Team leader Yoshiteru Takahashi doesn't want to capture it but does want to shake it's hand(?!).
posted by Civa at 5:29 AM PST - 14 comments

Pssst... got some luvverly bits of rocket here, guv'nor. Bring darn a plane like nobody's business. Yours for $90,000. Nah, 'cos I like you, I'll do you a deal: $85,000.

Black market missiles, anybody? [apologies for the Cockney accent]
posted by humuhumu at 2:06 AM PST - 21 comments

Look, up in the sky, it's a search engine, it's a phone book, it's....a calculator? Start/Programs/Accessories/awww screw it, I've got Google. Found this by searching for my phone number (with the parens in the wrong place) because a magazine article told my girlfriend to. By the way, my phone number is -7 662.
posted by m@ at 7:30 PM PST - 53 comments

It "...has no side effects, causes no allergic reactions, is not addictive" and patients can even be taught how to administer it to themselves, yet hypnosis isn't used as widely as pain drugs, anitdepressants and pharmaceuticals. (More inside.)
posted by emelenjr at 7:23 PM PST - 24 comments

Do Penis Enlargement Pills Work? I'll be chronicling my experience here for the benefit of others. I'll add that I am just a regular guy living in New York City (Go Yankees!) who wants a larger penis. (via Kill Ugly Radio). I'll be curious to hear how this progresses. This is safe for work (no pics; just measurements).
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 4:19 PM PST - 40 comments

Officials: Bush Administration Was Slow to Approve Drones to Kill Bin Laden I am not able to say how accurate this posting is, but I post it because it strikes me that if true, Bush is certainly not the strong and forthright Texan gunman he has been made out to be. Any one know more on this issue?
posted by Postroad at 2:00 PM PST - 37 comments

"On Liberty" (1859), John Stuart Mill's classic, is all over the Web, says this article in Salon. "It stands to reason that the Net would embrace Mill, and not only because his text is now in the public domain: The Internet is the vastest marketplace of ideas that mankind has yet managed to create. It's an unbounded and still growing embodiment of Mill's ideals."
posted by homunculus at 1:22 PM PST - 4 comments

It's illegal to answer questions about where something is produced... if it's produced in Israel. Or so a Missouri company has just discovered. They've been fined for answering the question, "Are any of these products made in Israel, or made of Israeli materials?"
posted by dejah420 at 1:17 PM PST - 30 comments

fractal-recursions... huge gallery of images and animations made with ultra-fractal (for windows).
posted by crunchland at 12:24 PM PST - 19 comments

Retrolounge is a compendium of the next new thing in design, art, architecture and fashion. I kid! Truly, go-go boots make me swoon.
posted by pedantic at 12:12 PM PST - 7 comments

It's official: 98% of people have had songs stuck in their heads. What about the other 2%? They don't have to contend with top offenders like the Mister Softee song, "Whoomp, There It Is" or "It's A Small World After All" ringing in their ears for hours.
posted by marzenie99 at 11:04 AM PST - 127 comments

In a new twist to a theme discussed earlier on MeFi, on language censorship (but in an entirely different case) the UK might be the first country to jail a man for using a single court-prohibited word in public.
As repellent as the defendant's behaviour was, can such a case of censorship and prohibition of freedom of speech ever be justified?
posted by Blue Stone at 9:21 AM PST - 36 comments

Remixed G.I. Joe PSAs. Chicago filmmaker Eric Fensler has taken the "Knowing Is Half the Battle" PSAs that accompanied the 1980s G.I. Joe cartoon series and replaced the audio tracks with his own. The results are utterly hilarious. (Audio NSFW.) This site only has four, but there are more out there (details inside).
posted by staggernation at 8:51 AM PST - 31 comments

Do you believe in miracles? During the height of the cold war, an unlikely group of Americans did the impossible. Herb Brooks gathered these college athletes into a team, and executed the miracle on ice, defeating the "unbeatable" Soviet Union. Sadly, Herb Brooks has died, leaving behind family, friends and fans who wonder if he might still be alive, had he buckled up.
posted by mosch at 8:06 AM PST - 20 comments

Last week, Josh Marshall of TPM broke a story on his blog, about US detention of Mahdi Obeidi, who has been held under American surveillance since the fall of Baghdad. Marshall claims that Obeidi is being held due to his refusal to tell his captors what they want to hear as regards the alleged Iraqi nuclear program. It took a few days, but the story has now gone beyond the "blogosphere" and was picked up by Newsweek's Michael Hirsh in yesterday's story Is Iraqi Intel Still Being Manipulated?
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 8:00 AM PST - 7 comments

Because Regime Change Begins At Home... Forget the Iraqi leadership cards, these cards are much more fun. You can also check out this news article for more info. Although I am surprised they had a hard time finding a printer willing to do the job. Makes playing a game of "asshole/president" that much more meaningful.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 7:53 AM PST - 10 comments

Giuseppe Garibaldi, who united Italy in the 1860s, was asked by Lincoln to lead the army during the US Civil War. Garibaldi said he would if Lincoln officially declared that the aim of the war was to end slavery. Lincoln replied that he couldn't at that time, and so Garibaldi moved on to other things. But what if Giuseppe had gotten involved? The Papacy would clearly have denounced the North (indeed, the pope was the only world leader to recognize the Confederacy). The French hated him; the English loved him. Had he led the Federal troops, would France have jumped in on the side of the South? Would England have then jumped in on the Union side to counter? A whole different world history, perhaps, hanging on a yes/no question.
posted by ewagoner at 7:48 AM PST - 12 comments

Save Our State: Vote Terry Tate. (NYT/rr) Remember the Reebok Superbowl ad featuring the "office linebacker"? Well, that actor just entered the California governor's race. As the bumpersticker says, "Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?" Name your pick for next has-been to get on the ballot...I smell Kato.
posted by serafinapekkala at 7:44 AM PST - 19 comments

Perseid shower will peak in the (very) small hours of tomorrow morning...
We're in for a treat this year because Mars, at the closest it has been to Earth in almost 60,000 years, is also in sight. But the moon might cause smaller, fainter Perseid objects to be all but invisibile. If you're in Europe or North America, or elsewhere in the north hemisphere, you should be able to see something...
posted by tomcosgrave at 7:13 AM PST - 11 comments

The Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia. Posters, pamphlets, social protest material. 'In the morning hours of August 21, 1968, the Soviet army invaded Czechoslovakia along with troops from four other Warsaw Pact countries. The occupation was the beginning of the end for the Czechoslovak reform movement known as the Prague Spring. This web site contains material from the days immediately following the invasion, and they reflect the atmosphere in Czechoslovakia at the time: tense, chaotic, uncertain, full of pathos, fear, and expectation... '
Related :- the Berlin Wall and East Side Gallery; A Concrete Curtain: The Life and Death of the Berlin Wall; Szoborpark in Budapest, with its gigantic Cold War-era statues.
posted by plep at 5:59 AM PST - 6 comments

Walk the Great Wall of China, or rather, take a virtual stroll through the use of a QTVR-esque java applet along a good stretch of the Wall that seems to be in pretty fair shape. For the vast majority of us that will never get there in person, this is an interesting close up.
posted by jonson at 10:43 PM PST - 7 comments

Arnold the Barbarian? We've heard that the wannabe governator faces potentially scandalous accusations, but what are they? I compiled a list which includes statuatory rape, infidelity, repeated claims of sexual harassment, sexist remarks, recreational drug use (which he lied about in the January 1988 edition of Playboy), steroid use, nude photography (not worksafe), possible health issues related to open heart surgery and steroids, his support for ex-Nazi Kurt Waldheim, multiple claims that he used to idolize Hitler... and even an Enron connection -- Arnie had a private meeting on May 26, 2001 with Kenneth Lay, where Lay sought support for his solution to the California energy crisis, opposing price caps on electricity and federal assistance. The Bush administration supported Lay's solution and stood by while Enron defrauded Californians out of billions... but did Arnie use his influence to drum up support for Lay's plan?! Will any of these charges stick?
posted by insomnia_lj at 7:48 PM PST - 58 comments

String and Knot, Theory of Inca Writing An article today in the NY Times (you know the drill, I think it's metafi/metafi, no?) regarding a new theory to do with the decoding of the "cryptic knotted strings known as khipu".
If khipu is indeed the medium of a writing system, Dr. Gary Urton of Harvard says, this is entirely different from any of the known ancient scripts, beginning with the cuneiform of Mesopotamia more than 5,000 years ago. The khipu did not record information in graphic signs for words, but rather a kind of three-dimensional binary code similar to the language of today's computers. Dr. Urton, an anthropologist and a MacArthur fellow, suggests that the Inca manipulated strings and knots to convey certain meanings. By an accumulation of binary choices, khipu makers encoded and stored information in a shared system of record keeping that could be read throughout the Inca domain.
More information about Urton's book, which is to be published this month, here; more information about the Khipu themselves and further linkage here (note: this link is to an angelfire page, popups and limited bandwidth are to be expected). From Cornell, detailed descriptions of 200 Khipu, with photographs.
posted by jokeefe at 5:30 PM PST - 11 comments

The colour of numbers - For the math geeks out there (which I'm not - maybe his theories will be shot down in flames), Karl Palmen has discovered that numbers can be assigned one of eight "colours", related to their prime factors. He goes on to show the interesting mathematical properties of these colours. A novel way of playing with numbers. Software is on offer.
posted by Jimbob at 5:28 PM PST - 21 comments

