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If you refer to Russia as the Soviet Union three times while discussing foreign affairs should you really be President of the United States?
posted by Mick at 8:07 PM PST - 72 comments

Arial or Helvetica?
posted by btwillig at 7:19 PM PST - 46 comments

'Gay' Is Not a Dirty Word. The ACLU is outing a Louisiana Elementary school which punished a second grader for using the word "gay" when answering a classmate's question about his family. Not only did the teacher freak, sending little Marcus to the principal's office for using a "bad word", but the school made Marcus go to a behavioral clinic the following week and repeatedly write “I will never use the word ‘gay’ in school again.” Great use of a teachable moment for all. Extra credit assignment (these require Acrobat): (Student Behavior Contract) (Behavioral Incident Report)
posted by msacheson at 5:57 PM PST - 91 comments

The Case Against Milosevic (flash)
posted by Ljubljana at 5:15 PM PST - 3 comments

A Dell with a 2GHz Pentium processor owned by a Michigan State University student has found the world's largest prime number -- containing more than 6.3 million digits. The student was loaning his extra computer cycles to the GIMPS project [sort of like SETI and other monster farms]. Here's a web page he created about palindromic prime numbers before he became Mr. Biggest Prime Number Guy.
posted by jessamyn at 5:07 PM PST - 27 comments

Rep. Bill Janklow's Motorcycle Manslaugher Trial Continues
An excerpt, Janklow, a former four-term Republican governor of South Dakota, has pleaded not guilty to charges of speeding, failing to stop, reckless driving and second-degree manslaughter. Witnesses have said he didn't even slow down for the stop sign. First he lied about swerving to avoid a white car and then blamed low blood sugar for the lie.
Janklow has a long history of utter disregard for traffic laws but got off for years because he was the governor and then a congressman. More at Google News: Janklow
posted by fenriq at 3:51 PM PST - 17 comments

Classic British graffiti. None of yer spraycans and colours, mate - a black biro's all you need. And if the pen is truly mightier than the sword, then the British obviously wield their weapons best when they're sitting comfortably. (From b3ta, which also hosts the classic "Argentine football team with handbags" picture)
posted by iffley at 3:03 PM PST - 28 comments

Mario in the News A Japanese person (cannot translate the name, sorry) has completed the classic NES game Super Mario Bros. 3 in just over 11 minutes. Fortunately he recorded it for posterity. (uses Windows streaming video.) Speed runs have been gaining in popularity lately. What game would you like to see abused in such as fashion?
posted by patgas at 3:00 PM PST - 18 comments

Do you have Arachibutyrophobia? Or some other kind of phobia? All kinds of fear from A to Z Which is your favorite?
posted by bluno at 2:30 PM PST - 7 comments

As a historian, I am dismayed by the letters I see that proclaim that America was founded as a Christian nation. "America is not a Christian nation but rather a nation of mostly Christians. That was the intent of the Founders, to allow each of us the right under natural law, to decide matters of conscience for ourselves." A new form of revisionism?
posted by the fire you left me at 1:32 PM PST - 57 comments

Robot Wisdom weblogger and prolific online writer Jorn Barger has been missing since early October, according to friend Eric Wagoner.
posted by rcade at 11:46 AM PST - 51 comments

If you can offer the world a strip like Calvin and Hobbes, don't you have a responsibility to keep working? The Cleveland Scene travels to Chagrin Falls, Ohio, trying to track down its most famous (and famously reclusive) resident, Calvin and Hobbes author Bill Watterson. Along the way, the reporter contemplates micturating Calvins, burning paintings, the cost of hewing to one's principles, and the utter vacuity of Jim Davis's soul. In the end, there's even a brief encounter with a man who may or may not have once made millions happy by drawing a six-year-old boy and his stuffed tiger.
posted by pardonyou? at 11:32 AM PST - 58 comments

A Consumption Manifesto.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 11:16 AM PST - 11 comments

The Miami Model... ["What is the Miami Model? It is several things: extremely violent police response to nonviolent demonstrators, embedded reporters behind police lines - and arresting and harassing "non-embedded" journalists...(and) mass arrests and an arsenal of "non-lethal" weapons.]...represents the next step in the criminalization and repression of dissent that is occurring in the United States right now." It is part of the newly emerging "Technologies of political control" (1.1m PDF) which are rapidly consuming American democracy from within. This is more than crowd control. This is the new Information Warfare. Oh - and thinking of protesting? - The FBI would like your name, please. (more inside)
posted by troutfishing at 11:10 AM PST - 73 comments

n Ø 1 s e - How do data and information differ? What is pattern and how do we recognise it? Where is the threshold between random and order?
posted by Orange Goblin at 10:59 AM PST - 7 comments

