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Our nation so richly endowed with natural resources and with a capable and industrial population, should be able to devise ways and means of insuring to all our able-bodied working men and women a fair day's pay for a fair day's work . - Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1937

Chapter 1 [PDF] of Ending Poverty as We Know It - Guaranteeing a Right to a Job at a Living Wage. Here is a Q&A with William Quigley, its author.
posted by y2karl at 10:47 PM PST - 29 comments

Not your smooth jazz crap! Frank Kimbrough is part of the Jazz Composer's Collective, a prolific and amazing composer and one of my mentors. His music is groovy, intellectual and comes from an area that includes much thought, much playing and being the house pianist for years in what used to be a real crap bar owned by devotees of Ayn Rand. My favourite of his many groups is the Herbie Nichols Project, which resurrects the music of a man taken early from this world, but who could have done much more for music.
posted by Captaintripps at 10:39 PM PST - 7 comments

These are the toy tanks and they shock the people.
posted by hughbot at 6:45 PM PST - 48 comments

Megametajapanfilter --feel the fury of 2ch, Japan's largest message board. Not only have bus hijackings (CNN) and group suicides been announced there, but 2ch helped spawn a world of memes and spin-off sites. The likes of pancake bunny (Oolong) and roflcopter have been breeding freely in the English-language mirror-world 2ch would help create. There is the (frequently disgusting and sexual) spin-off image board 4chan (English), which is a legend in its own right, plus many other *chans you'd rather not see. (See also the Japanese Futaba Channel.) Obviously Something Awful goons had their fingers in the 4chan pie.
posted by Kleptophoria! at 6:34 PM PST - 20 comments

A rug that turns into a laundry bag. "The perfect gift for teenagers, students and the lazy other half." [via]
posted by adampsyche at 6:06 PM PST - 27 comments

Chris Hedges on war. The long-time war correspondent explains why it will be years before we have any idea what's been going on in Iraq, and describes the gulf between here and there:

One of the Marines in the book returns to California and is invited to be the guest of honor in a gated community in Malibu, a place where he could never afford to live. The residents want to toast him as a war hero. "I'm not a hero," he tells the guests. "Guys like me are just a necessary part of things. To maintain this way of life in a fine community like this, you need psychos like us to go out and drop a bomb on somebody's house."

posted by languagehat at 5:49 PM PST - 45 comments

New York's HIV Experiment. Need test subjects for your highly experimental, possibly lethal drugs but don't want to deal with consent issues? Don't worry, New York City's Association for Children's Services has got you covered! Just ask GlaxoSmithKline about its continuing antiretroviral drug trials. Not only does the ACS provide it and other pharmaceutical companies with high-quality HIV-positive orphans and foster children, but it administers the drugs to them as well! Kids not willing to take the pills? The ACS will stick peg-tubes in their stomachs. Foster parents refusing to give kids the drugs? The ACS will charge them with abuse and put the kids somewhere else. Wondering about Tuskegee comparisons or how the combination of side-effects like diarrhea and swollen joints with no evidence of benefits fits into a cost-benefit analysis? Why? This is the ACS! They can do whatever they want.
posted by Anonymous at 2:55 PM PST - 81 comments

Google "Arabian Gulf" and you'll find that the gulf you are looking for does not exist. It seems that the ongoing ideological war between Iran and Iraq has escalated to the level of parodic error pages.
posted by mikrophon at 2:33 PM PST - 18 comments

Diagnosis via press release. Josh Marshall speculates on Dick Cheney's health based on a press release put out by a shoe store. The store says Cheney's feet have "changed to a size 10EEE". Swelling of the feet is a primary symptom of congestive heart failure.
posted by jpoulos at 2:26 PM PST - 33 comments

Who ate Baby Jesus? You may well ask yourself if you should become owner of this here nativity scene made entirely out of S'Mores.
posted by brookish at 1:52 PM PST - 21 comments

On the meaning of life... and movies: The radiation made it difficult for me to handle solid food, and I existed on a product named Ensure, which kept everything humming along. Very early on the first morning in Cannes I woke early, as I always do, and wandered, as I always do, down to the all-night cafe by the port, and ordered, as I always do, a croissant and cafe au lait. I dunked the croissant into the coffee, as I always do, and ate it, and that was the beginning of real food again.