How the Iraq war was lost. "'These were the orders of an imbecile. Qusai [Hussein] was like a teenager playing a video war game,' [Republican Guard Col. Raeed] Faik, 33, said in the cool reception room of his Baghdad home, gesturing to his teenage son banging away on a computer combat game." "We were like 10 different armies fighting their own private wars," said another Iraqi soldier. An account of the war as seen through the eyes of the Iraqi military.
posted by Zonker at 5:04 PM PST - 11 comments

In May 1999, Chris and Erin Ratay quit their jobs, sold their Upper West Side Manhattan apartment, and shipped their motorcycles to Morocco to begin a trip around the world. Now, four years, 50 countries, and 100,000 miles later, they're back home. They've kept a continuously updated web journal over the past four years, available here. Ignore the unfortunate font and JavaScript choices and read this couple's incredible story.
posted by grrarrgh00 at 3:28 PM PST - 7 comments

"So I thought about the story of the rabbit jumping into the fire and realized that Grendel would have wanted to give me every last little bit of joy possible, and I should do something truly personal with her body. I decided to make a fancy dinner with her." (via memepool)
posted by emelenjr at 10:01 AM PST - 85 comments

Supreme Court Denies Castillo Appeal. Castillo was charged with two counts of obscenity for selling adult comic books to adults. The State prosecutor did not offer contradictory testimony, but secured a guilty verdict with a closing argument stating, “I don’t care what type of evidence or what type of testimony is out there, use your rationality, use your common sense. Comic books, traditionally what we think of, are for kids. This is in a store directly across from an elementary school and it is put in a medium, in a forum, to directly appeal to kids. That is why we are here, ladies and gentlemen. … We’re here to get this off the shelf.” Castillo was found guilty and sentenced to 180 days in jail, a year probation, and a $4,000 fine.
posted by jopreacher at 9:14 AM PST - 36 comments

"Buildings of Disaster are miniature replicas of famous structures where some tragic or terrible events happened to take place. The images of burning or exploded buildings make a different, populist history of architecture, one based on emotional involvement rather than scholarly appreciation."
posted by MrMoonPie at 8:50 AM PST - 27 comments

Terminus1525.ca is a Canadian art community funded by the Canada Council for the Arts. Of course, you don't have to be Canadian to sign up. It's a neat place to show off your own art, be it political, urban, or just strange. If nothing else, their live Graffiti Wall is cool.
posted by dum2007 at 8:49 AM PST - 1 comment

Atlantic Ocean Abrupt Temperature Drop A Mystery for Scientists.
posted by stbalbach at 8:40 AM PST - 12 comments

The Unemployed Philosopher’s Guild began in 1992 when two students of philosophy found their inner creativity in the midst of a dwindling academic job market. As it turned out, fulfilling gift giving needs proved to be almost as satisfying as probing eternal questions. They offer such items as "Freudian Slippers", "Nietzsche's Will to Power Bars", "Brainy Beanies", and "Dorothy Parker Martini Glasses".
posted by ewagoner at 7:39 AM PST - 18 comments

"The only lady I've kissed is my mom" -- WA couple plan their first kiss...on the altar at their wedding. Is there something profound (and not just creepy) about postponing everything but hand-holding until after the vows? Or are they doomed to disappointment? (Via Obscure)
posted by serafinapekkala at 6:58 AM PST - 159 comments

The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Online exhibit.
Related :- Buddhist art and ritual from Nepal and Tibet; photos of Tibet in the 1940s; dissecting the mandala; mandala and temple sacred architecture in Tibet; mandala sand painting; early Tibetan mandalas; Buddhist sculpture and paintings; the Norbulingka Institute.
posted by plep at 2:51 AM PST - 9 comments

The Night Air is a beautifully constructed radio show broadcast on Radio National here in Australia. It's essentially cut up bits of documentary, music and audio art .. woven together into a one and half hour themed show. It makes great headphone listening at work.
posted by mrben at 2:21 AM PST - 7 comments

Duct tape. Celebrity worship. Webbed penii. The obvious. Memory and castration. Kroger store-brand pasta sauce. Killer pancakes.

No matter what you're looking for, you'll probably find something interesting in the absolutely free 12 million article database, PubMed. Warning: may cause addiction.
posted by LimePi at 11:53 PM PST - 15 comments

Top hyundai Executive Plunges to his Death 4 days ago, amidst an ongoing investigation into a 100 million dollar underground transfer between Chung Mong-hun and the government of North Korea. But then again, its not like the sky wasn't already falling on him.
posted by Keyser Soze at 11:15 PM PST - 8 comments

DA ENGLISH-2-12-Y3AR-OLD-AOLER TRANSLA2R WIL TAEK WUT U WRIET IN IT AND TURN IT IN2 TEH MAN3R A 12-YEAR-OLD AOLER WUD WRIET IT!1!1 LOL JUST WUT U NED 2 KIK START A MONDAY!!1!!
posted by riffola at 10:42 PM PST - 31 comments

The New York Times runs a front page Arts and Leisure feature on Dashboard Confessional and emo (no! it's not emo! not emo!) in general. It's always fun to see the Grey Lady's earnest, respectful, decidedly National Geographic take on youth subcultures (for example, something tells me the Dawson's Creek anecdote didn't happen quite the way it was reported). Despite its reputation for whiney self absorbment, the Subgenre That Will Not Be Named has produced some masterpieces; will it finally get the (pick one) respect/condemnation it deserves?
posted by Tlogmer at 8:23 PM PST - 45 comments

Beware technology that disconnects war from politics. This is a very interesting article by Fredrick Kagan on the growing gulf between America's military means and political ends. "Unless the direction and nature of military transformation change dramatically, the American public should expect to see in the future many more wars in which U.S. armed forces triumph but the American political vision fails."
posted by homunculus at 3:40 PM PST - 16 comments

Pancake. Kansas, flatter than.
posted by srboisvert at 3:11 PM PST - 23 comments

ABA games makes some of the coolest free games available. I especially like rRootage and Noiz2sa [OS X ports], whose wireframe graphics initially remind you of oldies like Tempest and Asteroids, but whose gameplay is much closer to recent twitch classics like Raiden and Ikaruga. If you want a little preview of how these games play without making the commitment to download a ZIP file, you can check out a slightly simplified Noiz2 in your browser [java].
posted by britain at 2:26 PM PST - 12 comments

Butt implants For the woman who asks "do these jeans make my ass look skinny?" As disconcerting as retouching in silicon can be, retouching with silicone is moreso. Or if you're nostalgic for old-fashioned airbrushing, but want something more direct, you can just airbrush yourself.
posted by adamrice at 12:08 PM PST - 20 comments

Transportation around the world is a huge database of photos focusing on two topics: transportation mode and geography. From bullet trains to dogsleds and camel caravans to tramways, - browse by location or by topic. Also related: One of the best transportation museums in the world is the Verkehrshaus der Schweiz in Lucern, Switzerland. (via booknotes)
posted by madamjujujive at 7:17 AM PST - 3 comments

There will be over 150 candidates on the ballot at the California recall. Does anyone else think that this might lead to ballot woes? Will officials use a 'butterfly' design to save space? What are your thoughts on this?
posted by clevershark at 6:59 AM PST - 40 comments

Interesting Ideas. Roadside and outsider art: prison art, Chicago's lakefront, anonymous portraits, ruins, motels, etc.
Related Outsiderart.info.
posted by plep at 2:21 AM PST - 10 comments

51 Migs Found Buried in Iraq
posted by Espoo2 at 11:39 PM PST - 50 comments

The fire that will not die. In December 1958, 92 children and three nuns died in the Our Lady of the Angels school fire. Only one fire escape, no sprinklers, layers of petroleum-based paint, no alarm connected to the fire department - in retrospect, it was a disaster waiting to happen. How many of us ever took school fire drills seriously?
posted by Oriole Adams at 10:20 PM PST - 15 comments

Documented Life Miles has put his whole life up online for us to look at pictorially. It's actually quite a poignant exercise, as we see the sweep of a life within a few clicks of a mouse -- like a weblog telling his story over a greatly extended period.
posted by feelinglistless at 5:30 PM PST - 8 comments

Glider PRO , a Macintosh game created by John Calhoun nearly ten years ago, was an innovative and one-of-a-kind title — a refreshing alternative to typical video games of warfare or board game translation. In the game, the player controls a small paper glider through a perilous household, catching updrafts from floor vents and gliding swiftly though the household collecting items, making sure never to touch the floor or the dangers abound. The long-time software publishers of Glider, Casady & Greene have recently folded, and have since returned the distribution rights to Glider back to Calhoun, who is now graciously offering the game as a download on his Web site, free of charge. The game remains as fun and unique as when it first appeared. (Mac only.)
posted by Down10 at 3:00 PM PST - 24 comments

Insurance companies abandon brokerage firms. A brokerage firm would have to have a catastrophic meltdown before insurance would pay the "last" dime to protect investors' accounts, after all other means had been exhausted. In fact, they haven't had to pay a single claim in over 30 years. So why are three major insurers suddenly getting out of the business? (NYT subscription req.)
posted by kablam at 2:53 PM PST - 3 comments

