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French police on Sunday ended their practice of hiding plastic explosives in air passengers' luggage to train bomb-sniffing dogs after one such bag got lost, possibly ending up on a flight out of Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport.

WTF were they thinking? Isn't there a better way to train the dogs without making innocent people unwittingly carry plastique?
posted by Vidiot at 11:00 PM PST - 34 comments

It's the stupid, economy. I'm no economist, but I'm reminded of the underpants gnomes business strategy when I read this. Obviously there is a political component (to the story) but what the $!@(# are the nuts and bolts? Why is pressuring economic engine states (California, New York) a good thing? (registration to the L.A. Times ... sry) Pretty much the same story here.
posted by Smedleyman at 10:41 PM PST - 15 comments

It goes back to his kidnapping and presumed death this year...
posted by symbioid at 10:31 PM PST - 6 comments

According to Persian mythology, God is a painter who has painted the world with his kelk. More Persian calligraphy here.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 9:12 PM PST - 10 comments

Pat Tillman, The Real Story: "During several weeks of memorials and commemorations that followed Tillman's death, commanders at his 75th Ranger Regiment and their superiors hid the truth about friendly fire from Tillman's brother Kevin, who had fought with Pat in the same platoon, but was not involved in the firing incident and did not know the cause of his brother's death. Commanders also withheld the facts from Tillman's widow, his parents, national politicians and the public, according to records and interviews with sources involved in the case. " Believe nothing.
posted by owillis at 9:01 PM PST - 46 comments

Skeletal systems of cartoon characters

(All hail Waxy.org)
posted by 40 Watt at 8:42 PM PST - 40 comments

Sinterklaas is coming to town. Christmas comes early for Dutch children. Or rather, Sinterklaas does, having brought his gifts this weekend. While many Anglo-American Christmas traditions owe much to marketing schemes, the Dutch attachment to mulled wine and spiced biscuits harks back to earlier times. Perhaps too much so: with ongoing racial tensions following the murder of Theo van Gogh, the annual debate over 'zwarte piet', Santa's blackfaced little helper, has been especially heated. (One advantage of artificial traditions is that they tend to avoid such messy questions.) Nevertheless, here's the motherlode of Sinterklaas links, including songs, recipes and background.
posted by holgate at 8:06 PM PST - 25 comments

Artistic guitars. Check out the Folk Legend, the Skeletar, and the MotorGuitar.
posted by Wet Spot at 7:26 PM PST - 14 comments

Carnival by Steve McCaffery (wikipedia entry). One of the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets. Their late 70's, early 80's magazine can be found archived here and makes for interesting reading. However, I suggest you start off by looking at the two beautiful panels that comprise Carnival. They're both visual art and poetry. There's also a terrible pun hidden in one of them if you can find it. But if you hunger for more, here's an interesting critique by Marjorie Perloff [note: The Carnival panels are too big for any screen, but they can be shrunk by hitting "map"]
posted by Kattullus at 6:01 PM PST - 19 comments

Media Mammon is the latest edition of stock market simulation...with a very kind UI. Instead of 'buying' stocks, atheletes, celebrities, politicians or future events specifically you are 'buying' words and phrases that can cover anything...as long as its reported on Yahoo! News. By analyzing the content of news stories, the more frequently a word is used, the higher its value. Some people may just want to buy 4 shares of dumb and call it a night, or be the first to get Metafilter listed as a public share...hail Mammon ;¬) [via Waxy]
posted by gren at 5:55 PM PST - 17 comments

Famous for Being Famous - is an article on the artist, Giotto, argued to be among the first "celebrities." Giotto studied with the painter Cimabue and is said to have been an early influence on Leonardo da Vinci. Although not currently as well-known as Michaelangelo, for instance, Giotto's fame in his day was great, as evidenced by writings by Dante and Boccaccio.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 5:48 PM PST - 5 comments

Recently we've all been thinking about flat (or better, faceted) hierarchy web apps that organize email, photos, bookmarks, and general knowledge. The common threads are metadata (tags, categories, labels) that enrich relationships within and hence searchability of large collections. But besides marketroid hype (buzzwords, snark) and a computer that plays Twenty Questions what else can we do and study using faceted data structures: searchable culture references in The Simpsons, library science, computer filesystems, A.I. development, models for human memory and cognition?
posted by fatllama at 5:26 PM PST - 46 comments

The Wonderfully Absurd Temple. [Via MoFi]
posted by homunculus at 5:13 PM PST - 2 comments