Roger Ebert describes his battles with cancer--and his love of movies--in the introduction to his 2005 Movie Yearbook.
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:18 PM PST - 25 comments

Google's sorcery You use it, I use it some 30-40 times a day, but did you ever wonder exactly how they do it? The numbers are staggering:

# Over four billion Web pages, each an average of 10KB, all fully indexed. # Up to 2,000 PCs in a cluster. # Over 30 clusters. # 104 interface languages including Klingon and Tagalog. # One petabyte of data in a cluster -- so much that hard disk error rates of 10-15 begin to be a real issue. # Sustained transfer rates of 2Gbps in a cluster. # An expectation that two machines will fail every day in each of the larger clusters. # No complete system failure since February 2000.

Is Google God? (via /.)
posted by daHIFI at 12:50 PM PST - 40 comments

Perhaps the largest non-profit you never heard of, the Chevy Chase, Maryland-based Howard Hughes Medical Institute recently decided on the long-term mission of their currently-under-construction $500 million research facility in Ashburn, Virginia. Janelia Farm will strive to understand human consciousness in a 100-year timeframe. They plan to accomplish this by attracting the best and brightest, and non-conventional scientific minds to live at or near the research facility, and to work in a collaborative, the sky's the limit type environment.

disclaimer: I work for HHMI in a non-scientific role.
posted by pmbuko at 12:32 PM PST - 41 comments

Saving the world, one stapler at a time. Now you can buy a stapler (signed by an uber-celeb) and be a philanthrophic soul at the same time! If only they had a red Swingline signed by Milton, my life would be complete. But why would anybody want this one signed by Paris Hilton? God knows where it's been!
posted by drew at 12:12 PM PST - 14 comments

Marcel Duchamp's "readymade" Fountain has been named the World's Most Influential work of modern art, according to 500 artists, curators, critics and dealers in a survey conducted by Turner Prize sponsor Gordon's. (more inside)
posted by Ufez Jones at 11:39 AM PST - 64 comments

RC Aerial Photography. Oh so pretty!
posted by riffola at 10:41 AM PST - 29 comments

Do you like boobs? Do you like spikes? How about boobs that look like blowfish? Spiky Bras is an innovative concept, to say the least. Bras (and other, related underthings) covered with spikes. Why not? Give people the impression you have 300, 400 nipples! But why stop there? They have feathery bras and flowery bras and men's underpants that talk (ie. "I'm a horny 'lil devil!"). This may seem crass and juvenile but nothing is as cool as the glowing cactus that now tops my Christmas list. The site is relatively SWF, that is, if you think looking at pictures of boobs stuffed in bras covered with what looks like white, plastic Hershey's kisses is safe for your workplace.
posted by E_B_A at 10:35 AM PST - 16 comments

Rescheduling marijuana: third time's the charm? Rather than hoping activist judges use the outdated notion of state's rights to allow Angel Raich to use marijuana medicinally (she claims she'd die without it), why not reclassify it as Schedule II? Or more appropriately, Schedule III? Don't hold your breath. They've been trying since 1972.
posted by mrgrimm at 10:34 AM PST - 42 comments

Copycat [Java] - long available only in its rickety original LISP source - is now an interactive applet. You can propose analogy puzzles based on strings of letters and watch Copycat build up and tear down models of the problem until it finds a solution it's happy with. It will explain its reasoning, and, since stochastic elements are inolved, can come up with alternate solutions upon rerun. Tutorial for the applet here; or, explore MetaCat, the next generation follow-up.
posted by Wolfdog at 9:50 AM PST - 6 comments

FIDDLE • GoldenFiddle.com sends up Gawker.com, tailing celebrities in Atlanta: "Saw David Cross over thanksgiving at the Magnapop show in east Atlanta. He seemed really pissed off about something. Christianity maybe?"
posted by dhoyt at 9:44 AM PST - 3 comments

When technology falls into the wrong hands...After 48 hours, the DVD expires and turns black. "The viewing window begins when the consumer opens the package and exposes the Flexplay DVD to air. A Flexplay DVD can be watched as many times as a consumer wants during the pre-set viewing window." More here, here, and here.
posted by thisisdrew at 9:16 AM PST - 76 comments