Anxious? Depressed? - you need more brain cells. Just take one of these twice a day. New research shows that antidepressants may not work as we thought at all, rather they actually stimulate growth of cells in the hippocampus area of the brain. This may all be for the good - but it seems strange that we release millions of happy pills and market them as safe without knowing for sure what they do. Perhaps its the money talking.
posted by grahamwell at 1:12 PM PST - 67 comments

The Indiana Supreme Court scolded personal injury law firm Keller & Keller for their television ads that "create an impression that the claims they handle are settled, not because of the specific facts or legal circumstances of the claims, but merely by the mention of the name of the respondents' firm to insurance companies." Interestingly a search for this turned up Network Affiliates Incorporated, a company that sells advertising to lawyers. Television ads are evidently not the best way to find competent legal council and are considered to be unethical in parts of Australia. (Just to provide four different points of view on this issue.)
posted by KirkJobSluder at 11:21 AM PST - 13 comments

Digital retouching of models. (via kottke)
posted by gwint at 9:25 AM PST - 55 comments

Space Dudes! Space Dudes is fifty levels of shooting... PacMan ghosts? It's a Java game. Simple but I found it addictive.
posted by bargle at 11:46 PM PST - 6 comments

Did he who made the lamb make thee? O. vulgaris, now appearing on a sea floor near you.
posted by Hildago at 9:50 PM PST - 12 comments

At Fermilab , one of about seventy high energy particle accelerators on the planet, scientists offer day-by-day, hour-by-hour reports of experimental progress and setbacks. Science in action looks tedious. This reads like a particle physics blog.
posted by tomharpel at 9:25 PM PST - 9 comments

Old soda caps sold by "the bottle cap man" provide a great web gallery of retro design. I wish I knew the histories of these obscure drinks. Warning: hundreds of thumbnail-sized pictures.
posted by pinto at 8:08 PM PST - 10 comments

The Itsy-Bitsy Spider. I was looking online to try and identify the freaking huge spiders I saw today (possibly wolf spiders), and I came across this hand spider identification chart. Slightly unnerving when the spiders randomly wiggle. Perhaps more so if you have a problem with spiders.
posted by kayjay at 7:24 PM PST - 71 comments

"These are the conditions under which I will not immediately throw away your donation: all socks are welcome, though I prefer colorful, interesting socks with a different colored toe and heel. a little hole here or there won't hinder the creaturfication process, but threadbare socks with big worn patches you can see through are not preferred. Send no pantyhose or nylons, please." John Murphy used to make beasts out of clay. Now he makes them out of socks.
posted by eustacescrubb at 7:05 PM PST - 5 comments

Ouch! Kurt falls to the dirt, surely hurt, while a clown on the alert wearing a skirt made of shirts, attempts to distract, to divert, a raging bull, ...one of many documented attractions at the Valley Center Western Days Rodeo.

My particular favorites are the "man vs steer", the stalemate, and nothing describes kids on sheep better than "mutton busting".
posted by thisisdrew at 4:14 PM PST - 15 comments

Is hip-hop holding back white youths? (wmv)
posted by delmoi at 3:51 PM PST - 19 comments

The Concrete Goose -- a flourish of individuality in a sea of identical suburban tract homes. Dress yours up in professional attire, as other animals, the devil or a certain copyrighted animated character. Some people go a little further than others.
posted by me3dia at 3:30 PM PST - 19 comments

Jeus hates Christmas.
posted by majcher at 2:51 PM PST - 28 comments

Fourmilab Switzerland is a large and diverse site created and maintained by John Walker, co-creator of AutoCAD and founder of Autodesk, Inc. A few sub-sites have been mentioned here over the years, but there is plenty to explore -- ranging from free computing utilities, science tools, a diet plan, original fiction and educational texts, to a page on RetroPsychoKinesis: influencing the past with your mind.
posted by ewagoner at 2:25 PM PST - 4 comments

Visitors to the current Illinois State Fair have the opportunity to see an American classic, the Butter Cow. This year's cow was sculpted over two days by Nancy Wise. You can watch the construction or live shots of its admiring public at the Butter Cow Cam. [more inside]
posted by Songdog at 1:07 PM PST - 22 comments

The Spiders, Part 3.5 (al Djinn), the latest installment in Patrick Farley's alternate history of the Afghan/U.S. conflict, is live. If you encounter a "Temporarily Unavailable" error, try the mirror server. There were previous threads on Part 1 and Part 2.
posted by homunculus at 12:07 PM PST - 11 comments

SINGLES FROM CD LOOKS TO BE A SMASH HITS! We’ve seen some silly side projects from wrestlers before, from Jerry Lawler vs. Andy Kaufman to Jesse Ventura to Pastamania to the Ultimate Warrior’s "University"(He defines such terms as destrucity. You can’t make that stuff up). But Randy “Macho Man” Savage’s new rap album ought to take the cake. Of course, comedy gold of all types is mined at Wrestlecrap, which makes even non-fans weep with laughter.
posted by norm at 11:10 AM PST - 11 comments

In a report recently complied by Rep. Waxman (D-Calif) and the minority staff of the House Government Reform Committee's special investigations division areas in which the Bush administration has manipulated science to the benefit of his political agenda are highlighted. The report has an accompanying website.
posted by mhaw at 10:33 AM PST - 14 comments

Nature is amazing. "Camera approaching coral with no sign of animal. As the camera gets closer, an O. vulgaris that was camouflaged changes color to white and becomes visible." This page leads to a video clip containing "special effects" that put the movie industry to shame. (via Looka!)
posted by stefnet at 10:26 AM PST - 54 comments

Steve Martin's take on WMD With a little stab to the left and a little stab to the right, it's good to read something funny. It's a NYT article but there's a Metafilter login I recall. Someone can tell us what that is? I think that this sort of entertainment is a better use for the hollywood set than this is.
posted by Red58 at 9:12 AM PST - 13 comments

Canada's Supreme Court Trashes Citizens' Property Rights. Canada's Supreme Court ruled: “Parliament has the right to expropriate property, even without compensation, if it has made its intention clear and, in s. 5.1(4), Parliament's expropriative intent is clear and unambiguous.” The Supreme Court ruling also stated: “Lastly, while substantive rights may stem from due process, the Bill of Rights does not protect against the expropriation of property by the passage of unambiguous legislation.” M.P. Breitkreuz notes "They even ruled that the Bill of Rights ‘does not impose on Parliament the duty to provide a hearing before the enactment of legislation.’ So if the property rights guarantees in the Canadian Bill of Rights don’t protect an individual’s fundamental property rights, what good are they?"
posted by ZenMasterThis at 8:54 AM PST - 54 comments

Ashcroft's Victory Act? I can't find any other mention of it on the mighty Web, but a handful of left-leaning sites are linking back to this article in the NY Daily News. Is this a renaming of the impending sequel to the PATRIOT Act? And if so, does anyone else find the use of the word "Victory" as creepy as I do?
posted by grabbingsand at 8:32 AM PST - 23 comments

Mammoths (Mammuthus) have been discussed here before and for those modern explorers who hunt the long extinct tusker in the field there is the 3rd International Mammoth conference where you can learn about things such as Mammoth Hunters and Ice Age Dogs.
posted by stbalbach at 7:19 AM PST - 4 comments

Arghnold is laughing at you! Apparently Californians will not be trifled with.
posted by dreamsbay at 7:14 AM PST - 41 comments

Michael Johnston, a strong voice of the ex-gay movement, falls from grace, admitting he willingly had unprotected sex with men without disclosing his HIV+ status, after appearing in national advertisements to promote the ex-gay movement. One of his strongest supporters, the Concerned Women for America, are calling it a "severe moral failing" and equating homosexuality to alcoholism (i.e., a disease).
posted by archimago at 6:50 AM PST - 58 comments

The Tricolor, a 50,000-ton cargo vessel carrying 3000 automobiles worth more than $40 million, is being raised. Cost to raise the Tricolor: $40 million. It sunk, then was hit three times, once by the Nicola, then by the Vicky (an oil tanker which spilled some, and killed marine life), then by a salvage tug. Good summary of the collisions in Dutch and English, with photos (similarly in French). Official press briefings offer good outline of all stages since the beginning. The automobile manufacturers tried to prevent pictures being taken of the destroyed automobiles, but there they are and even more and better. The official Tricolor salvage site offers a PDF file on how the salvage is being done: in part, with a huge cutting wire.
posted by Mo Nickels at 5:23 AM PST - 20 comments

Can monkeys really recreate Shakespeare? So far they've managed to get 6 letters from King John. Set your own monkeys at work, and see if they can do better!
posted by Orange Goblin at 5:04 AM PST - 20 comments

DeanSpace is an open development community providing web-tools, support, and advice to Howard Dean's supporters. The goal is to better interlink existing web activism, bring new citizen participants into the political process, and assist individuals to network and organize for taking action in Howard Dean's presidential campaign.

According to some, this could be another sign of the approaching singularity. Smart mobs on election day anyone?
posted by cbrody at 12:00 AM PST - 5 comments

The founders of Metafilter and Kuro5hin plan to launch an independent news site this fall to track the 2004 presidential campaign. Matt Haughey and Rusty Foster, the programmers behind those two collaborative media sites, will create a "smart mob-style site" to provide a place for independent reporting about next year's election.