To settle the issue, I extracted my own DNA. I extracted the DNA of my subject. I tested both in a gel electrophoresis [flash] chamber that I built myself. As I suspected, although my DNA is delicious, I am not a kiwi fruit.
posted by deshead at 5:02 PM PST - 6 comments

"We need to be the benevolent, dominant tribe." The United States enacts tough love in the aftermath of fighting in Fallujah. "Bellon asserted that previous attempts to win trust from Iraqis suspicious of US intentions had telegraphed weakness by asking, " 'What are your needs? What are your emotional needs?' All this Oprah shit," he said. "They want to figure out who the dominant tribe is and say, 'I'm with you.'""
posted by four panels at 3:51 PM PST - 43 comments

When the fighting stops. In World War II, for every American soldier killed in combat, there were three wounded on the battlefield, according to the U.S. Army Medical Command. In Korea, the ratio of killed-to-wounded was one to four. The ratio was the same for Vietnam. In Iraq, the ratio is one to 12.
Those combat survivors -- along with thousands more service members in Iraq and Afghanistan who are injured or who fall ill off the battlefield -- will add to the growing demand for services from an already struggling federal Veterans Affairs Department. More inside.
posted by matteo at 1:47 PM PST - 33 comments

"Excuse me, but we can credit sources however we choose." Some of you might have seen the pictures of Jessica Simpson as Daisy Duke which have been popping out all over. One of the sources was Film Rotation, who presented the 'story' in this post. The following day they included a follow up discussing other sites which have been covering the story including Cinema Blend adding that it was "sadly with no source credit - seems to be a pattern with them as of late." The Blend people didn't take too kindly to the criticism and this 'discussion' occured. It's captivating, but all too familiar.
posted by feelinglistless at 1:38 PM PST - 31 comments

Minimal surfaces in 3D (red/green, or stereo pairs), with rotate and zoom. If you want to go beyond the eye-candy aspect, here's the obligatory Mathworld link, the classic intuitive explanation, and a raft of additional information. If you like eye-candy, don't miss the ray-traced minimal surfaces and these interesting, but non-minimal surfaces.
posted by Wolfdog at 12:41 PM PST - 7 comments

A history of Mondo 2000 : "It had arrived at a particular moment where there was at least a subculture of people in the computer community that were ready for it," remembers Sirius. "At the time there was no competition at all. There was absolutely nothing to compare it to. It talked about how technology was important in our lives at a time when people were in denial about it."
posted by ori at 11:57 AM PST - 33 comments

For anyone who still believes "reality" shows are legit, Time magazine's Joel Stein has the scoop in the LA Times (free reg. required) of "unscripted" programs with "real" people following carefully-written plots. He's even obtained a smoking gun: a Queer Eye script (.pdf) in which "every moment is planned in advance, including a few specific lines for the straight guy to deliver." The Osbournes features canned sound effects and phony reaction shots. Every scene in The Simple Life is so scripted, its producers stopped calling it a reality program, preferring the odd "soft-scripted show" euphemism. In short, the entire genre is a rather transparent fraud.
posted by evening at 11:54 AM PST - 90 comments

The Hidden (in Plain Sight) Persuaders It's not hard to understand why corporations would try "word of mouth" marketing campaigns to promote their products. But why would regular people volunteer to turn their daily interactions into marketing moments? (NYT - requires free registration)
posted by ericb at 10:13 AM PST - 45 comments

The Scarlet Whore of Babylon must've been a culinary genius. After all, the Quakers credited her with the invention of the Christmas pudding. Being American, I grew up thinking that the world of pudding began and ended here. Boy, was I wrong! This traditional dessert has made its mark on everything -- from great literature and film to atomic modeling. While Stir-up Sunday has been and gone, I think that as long as Christmas hasn't arrived, it's never too late to make your own. (And once you've eaten your fill, try your hand at the game!)
posted by fricative at 9:30 AM PST - 16 comments

Take a Nobel economist who has devoted his career to studying the effect of social and political change on microeconomic theory. Combine with the most prolific legal scholar of the past half-century and federal judge with immeasurable influence on American jurisprudence. Add Moveable Type and a bit of technical help from our fearless leader, and you've got the Becker-Posner Blog, which debuts today.
posted by PrinceValium at 9:05 AM PST - 14 comments

Saltacol {flash} is a jumping snail who needs your help to reach his mate. Level codes and hints are here. Warning: can be frustrating and addictive.
posted by Cryptical Envelopment at 7:34 AM PST - 10 comments

Just a week in the life of a san diego county police officer. Linked from YouCSD, a news alternative weblog for the UCSD community.
posted by radiosig at 5:05 AM PST - 28 comments