RecallMontgomerySchoolboard.com The purpose of this site is to provide an information exchange for all citizens* concerning the recent actions of the Montgomery County School Board with the possible recall of these board members in accordance with applicable statutes.
* Please note that "all" is used here in its little known sense of everyone afraid of rubbers and homos.
posted by danOstuporStar at 8:53 AM PST - 30 comments

Are you a gay teen in Utah? Do you want to attend a high school dance with a same-sex date? Better bring a note from your parents!
posted by mr_crash_davis at 8:19 AM PST - 26 comments

Abortion makes you sterile, 50 percent of gay male teenagers are HIV-positive, mutual masturbation can get you pregnant, you can get HIV from sweat, and more fun "facts" from our federally-funded abstinence-only curricula.
posted by grrarrgh00 at 8:03 AM PST - 58 comments

Jeopardy Going After Kottke. Jason Kottke has served as the web's source of news about Ken Jennings and Jeopardy, with his most-linked blog entries being his September report of Jennings' impending loss and his Sunday provision of the actual audio of Kennings' loss. Now Sony is taking legal action against him for his spoilers, and this makes him very sad.
posted by waldo at 8:02 AM PST - 76 comments

From Guernica to Fallujah It's difficult to believe that in this day and age, when people are blogging, emailing and communicating at the speed of light, a whole city is being destroyed and genocide is being committed - and the whole world is aware and silent. Darfur, Americans? Take a look at what you've done in Fallujah." - Female Iraqi blogger Riverbend
posted by Postroad at 7:24 AM PST - 51 comments

With a newly indurated PPD in my arm, I went looking for tuberculosis resources. According to the WHO over 2 million people a year die of tuberculosis. About a third of the 40 mil. people infected with HIV worldwide are also infected with TB. Successful treatment takes 6-9 months of powerful antibiotics, but that's assuming the bacteria in your body aren't drug resistant. Epidemics of drug resistant TB are raging in some parts of Central America and in the Russian prison system. Paul Farmer is the man for treating it, and quite a good man in general. On the plus side, possibly having TB puts me in good company: Orwell, Kafka, Chekhov, Chopin, and the 70s favorite mummy, King Tut all had it. Every one of the Brontes did too, and they were all geniuses. Of course they all died of it. On a more sober note, if I do have to get treatment, but I refuse, I might be ordered to take medications by a judge.
posted by OmieWise at 7:03 AM PST - 11 comments

Lorcan O'Herlihy, architect. Cool stuff. c/o Los Angeles Times.
posted by xowie at 6:41 AM PST - 4 comments

Copyright Davis. Logo terrorist.
posted by armoured-ant at 6:28 AM PST - 27 comments

Microsoft does blogging Standard features, standard ugly MS design. Will "integrate" with MSN Messenger.
Via /.
posted by Mwongozi at 6:05 AM PST - 21 comments

Are you a member of the sandwich club?
posted by ifoughttheapemen at 5:42 AM PST - 24 comments

Three major record labels have inked deals with Peer Impact, a (still-in-beta) "legal p2p service"...this news on the heels of Shawn Fanning's "Snocap plan which involves identifying music files being traded through file-swapping networks and then attaching a price tag to them..." [+]
posted by tpl1212 at 5:18 AM PST - 7 comments

Lexis-Nexis...AlaCarte? Yes, it's true. The giant archive of news, corporate and legal information is now providing a pay as you go service. Queries can be entered for free, without subscription; charges are affixed to downloaded material on a per-document basis. (via Poynter)
posted by Smart Dalek at 5:03 AM PST - 9 comments

First look look into the surgery of of Dr Huang Hongyun who cultivates the cells of aborted foetuses and injects them into the brains and spines of his patients. His method is controversial, but his results have led hundreds of westerners to his Beijing surgery. (MI)
posted by brettski at 3:38 AM PST - 28 comments

Yankee Star Admits Steroid Use. Jason Giambi finally came clean. Will this lead to the confession of other baseball players? Barry Bonds - the heat is on. Or are you in "the clear"?
posted by cpchester at 3:12 AM PST - 30 comments