[more inside]
posted by Vidiot at 11:30 PM PST - 45 comments

Historian H.W. Brands argues in this month's Atlantic that we over-venerate our Founding Fathers. John Adams and co., he surmises, were no wiser or more virtuous than our current crop of politicians, but their numerous flaws have been rendered invisible through the rosy glasses of time. What today's politicians could learn from their predecessors, he says, is bravado, the courage to take risks. Why not call a Constitutional Convention and rewrite the rules every so often?, he asks.
posted by grrarrgh00 at 9:20 PM PST - 40 comments

10% of American tech sector jobs will move offshore by the end of the year. Cyber-Marx (1999):

"... globalisation has given some knowledge workers, largely male, largely white, associated with high tech, finance, communication and information an exceptional importance. Concentrated in the technopoles that form the hubs of "global webs," these constitute a layer of privileged labour on whose loyalty capital can largely rely. But analysis that sees "symbolic analysts" as the crucial actors in globalisation does not grasp the speed with which capital turfs yuppies from the lifeboat when cheaper replacements can be found. Even symbolic analysts feel the blast of globalisation, as North American computer programmers are undercut by Lithuanian or Indian competition, and architects, engineers and professors discover that those who can telecommute can always be teleterminated by cheaper services uploaded from anywhere on the planet.

True? What effect will this trend have on the digerati as a class, do you think?
posted by hairyeyeball at 7:28 PM PST - 29 comments

Pavement Terror! Do you jump out of your skin whenever a car backfires? Just hope this guy didn't catch you on film. Interesting photos of people reacting to his backfiring van.
[from MorningNews]
posted by strangeleftydoublethink at 4:35 PM PST - 26 comments

Human cardiac catheterization was introduced by Werner Forssman in 1929. Ignoring his department chief, and tying his assistant to an operating table to prevent her interference, he placed a ureteral catheter into a vein in his arm, advanced it to the right atrium [of his heart], and walked upstairs to the x-ray department where he took the confirmatory x-ray film. In 1956, Dr. Forssman was awarded The Nobel Prize. [via the "fortune" command]
posted by hob at 3:44 PM PST - 15 comments

On 2003 April 5th, a Saturday, at the age of 33, I threw away my dignity, mocked my Ivy League education, disgraced my Master's degree, and proved, in just over three hours, that humans can do things "The System" didn't anticipate. Rather than fight the test, I use the SAT's difficulty to my advantage, leveraging down to a new, elite level of distinction. Verbal: 200. Math: 200.
posted by gottabefunky at 2:31 PM PST - 17 comments

In their day, Trilobyte was at the height of the computer gaming world. Their first title, 7th Guest, made them an instant success, and their follow-ups, 11th Hour and Clandestiny, were equally well-received. But as the saying goes, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Haunted Glory, from the GameSpot archives, documents the rise and fall of Trilobyte.
posted by ewagoner at 1:49 PM PST - 18 comments

Not just another candidate Forget Arnold, let's elect the Mozilla Foundation's very own Asa, he understands the web and technology, and even has a weblog. (Oh, and he works on some browser called Mozilla...)
posted by raster at 1:28 PM PST - 4 comments

Craigslist: The Movie Just like the spate of body swap films in the 80s there are bound to be many more made about community websites.
posted by feelinglistless at 12:31 PM PST - 21 comments

Behind the Typeface: Cooper Black You might not think to make a movie about the life and times of a font, but someone did.
posted by Karmakaze at 10:53 AM PST - 18 comments

That's it I'm dead. Collected transcripts (and some MP3s) of the last words spoken in the cockpits of doomed planes make for harrowing, and addictive reading/listening. Further examination of the site yields interesting statistics and more MP3s.
posted by thirteen at 10:37 AM PST - 49 comments

this election cycle's best campaign website? very nicely done. via the always excellent ugga bugga
posted by specialk420 at 10:32 AM PST - 15 comments

Why is yawning contagious? Scientists at SUNY Albany have a theory. It's got something to do with "mental state attribution" (i.e. the ability to inferentially model the mental states of others). Nature Magazine has a decent summary here for those that don't want to read the paper.
posted by Ufez Jones at 10:21 AM PST - 10 comments

How to Reform the Global Financial System by Joseph Stiglitz. Stiglitz--a noted economist and author--takes a look at the recetn history of economic and currency crises, and suggests a novel (but not new) approach: reviving the SDR (special drawing rights) concept originally envisioned by John Maynard Keynes. [more inside]
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 10:11 AM PST - 6 comments

Chinese Heritage of Australian Federation. A page full of stories of the Chinese community in Australia around 1900. 'At this time there were almost 35,000 Chinese in the Australian colonies. Each of these individuals to varying degrees has played a role in the development of Australia. This page explores the lives of some of these people - both ordinary and famous. '
Related :- the Ng Shing Gung in San Jose; the Mai Wah Society and the Asian heritage of Butte, Montana (old building and the Tong Wars); the Wing Luke Asian Museum, Seattle; a Chinese joss house in Darwin; Chinatown Melbourne (history, today, virtual tour); Chinatown Sydney (community and culture); Yema-po, once a Chinese labourers' work camp in California.
posted by plep at 10:01 AM PST - 11 comments

Ailing teen gets her dream: meeting Queensryche singer. It wasn't a funded Make-a-Wish Foundation event, just a hospice worker making some phone calls. Geoff Tate didn't just show up at the hospital to say hi to Brittany... he, his wife, and the band went to great lengths to show her the time of her life.
posted by Tubes at 9:59 AM PST - 27 comments

Sometimes, you really need to know when that ranch dressing is going to change into raunch dressing. For all of your organized condiment spoilage needs, there is the table of condiments that periodically go bad
posted by jearbear at 9:28 AM PST - 17 comments

How many times have you alleged sexual or racial allegations for a settlement?
A recent Washington Post article, documents the somewhat troubled past of Charles Moose, the ex-chief of police in Montgomery County, Maryland (Remember the Sniper Manhunt).
$10,000 to his wife to settle a sexual harassment allegation, another undisclosed settlement of $10,000 to him and his wife for a separate incident, and the motherload, a $200,000 settlement from Marriott Corp. for a racial-bias allegation. Is this, in the norm? $10,000
posted by omidius at 9:02 AM PST - 20 comments

You're going to die, why not do it with a big bean & cheese burrito and a lime slurpee in hand? While trying to figure out what's up with Hardees' latest ad campaign, I found this site reviewing all manner of fast food chains. Put on your Celebrate Obesity t-shirt and enjoy.
posted by idlemind at 8:55 AM PST - 8 comments

Harvard weblogs, Warwick University Weblogs, University of Toronto blogs. Anywhere else?
posted by hoder at 8:14 AM PST - 14 comments

Flying Cloud flies for the last time On Wednesday, August 6, the last Boeing 307 Stratoliner landed at Dulles [WaPo; may require registration]. [more] [more] [more] This was the plane that ditched off Seattle in March, 2002 after being fully restored. Now, re-restored, it has arrived at its final destination, the Smithsonian's new Hazy Center. Dry eyes were a rare commodity.
posted by SealWyf at 6:26 AM PST - 9 comments

If Adam is to be identified, and his killers found, a whole, if short, life must be reconstructed from a tiny, bloodless torso.

Two years ago a small boy's torso was pulled out of the Thames. This fascinating article details how forensic science is driving the investigation in to his murder.
posted by davehat at 5:09 AM PST - 8 comments

Damn your eyes, Harry Paget Flashman lived through and thrived in spite of his involvement in almost all of the sticky and and unpleasant incidents involving agents of the British Empire from the late 1830s to the beginning of the last century. Although a fictional creation, his tales seem to ring as true as anything written about any other Victorian Gent, whether he got his V.C., took a jezail bullet, or even knew 'little Vicky' herself.
posted by GriffX at 12:15 AM PST - 25 comments

Does Belonging To A Club Make Sense In The 21st Century? Why, then, are they proliferating? And with free membership, already! Will the clubbish mentality, like the poor, always be with us? Is it still birds of a feather or just "anything goes"; an excuse; a lame post-modern irony taken far too far? Is "exclusive" still acceptable? Does it, in fact, still exist? Come to think of it, is MetaFilter a club of sorts?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 10:02 PM PST - 34 comments

The game designers at Orsinal have been busy since we last discussed them, with a number of new amusing & lovely games. For those who haven't been there yet, and for those who haven't been there in a while, stop by and play... if only all flash animation were done with this degree of care and attention to aesthetic.
posted by jonson at 10:00 PM PST - 12 comments

Have Google keep you up to date with a news item. But judging from the vast assortment of news and comment out there, can even Google keep up?
posted by kablam at 8:05 PM PST - 9 comments

This Webcam features a live feed to a LED sign. You get to input the text it shows and then you can see it in real time via the webcam. This is one of the coolest things I have seen in a long time.
posted by thebwit at 7:22 PM PST - 26 comments

Medical fotolog. [warning -- graphic surgical photos]
posted by monju_bosatsu at 7:06 PM PST - 15 comments

Hear ye, hear ye! Supreme Court arguments now available in MP3 format, thanks to the OYEZ project. Arguments include Roe v. Wade and Bush v. Gore.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 6:35 PM PST - 6 comments

Can U beat Gorgar? In 1979, a page was turned when a frightened Williams was forced to do his bidding (mp3)
posted by sharksandwich at 6:13 PM PST - 6 comments

It's official Arnold Schwarzenegger is running for governor of CA
posted by bitdamaged at 6:02 PM PST - 77 comments