The Songs of Bilitis. 'First published in Paris in 1894, this purports to be translations of poems by a woman named Bilitis, a contemporary and acquaintance of Sappho. This caused a sensation, not only because finding an intact cache of poems from a completely unknown Greek poet circa 600 B.C. would be a miracle, but because of its open and sensitive exploration of lesbian eroticism. Actually Bilitis never existed. The poems were a clever forgery by Pierre Louÿs--the "translator"; to lend weight, he had even included a bibliography with bogus supporting works ... '
A new addition to the sacred-texts.com canon.
posted by plep at 10:56 AM PST - 8 comments

mr. picassohead
perhaps we should be out working in our gardens or making art instead of spending time in front of our computers... but this is pretty cool. [ via newstoday, flash required ]
posted by specialk420 at 9:17 AM PST - 11 comments

Walt would turn over in his cryonic chamber... (I know, I know, it's not true.) Speaking of family trees, Roy Disney (the last board member with ties to the founding family) resigned from the company Sunday, calling for the ouster of Chairman Michael Eisner. Stanley Gold soon soon followed. In a harsh letter, Disney said the entertainment conglomerate had "lost its focus, its creative energy, and its heritage" and that the public now held the perception that company is "rapacious, soul-less, and always looking for the 'quick buck'." No word yet from the Disneyland obsessives, but the folks at MousePlanet 's Mousepad seem optimistic about this development...
posted by Fofer at 8:37 AM PST - 18 comments

Pacelman. Pacman for Excel. [via Edge (print edition)]
posted by davehat at 8:31 AM PST - 17 comments

The Philip K. Dick Offical Site has opened: relevant not just because the movie Paycheck is coming out this month (based on a short story of his), but because we live in a Dickian world. As he put it, "We live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups. I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudorealities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives. I distrust their power. It is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing."
posted by paladin at 7:56 AM PST - 25 comments

Canada's View on Social Issues Is Opening Rifts With the U.S. (note: NYT reg. required) "Being attached to America these days is like being in a pen with a wounded bull," Rick Mercer, Canada's leading political satirist, said at a recent show in Toronto. "Between the pot smoking and the gay marriage, quite frankly it's a wonder there is not a giant deck of cards out there with all our faces on it."

Being different is good, right? Right? Vive la Difference!
posted by ashbury at 7:34 AM PST - 60 comments

Dead Milkman drummer Dean 'Clean' Sabatino has set up a blog to post 18 year old tour diary entries, which begin with the band's first full tour in the summer of 1985. via irregular orbit
posted by jasonspaceman at 7:29 AM PST - 16 comments

It's the equivalent of "You can play the CD on three designated CD players that support the DRM. Like, it will play ONLY on xyz brand cd player and only three of those that you pick. Yes, you have to stick to that brand of cd player (the iTunes player, the supported OS of iTunes, no unix support in sight) and too bad if you have a fourth one in the bedroom. It's not gonna play in your second car's player either. Nor in the kitchen. Nor on your neighbor's player. Nor can you trade it on the used market when you're tired of listening to it. "
"They finally found a way to sell you some wind. Even better, they will restrict the direction and force in wich the wind will blow, how often and where it will happen..."

As "DVD-Jon" Johansen goes to retrial, a backlash is rising in the media & community towards Apple's DRM (digital rights management), a week after this same kid created an open-source program that lets users copy the songs that they bought onto other sources.
posted by omidius at 7:24 AM PST - 28 comments

Traditional annual advent calendar post.
posted by nthdegx at 5:43 AM PST - 11 comments

One Nation Under God(s): George W.Bush unwittingly restarted an old theological debate. Is the God that the Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same God? Or to be more accurate; notwithstanding the different forms of worship and beliefs, is it the same God in different guises? Fundamentalists in all three monotheistic faiths tend to disagree. For other believers - to ruthlessly simplify - God is necessarily one. Either way it's still a fascinating question (possibly not only for religious folk) and has important consequences in an increasingly divided and antagonistic world. What's it be? One God or one's God?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:38 AM PST - 107 comments

Attack of the Disco Furball! The cute animated character has become something of a staple for alterno-pop videos - from the runaway milk carton in Blur's Coffee and TV to the big-nosed moper in Moby's Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad. But new heights of weirdness are reached on this Flash video called Jive County which shows a be-stetsoned one-legged bundle of hair bouncing to an electro beat.
posted by skylar at 1:51 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Kenneth Michael Trentadue was found dead in his cell in 1995, and ruled a suicide despite sloppy handling of evidence and other eyebrow-raisers. DOJ's Civil Rights Division punted in 1997, and it was again ruled suicide in 1999 by their Office of the Inspector General. Last week, an AP story said the DOJ's Public Integrity Section would be taking the matter up yet again. While there are plenty of fringe sources in a google search on his full name, there seems to be enough in the mainstream to support the notion that something doesn't add up.
posted by trondant at 12:04 AM PST - 5 comments