Himmler's Crusade: The true story of the 1938 Nazi Expedition to Tibet.
posted by stbalbach at 5:53 PM PST - 9 comments

Hentai made real. Scientists research sex-crazed giant squid.
posted by qDot at 4:55 PM PST - 4 comments

Max und Moritz • The online edition of Wilhelm Busch's classic children's story boasts the original illustrations from 1865. This tale of two mischievous boys and their brutal deaths is considered a precursor to the modern comic strip. (More 19th-Century German stories here.)
posted by Ljubljana at 4:13 PM PST - 9 comments

Because people have a need to glue things to other things, there is thistothat.com. Let's glue! One of the simplest yet more useful sites on the interweb.
posted by ewagoner at 1:40 PM PST - 21 comments

The proposed European Union Constitution will lead to a massive welfare state? Or, "Compare and Contrast the United States Constitution with that of the EU" From a cursory glance at the depth of the document, this detail-oriented Constitution is entirely alien to one such as myself used to the broad Madisonian brushstrokes of the United States Constitution. What are the merits and/or limits of the 'broad' versus 'detailed' Constitution? Is the EU taking on more than a government should by stating provisions for general welfare and environmental awareness? Or, is the EU looking ahead in ways that others have not?
posted by tgrundke at 1:35 PM PST - 22 comments

How Hip-Hop Holds Blacks Back As a white guy with a young kid, I worry about how the often gleefully violent, misogynist rap music he may choose to listen to could affect him. Maybe that's a racist thing for a white boy to say, but when a black scholar like John H. McWhorter says it, maybe it's worth considering.
posted by kgasmart at 1:29 PM PST - 96 comments

His name is Mr Freetime, he has 2,967 copies of Moero!! Pro Baseball for the Famicom. He knows how to use them.
posted by nthdegx at 1:26 PM PST - 10 comments

"If elected, I will resign." Probably the most unusual campaign promise ever made, this time by a potential candidate in the California governor's recall race -- Brian Flemming argues that Democrats are guilty of bringing a "feather to a gunfight" and is openly courting the vote of people who are "furious about this right-wing recall."
posted by bclark at 1:03 PM PST - 13 comments

Gary for Governor! The East Bay Express helped put former child actor/current online advice columnist Gary Coleman on the ballot for the upcoming California gubernatorial recall election. Their extensive coverage includes his platform, compares him to the competition, outlines his appeal to various constituents (including model train enthusiasts), and picks his theme song (and it's not "Short People" or "Tiny Dancer").
posted by kirkaracha at 12:55 PM PST - 11 comments

6000 breathtaking aerial photos of American towns and other sites, with particularly good coverage of towns in New England (MA, VT, CT, NH, RI, ME). All of this by one photographer, Joseph Melanson, whose mission in life is "to show you facets of your environment that you never realized no matter how long you lived there."
posted by dougb at 12:34 PM PST - 22 comments

Mike Hawash pleads guilty to conspiring to provide services to the Taliban and will testify against his friends that attempted to travel to Afghanistan after September 11, 2001. After the previous MeFi threads about Mike here and here, this ought to be quite a suprise for some. No update yet on the Free Mike Hawash site.
posted by schlyer at 12:18 PM PST - 29 comments

Starbucks sucks! ' The culprits went as far as to stick "closed" and "for lease" signs and notices on the stores -- using bogus Starbucks Corp. letterhead -- announcing that "thousands of retail locations worldwide" were closing, and the Seattle- based company was "making room for local coffee bars." ' I'd be lying if I claimed that I've never fantasized about doing something like this. If nothing else, admire the organizational skills required to pull this off.
posted by majcher at 12:07 PM PST - 101 comments

Google as voyeur Interesting use of Google technology. Anyone find anything really interesting? Pretty addictive... [via MilkAndCookies]
posted by pizzasub at 11:28 AM PST - 61 comments

Tom Swifties! "I'm wearing my wedding ring," said Tom with abandon. Oh, the pun-ishment.
posted by kcmoryan at 11:15 AM PST - 281 comments

A Boeing 727 went missing from Angola on May 25. Some people made immediate, predictable noises about "terrorists", despite the fact that things are a lot less settled in Africa (from a paperwork and regulatory point of view). It was spotted with a new paint job on June 28 in Conakry, the capital of Guinea. But, now it's gone again and nobody knows where it is.
posted by Irontom at 11:04 AM PST - 8 comments

Celebrity sound clips. Soundboards with clips of famous folk. Check out Chris Farley, Dr. Phil, Jack Black or The dude. Web enable your phone pranks.
posted by srboisvert at 10:30 AM PST - 3 comments

Sometimes a parent can go a little too far helping out a kid. In this case - way too far, when it comes to drugging the competition.
posted by Spezzatura at 10:02 AM PST - 10 comments

Ever wonder who would respond to penis-enlargement spam? Corporate CEOs, veterinarians and athletic coaches, to name a few.
posted by Oriole Adams at 8:56 AM PST - 45 comments

And now someone's courting the insane vote. Forget your Bush, forget your Dean, vote for someone who will stop the hustle and save us from the Zioni$ts and Communi$ts.
posted by COBRA! at 8:56 AM PST - 16 comments

If a young worker attempts to reproduce, she is spreadeagled by her fellows and kept immobilized for hours or even days. At the end of her sentence, the best she can hope for is a reduction in rank and loss of reproductive capability. Often she is mutilated or killed.

Fascinating article about police-state behavior in insects, complete with information on mutant anarchist worker bees, ant-led coups, and parasitic self-cloning bees. (via BoingBoing.)
posted by Vidiot at 8:29 AM PST - 5 comments

Breastfeeding while driving seemed like a good idea to Catherine Donkers, but now she is (thankfully) on trial for it. Since she's a member of a weird cult that believes the Bible should be the law of land, this should be entertaining. Presumably, they can just keep appealing for a few years until the crazies run the country.
posted by peterb at 7:46 AM PST - 45 comments

Channel 118. The 118118 experience. [possibly nsfw]
posted by ginz at 7:15 AM PST - 14 comments

Linkfilter, an occasional source of MetaFilter material, takes community weblogging to a new level, granting experience points for participation and requiring contribution points to "keep one user from hogging the whole site on any given day."
posted by rcade at 6:00 AM PST - 27 comments

Welcome to our wedding. Join Scott and Helen as they countdown to their wedding on the 9th. View pix of the proposal, the stag do in Amsterdam, the hen night in Brighton, and check out all the details of the upcoming event. Would you open your wedding to the eyes of the world? Site designer and groom Harold says "The idea is not to invite the world to our wedding, would you want them at yours? hence the reason I have now had to take off the reception maps/venues/pictures." (via Haddock)
posted by madamjujujive at 5:55 AM PST - 33 comments

Printers produce copies in 3D. Z corporation demos 'low-cost' 3D printers at the SIGGRAPH CGI show.
posted by MintSauce at 5:25 AM PST - 17 comments

Exhibition of Deportation 14 June 1941. Some history, moments and life stories. Via the Estonian National Museum.
posted by plep at 11:26 PM PST - 3 comments

I can't believe I missed a National Day of Prayer. And to think, this one involved a demonstration just blocks from my house. Damn it, I'm usually so devout when it comes to these things, and now that the day is nearly over, it looks like the prayer didn't even come true...
posted by jonson at 9:23 PM PST - 26 comments

Prison time requires culinary creativity.
posted by machaus at 6:53 PM PST - 13 comments

Howard Armstrong, artist and black string band musician who played 22 instruments--excelling by far on violin and mandolin--who spoke seven languages, who first recorded in 1930 and was still an active performer up into this year, died last Wednesday of complications due to a heart attack he suffered in March. He was the subject of the P.O.V. film Sweet Old Song, which will be reprised a week from today on August 12th, 2003. He was also the subject of Louie Bluie--the first film by string band muscian and director of Crumb and Ghost World, Terry Zwigoff--which is well worth your watching by itself. He was quite a character and lived quite a life.
posted by y2karl at 5:40 PM PST - 6 comments

Killing the music Who is the real enemy here? Mefites argue on whether downloading the latest eminem is theft or merely copyright infringement. RIAA says this activity is killing CD sales and wants to slap a lawsuit on everyone with a cable modem. Everyone seems to be missing the real culprit here. [via Ars-technica]
posted by Nauip at 3:07 PM PST - 126 comments

Those of you with crazy multi-tasking skills might want to check out Arcadia, where you play four different super simple games at the same time. Extra points for the stylishly retro chunky pixels look, which brings me right back to happy afternoons spent with my 2600!
posted by lia at 2:56 PM PST - 18 comments

The last World War Two Japanese soldier surrendered in the Philippines in 1980, ending a stream of holdouts. This is their story.
posted by ewagoner at 1:36 PM PST - 10 comments

Future of the Net: "Information wants to be free" vs. "truth costs extra" "...a coalition that included Amazon.com, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, Disney and others....spoke of "tiered" service, where consumers would be charged according to "gold, silver and bronze" levels of bandwidth use. The days where lawmakers once spoke about eradicating the "Digital Divide" in America has come full circle. Under the scenario presented by the lobbyists, people on fixed incomes would have to accept a stripped-down Internet, full of personally targeted advertising. Other users could get a price break if they receive bundled content -- news, music, games -- from one telecom or media company. Anybody interested in other "non-mainstream" news, software or higher-volume usage, could pay for the privilege. The panel's response was warm, suggesting that the industry should work this out with little federal intrusion. That approach has already been embraced by the industry-friendly Federal Communications Commission." For more, see The Center For Digital Democracy
posted by troutfishing at 12:41 PM PST - 36 comments

Who's So Vain? Carly Simon will be revealing the inspiration for her pop classic, "You're So Vain." Suspects include Warren Beatty and Mick Jagger. My guess (you heard it here first, kids): Gene Simmons of Kiss. Who do YOU think she was singing about?
posted by twsf at 12:08 PM PST - 69 comments

The World Triathlon Corporation ("WTC") runs the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon. Most people have heard of the 2.4 mile swimming, 112 mile biking and 26.2 mile running race in Kona, Hawaii. It's the best-known and most prestigious race in the sport of the triathlon (although no longer the most lucrative). Legend has it that the event was born in 1978 when some buddies in Hawaii, led by former Navy captain John Collins, were debating which was the toughest sporting event in Hawaii: the 2.4-mile Waikiki Rough Water Swim, the 112-mile bike race around Oahu, or the 26.2-mile Honolulu Marathon. After more than a few beers, the legend goes, the small group decided to attempt all three distances in one day, and the Ironman was born. Today, the Ironman ("IM") is a trademarked event replicated annually almost 20 times all over the world by the WTC. These (and a few 1/2 IM races) function as qualifying races for Hawaii, which now serves as the World Championship. Basically, each of these events is allotted a number of qualifying slots per age group and you have to win a spot for Kona. The non-pros that they show on TV are generally the result of 200 lottery slots or special invitation (celebrity, good tv story, etc). Athletes are lining up to get into IM races in the US. Currently, there are 4 IM trademarked races in the US: Ironman USA in Lake Placid, Ironman Wisconsin in Madison, Ironman Coeur d'Alene in Idaho and Ironman Florida in Panama City. What you may not know is that to participate in one of these you routinely have to register and pay the $400+ fee almost one year in advance. Registration for the 2003 races closed within a week or two of the completion of the 2002 races. Just recently, registration for the 2004 Ironman USA -- 2003 was held last weekend -- closed in two days, so you're already too late for next year. And who are these entrants? According to USAT demographics, over 41% of triathletes (USAT members) earn more than $80,000 per year, 40% have college degrees and 48% have graduate/post-graduate degrees. Perhaps reflective of the demographics, CEO's (of corporations with a minimum $1 Million in annual gross revenue) now have their own racing category. The WTC may own the name "Ironman" but I have my eye on a non-WTC, "iron distance" event this year: Duke. You can still register for this one. Here is a 13-week Ironman training schedule for a 12-14 hour finishing time.
posted by probablysteve at 12:03 PM PST - 25 comments

"The generals love napalm. It has a big psychological effect." Marines firebombed Iraqis during the initial campaign of the Iraq war.
posted by four panels at 11:33 AM PST - 54 comments

The High Hat is a new online magazine covering culture, the arts, and politics. Looks promising.
posted by staggernation at 11:15 AM PST - 16 comments

Rev. Gene Robinson's controversial aspirations to be the first gay bishop in the Episcopal church have been put on hold over accusations regarding allegedly inappropriate touching in public conversation and an indirect hyperlink to pornography via a group called Outright that says its mission is "to create safe, positive, and affirming environments for young gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, and questioning people ages 22 and under." They also say that the would-be bishop is not affiliated with the group in any way. The church's investigation into the matter, CNN has just reported, is now complete and the vote will soon be rescheduled.
posted by Hammerikaner at 10:30 AM PST - 36 comments

This WP commentary discusses a new Harvard study says the conservative editorial pages are more intensely partisan, and far less willing to criticize a Republican administration than the liberal pages are to take on a Democratic administration. Of course a liberal reporter did the study, but Mr Kurtz of the WP thinks his findings are well-balanced. I'm liberal, too, so I've got my biases, but I've felt this way for a while. I mean where's the liberal equivalent of Rush Limbaugh, Andrew Sullivan, Bill O'Reilly, or Anne Coulter? People full of vindictiveness, name-calling, and outright hatred and condemnation?
posted by Red58 at 10:21 AM PST - 36 comments

Why Do Gays Smoke So Much? Yet another escape from the cruel shackles of responsibility. Why do Gays smoke? 1. They have no children. 2. Social Opprobrium. 3. People are mean. This isn't journalism. It's crap. High risk behaviors tend to promote other high risk behaviors, like the tattoos-sex-cigaretts connection. It could be something even more sinister, like the values of particular subcultures. How can we get people to take more responsibility for self destructive behavior? Cigarettes, fat, alcohol, unsafe sex... if we are ever forced into National Health Care, there will be no reason to deny ourselves anything. Have another cigarette on me.
posted by ewkpates at 8:10 AM PST - 60 comments

Solid Space is what I'd consider to be an old school website. A handful of weird things thrown up on a questionable background that truly takes flight with Awful Music and The Dark Side of Pez. And for the truly obsessed? A full list of View Master reels. Bonus!
posted by headspace at 7:07 AM PST - 8 comments

With the trial of the bali bombers underway, a bomb has been exploded in the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta's CBD. Deaths have been reported here on Australian TV at 13, with over 120 injured, although these figures are expected to rise. The BBC is reporting on the experiences of those at the scene.
posted by dg at 6:03 AM PST - 43 comments

Move over Segway! Sir Clive Sinclair, who invented the first pocket calculator (retailing at only £79.95 + VAT in 1972), the ZX80, and the ZX81 with its massive 8K operating system, is promising an update to the Sinclair C5 that will compete with the Segway.
posted by Pericles at 5:36 AM PST - 20 comments

Team B (from Outer Space) Gordon Mitchell, author of Strategic Deception, has recently penned a paper that investigates the process by which decisions about the quality of American intelligence are made. He highlights the role of Team B, a group of far-right conservatives who routinely debated against Team A, usually consisting of mid-level intelligence analysts. These debates were a commonplace during the cold war, and through a series of enthymemetic narratives that altered the conditions of proof, Team B was able to successfully beat Team A (time and time again) and move foreign policy further and further to the right. The cold war ended, and Team B ended with it. But now Team B is back in the form of the OSP, and the same movements are happening, this time challenging and compromising moderate foreign policy, including the more moderate portions of the Bush Doctrine. Is this structural device possibly to blame for the Iraq intel snafu, rather than some overt desire to lie and deceive? Your thoughts?
posted by hank_14 at 5:24 AM PST - 12 comments

The 100 Worst “Groaners”. A “groaner” is a hackneyed, overblown, stuffy or just plain silly cliché that turns up time after time in news scripts. Groaners show laziness on the part of writers, disrespect for the folks watching, and a general contempt for lively English. Here are some of the worst offenders. You’ll recognize them immediately, so get ready to groan!
posted by madman at 10:47 PM PST - 94 comments

David C. Roy - Wood That Works. "All of my sculptures are spring driven escapement mechanisms. Nothing is hidden. Each part of one of my sculptures is essential to the operation of the whole. The relative motion of these interacting parts produces the interesting, some say "whimsical and dynamic" patterns of motion. I am always searching for simple ways to produce complex, yet understandable, visual, and at times auditory, patterns." Boy, if I were a rich man... [Note: Flash] (via Dublog)
posted by crunchland at 8:21 PM PST - 18 comments

Journey into Kimland • American graduate student Scott Fisher lives in Seoul Korea where he studies US-NK relations. Last year he took advantage of a brief window of opportunity: venturing North into the DPRK. His itinerary included Pyongyang, the DMZ, Mt. Myohyang, and Mangyongdae, birthplace of Kim Il-sung. The notes & photos he took explicitly document a mysterious and out-of-time North Korean culture rarely seen these days by Western eyes.
posted by dhoyt at 8:05 PM PST - 45 comments

Preservation by Plastination : Until recently the privilege to view corpses and the human body’s interior has been confined to medicine students and anatomists in dissection rooms. It is only due to the invention of plastination that the general public is now also able to enjoy fascinating insights into the human body.
posted by starscream at 2:50 PM PST - 11 comments

Geek or killer? Can you tell the difference? (via Daypop)
posted by CunningLinguist at 2:49 PM PST - 41 comments

Would you use a disposable digital camera? If so, when and why would you use a disposable Digital Camera? I can't see how a single use digital camera is an advantage, other than in dangerous situations where I might break it. Then again, there are $40 reuseable digital cameras I could use in the ski slope/roller coaster/dive bar scenario.
posted by m@ at 1:54 PM PST - 29 comments

Do you want fresh, locally grown, organic food, but don't know where to find it? The LocalHarvest map makes it easy to find family farms, farmers markets and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area.
posted by ewagoner at 1:33 PM PST - 9 comments

Interesting list of college athletic teams' nicknames. [More inside.]
posted by Vidiot at 1:05 PM PST - 40 comments

BullFighter is shareware that flags corporate jargon, like "mission critical asset foregrounding" and "value-added paradigm shift," in Word documents. Who developed it? Deloitte Consulting. Will wonders (or gimmicks) never cease?
posted by serafinapekkala at 1:02 PM PST - 13 comments

The Mutopia Project and the Choral Public Domain Library are repositories of public domain music in a variety of sheet music formats and sometimes MIDI performances.
posted by turbodog at 11:59 AM PST - 1 comment

Why I Hate Advocacy. Baseball, politics, and programming languages? Mark Jason-Dominus created a classic article that is really about the general human tendancy towards flawed dialogue and the pitfalls surrounding evangelism, even though it's specifically directed towards the perl programming community. Indeed, as in the past, some may see the "spectre of Metafilter itself" in Mark's words.
posted by weston at 11:07 AM PST - 19 comments

Powell and Armitage Intend to Step Down The WaPo has reported that Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage intend to vacate their posts in January, 2005. They allegedly told this to NSA Condi Rice, though the White House--staying true to form--is denying it. So, is he just getting old, or is he finally sick of all the bullshit?
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 11:05 AM PST - 22 comments

Here’s the deal. Brian has been crazy about Drew since the 2nd grade when he first saw her in E.T. So now it’s 20 years later and he figured since she hasn’t come knockin’ on his door, he’s gonna have to make the first move. Problem… She’s Drew Barrymore! But wait, it’s not as crazy as you might think. See, Brian figured he’d combine his two great passions in life – making movies and Drew Barrymore – and document his quest to meet Drew. That way he will represent the “everyman”, and his quest will seem noble… instead of just desperate. Next problem… Brian is completely broke. And he doesn’t even own a video camera to make this documentary. Fortunately, he recently won $1,100 on a game show! So he figured it must be fate. He will use this cash prize to seize the moment and pursue his dream. And as it turns out, you don’t even need any money to buy a video camera these days, thanks to Circuit City’s 30-day Return Policy. So he grabbed a friend’s credit card and picked out the most expensive camera in the store, knowing he will have to finish his documentary before the camera has to go back. So now Brian has 30 days and $1,100 to get a date with Drew Barrymore.
posted by amro at 10:29 AM PST - 60 comments

Robert Hooke. ''Robert Hooke is one of the most neglected natural philosophers of all time. The inventor of, amongst other things, the iris diaphragm in cameras, the universal joint used in motor vehicles, the balance wheel in a watch, the originator of the word 'cell' in biology, he was Surveyor of the City of London after the Great Fire of 1666, architect, experimenter, worked in astronomy - yet is known mostly for Hooke's Law ... '
More at Robert Hooke's Micrographia: a digital facsimile. 'In it we are introduced to the living cell; to microscopic fungi and the life story of the mosquito; we find the two contrasting theories about the origin of the lunar craters posed for the very first time ... '
posted by plep at 9:36 AM PST - 4 comments

Riddle me this: why are so many people in such a hurry to monitor, record and analyze every aspect of modern life? A UCLA professor wants to outfit an entire first grade classroom with minuscule sensors. The National Science Foundation awarded $1.8 million to fund the study, which will see students wearing special caps tracking their location and what they're looking at while cameras and microphones will record their activities. All the data gathered will be processed by a data-mining software package. [more inside]
posted by Irontom at 7:51 AM PST - 24 comments

Bill and Liz sit down on a sidewalk in New York City, and put up a sign that asks people to talk to them. No catch, no trick, just conversation. They do this full time, up to 14 hours a day, every day.
posted by majcher at 7:25 AM PST - 24 comments

The worlds largest mobile camera goes on tour. Shaun Irving has sunk his life savings into creating what may be the worlds largest mobile pin hole camera. His goal: To teach the youth of America that expensive cameras and Photoshop are not necessary to make good photographs. See how it works.
posted by Gif at 6:41 AM PST - 15 comments

Anybody remember that classic sci-fi TV show The Starlost? You're forgiven if you don't, since it barely lasted one season. Dreamed up by Harlan Ellison, he promptly disowned it when it failed to meet his expectations, but he had grand ideas: featuring writers such as Frank Herbert, Ursula Leguin, Philip K. Dick and others, with more help from Ben Bova, The Starlost was a virtual who's who of anything sci-fi. Read all about it in this exhaustive site. Now that your interest has been piqued, buy the series for only $60! I think it should be made into a movie, myself.
posted by ashbury at 6:15 AM PST - 14 comments

Whatever you do, don't touch anything, especially the walls! [note: flash]
posted by crunchland at 8:07 PM PST - 25 comments

The intent of stupidsecurity.com is to expose a particularly seamy aspect of modern life -- misguided thrashings labeled "security" and defended -- if at all -- by an appeal to paranoia.  My hope is that by providing a chronicle of really stupid security measures, we can make it more uncomfortable for pointy haired bosses of various types to approve really stupid security measures. [via codemode.org]
posted by soundofsuburbia at 1:13 PM PST - 14 comments

Beliefs about Saddam -- some Iraqis find it difficult to believe that their former ruler can die. "How can we really be sure he's gone for good?" asked Hassam Sahar, 45, an engineer. "We can't trust the U.S. and Britain. They left once before." Some believe that Saddam has links to the occult [audio file] ranging from a djinn kept in a stone to magic practiced by his mother, which are based in folk islam [google cache 1 2 3] Western occultists, too, have something to say about Saddam.
posted by e^2 at 12:45 PM PST - 3 comments

Argentina Didn't Fall on Its Own. (Single-page, printer-friendly version here.) I don't normally read long articles on economic subjects, but this one is riveting, because it links Argentina's collapse to larger issues of how the world of money works today.

"The time has come to do our mea culpa," Hans-Joerg Rudloff, chairman of the executive committee at Barclays Capital, said at a conference of bank and brokerage executives in London a few months ago. "Argentina obviously stands as much as Enron" in showing that "things have been done and said by our industry which were realized at the time to be wrong, to be self-serving."

...It is like "a bizarre AA program in which you remove booze from the homes of people who are reducing the amount they drink and put it into the homes of people who are drinking more every day," Pettis said. "This is probably not the best way to reduce drunkenness."

posted by languagehat at 12:20 PM PST - 7 comments

Audrey is a flash portfolio of abstract paintings by Audrey Bergounioux, including videos of the creation of Life is Energy and Color Del Sol (requires Flash 6).
posted by eddydamascene at 11:50 AM PST - 5 comments

"Movies: They're worth it!" In a move to educate those darn thieving kids and their evil P2P file-sharing networks which are used to trade ripped movies, the MPAA has launched a public service campaign to explain, in layman's terms, why violating their copyrights is wrong. …Yes, these are the same people who have just brought us an entire summer of bloated sequels, shameless celebrity vehicles and uninspired hack-work. Respect!
posted by Down10 at 11:32 AM PST - 78 comments

C. Bradley Dilger's research on ease of use. I'm reading Neal Stevenson's cryptonomicon and it got me thinking about interface design. Of course not all artists design interfaces, nor do they really want people to see their art as interactive, but for the rest of us I think this is an important topic. Mr. Dilger's Ph. D. dissertation is over 200 pages of current, well written anaylsis on the concept of "ease" in our culture, especially when it relates to technology and computer interaction. And to make it even better, his bibliography is top. I especially liked this article titled The Anti-Mac Interface.
posted by abulafia at 11:03 AM PST - 9 comments

The great firewall of Burma. "Burma's military regime has reluctantly dipped a toe in the cyber sea, but for most of the country's population owning a modem without permission means 15 years in jail." I guess I should stop complaining about my dial-up connection.
posted by homunculus at 11:03 AM PST - 5 comments

Fable ...There once was a boy with a mind of his own. Alone in a dangerous world, his destiny, the paths of good and evil... Built like a children's book with tabs that you toggle, choose your path in this gothic tale. The site is a beautifully designed promo for the upcoming xbox game release, but worth a visit for the illustrations and execution alone. (caveats: flash site that opens in a pop-up window, contains sound.)
posted by madamjujujive at 8:42 AM PST - 11 comments

Rekkaturvat: You've already pushed a hapless dummy down the stairs. Now you can see what happens when that same guy gets behind the wheel - or at least inside the cab - of a truck speeding toward a wall. Scant on documentation, but not hard to figure out (the 1 and 2 sliders control the position of two ramps). Anyone find a good technique for a high score? (2 MB Windows .exe)
posted by wanderingmind at 12:30 AM PST - 51 comments

Let's take a trip to the Mustard Museum, shall we? "4,000 jars, bottles, and tubes of mustard from all 50 states and more than 60 countries." They even have their own fight song.
posted by dchase at 10:16 PM PST - 11 comments

Collection of retro pin-up art from the 40's and 50's.
posted by crunchland at 7:09 PM PST - 4 comments

Interview with Profiler Roy Hazelwood. Enough to make you feel a little less safer, and to marvel at both the "the infinity of darkness," the depths of potential monstrosity, and the ability of some to understand broken minds and bent hearts. "'If I were to give you each a test, could you take it the way you think this offender would take it?' We said yes.... Both of us came out as paranoid schizophrenics. The psychiatrist was astounded. We sat there and tried to take the test as we thought the guy we had in mind would take the test. "
posted by namespan at 2:32 PM PST - 18 comments

Dalai Llama Misses Sex, Shoots Guns This is the finest tabloid newspaper headline evar. Remember Peter Falk, in Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, admiring the rhythmic and sadistic anticlimax of the headline: 'Scalp Grandma, then rob her' ? This is better. Should I have worked on the school paper instead of playing bass? I could have been a contender.via fark.
posted by crunchburger at 2:10 PM PST - 13 comments

For then entire month of July, the folks at sh1ft.org have been holding an international photographic scavenger hunt called 26 things. The hunt involves taking pictures of abstract topics such as love or symmetry. With over 300 sets so far, they have lots of great pics, any MeFi users do this?
posted by woil at 12:18 PM PST - 10 comments

Lone Eagle? According to this news story (from Reuters), famed aviator Charles "Lucky" Lindbergh got lucky in Germany in the 1950s--fathering three children with a woman he met there and keeping this double life a complete secret from his other, American, family. If true, this would certainly require a reassessment of Lindbergh's personal life.
posted by Man-Thing at 11:49 AM PST - 19 comments

Zoom! A nice series of images for a summer weekend. (Via Avva.)
posted by languagehat at 10:37 AM PST - 17 comments

Crap on wheels... that's Robbie Williams. He has a bit of a history with (ahem) lavatory 'situations'...
posted by apocalypse miaow at 10:21 AM PST - 12 comments

What do you get when you mix Mentos and Guns?
posted by nyxxxx at 9:36 AM PST - 11 comments

Dead Man Eating is a weblog listing last meals of American prisoners put to death. Often humanizing the prisoners without belittling their crimes, it's a macabre, fascinating read no matter which side of the death penalty debate you're on.
posted by kickerofelves at 6:23 AM PST - 36 comments

Considered by many to be the worst infomercial ever, Santo Gold was a bizarre mixture of the hocking of cheap gold jewelery, shameless movie promotion (in ThunderVision!) and extremely bad singing. Read about the rise of Santo and ultimately his downfall at the hands of the US Postal Service.
posted by PenDevil at 4:10 AM PST - 6 comments

Report on 9/11 Suggests a Role by Saudi Spies If this article in the NY Times is accurate, then The Saudi request that the classified pages be made public, and the Bush refusal to do so, is a cooperative effort to keep the public from knowing the Saudi involvement rather than an attempt to protect intelligence methods etc as had been claimed by Bush. Ot, Bush is right (we won't know) and the Times wrong. Take your choice.
posted by Postroad at 3:29 AM PST - 12 comments

Phil Borges: Photographs of People of Indigenous Cultures. A set of online exhibits. Take a look at Enduring Spirit: photography of tribal peoples, from North America, Peru, Kenya, Tibet, Ethiopia and other places. More photographs online : Tibetan Portrait, the Living Link.
posted by plep at 2:31 AM PST - 4 comments

STD-ster is an online community that connects people through networks of sexual partners for tracking STD contraction. (flash)
posted by LexRockhard at 10:26 PM PST - 4 comments

Long, interesting article in the NYT Sunday Magazine (reg. req'd, apologies) about a putatively "underground" community of black men who have sex with other men and who do not self-identify as gay.

There's more than a few problems with the piece. The reportage has a kind of breathless/clueless tone to it - like when the author identifies the phrase "on the DL" as originating in a 1990's TLC song (!) - and a pseudoanthropological, National Geographic stink of imputed Otherness hangs over the whole enterprise, but I found it compelling anyway. If nothing else, it's an introduction to a entire new subculture I had always assumed the existence of, but never seen. (I particularly liked the NYT piece's excursion to a low-rent thug-life amateur pr0n operation. Gibson was right: the street does indeed find its own uses for technology.)
posted by adamgreenfield at 8:04 PM PST - 54 comments

Pet-a-potty. Want to let your dog experience the thrill of doing their business on nature's own newspaper, but are scared that a great big eagle might swoop down and snatch poor Speckles away from you? Problem solved! Here's a nice square patch of grass! In a box! On wheels! No kidding! Sometimes, I think it's not the pets that are the ones that need to be spayed and neutered...
posted by majcher at 7:25 PM PST - 10 comments

Critics Gone Wild. Rarely do entertainment journalists have as fine an occasion to cut loose and shower their barbs as the opening of Gigli: "I fought the urge to punch someone once it finally ended." Not that anyone's surprised! Enjoy, if you get a kick out of scalding prose.
posted by scarabic at 5:53 PM PST - 51 comments

The Nazis are back and this time they're green! I can't seem to tell if it's real or not... which is kind of worrying.[Via memepool]
posted by knapah at 4:02 PM PST - 19 comments

Teen abduction foiled by cell phone cam. And here I was saying that those phone cameras were simply gimmicky.
posted by zedzebedia at 2:33 PM PST - 15 comments

Our vision is to serve all your iced out hip hop jewelry needs. At GangstaGold we offer you the finest quality hip hop jewels and watches, no gimmicks or tricks, at the right price.
posted by starscream at 2:15 PM PST - 11 comments

I Found A Duck!
posted by Karmakaze at 1:41 PM PST - 10 comments

Larry Flynt will run in the California recall election And he's serious too. Could he get the plurality needed to win? Oh and Arnold has anounced... that he'll anounce his decision on the 6th
posted by delmoi at 12:22 PM PST - 41 comments

Cool Kitty.... (fun Friday Flash! Via Memepool.)
posted by kodas at 12:19 PM PST - 10 comments

Diaphanous Fog Screen Projection Demonstrated at Siggraph, a thin sheet of dry fog is silently generated and used as a projection screen floating in the air, so you can literally step through it. Levels of opacity can be dialed up and down. Beautiful, but the possibilities seem to be appealing immediately to marketers (imagine a walkthough ad in your local shopping mall), and possibly some military folks. There are a couple videos here, you can see it looks like a video waterfall.
posted by kokogiak at 10:20 AM PST - 15 comments

Rubber duckies wash ashore after 11 years Eleven years ago, a cargo-ship container holding 29,000 toy ducks was lost at sea in the North Pacific storm. They have since floated round the United States, through the Arctic and past Greenland (map). One American scientist is devoted to studying sea debris like these, including 80,000 pairs of Nike trainers, five million lost pieces of Lego and 34,000 hockey gloves, all lost when containers fell from transport ships.
posted by ao4047 at 10:20 AM PST - 17 comments

Gyrussish Friday flash. All this spinning is getting me dizzy.
posted by caddis at 10:08 AM PST - 2 comments

The miniatures of Angie Scarr are astonishingly lifelike, and heartbreakingly charming. Instructions are provided for the nimble-fingered. Of course there's small, and then there's small, and then there's small, and then there's small, and then there's really, really small.
posted by e.e. coli at 9:48 AM PST - 6 comments

Long overdue: Pointdexter to resign
This Pointdexter
posted by magullo at 9:43 AM PST - 13 comments

Woman gives birth on a Boston train while refusing help from onlookers. While the story of the birth is unusual, what interests me is that her two other children were placed in protective custody. Was this warranted? [more inside]
posted by widdershins at 8:44 AM PST - 19 comments

Top Ten Urinals Some are exotic, some puzzling, and one is just out of this world.
posted by adamrice at 7:53 AM PST - 22 comments

Million for Marriage. "Mobilizing a million people for the right of every American to get married."

Tired of just talking about it? Then do something about it.
posted by grabbingsand at 7:22 AM PST - 32 comments

A bold paper published in the August issue of Foundations of Physics Letters seems set to change the way we think about the nature of time and its relationship to motion and classical and quantum mechanics. The work also appears to provide solutions to Zeno's paradoxes. (Via Kurzweilai.net. More inside...)
posted by Pinwheel at 7:20 AM PST - 41 comments

Honey, phone's for you....it's the Barbi Twins! Almost-celebrities will talk to you or a loved one on the phone for $1 a second (30 sec. increments). So, so awesome, I don't know where to start. I'm just glad Epstein from Welcome Back Kotter is available!
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 6:57 AM PST - 42 comments

The Pope really disapproves of gay marriage. He says "people extending cohabitation rights 'need to be reminded that the approval or legalisation of evil is something far different from the toleration of evil.'" He "also described gay sex as inhuman and gay couples adopting children as 'doing violence'."And some people thought Bush was bad!
posted by Blue Stone at 6:46 AM PST - 32 comments

Intriguing new haptic interface for creating electronic music.
posted by anathema at 6:13 AM PST - 7 comments

Park Life is an urban hipster-themed, viral-marketing, platformer game [shockwave]
posted by crunchland at 5:53 AM PST - 3 comments

Watch this trailer and see if you can guess who made this movie. And if you check imdb, you'll also see that the one of the stars isn't shown or mentioned anywhere in the trailer or on the site. Interesting marketing tactic. I wonder if it will pay off.
posted by grumblebee at 5:06 AM PST - 51 comments

Wanted. Worlds best programmer. Location - Superyacht. Salary - Outrageous. (Found in this weeks London Times)
posted by MintSauce at 2:14 AM PST - 20 comments

Interview with Bernard Lietaer. In this engrossing interview with economist, author, professor and businessman, Bernard Lietaer, he argues that complementary currencies (time dollars, local exchanges, bartering, Ithica dollars, “fureai kippu” (caring relationship tickets)), and other non-dominant currency systems can help to enable social change in small ways. Have any of you had any experience with complementary currencies? More inside...
posted by gen at 2:04 AM PST - 8 comments

The World Transhumanist Association met recently at Yale to discuss the pending demise of humanity and the rise of post-human beings, and the Village Voice was there to cover it. With more and more and more media attention paid to the idea that the Singularity is a-comin', are the issues getting clearer and more interesting, or have you just had enough?
posted by AlexSteffen at 1:07 AM PST - 13 comments