MetaFilter

the thoughts of childhood summed up in four panels
posted by drezdn at 11:44 PM PST - 5 comments

Aid workers forcing refugees to trade sex for food Over 40 aid agencies including the UNHCR were implicated, and 67 individuals - mostly local staff - named by the children. Some under-age girls said United Nations peacekeepers in the West African region were involved.
posted by nobody_knose at 11:07 PM PST - 9 comments

Avant-no -- Avantgo puts limit on "free" channels. If you currently offer a "custom channel" through Avantgo (in other words, one you're not paying for), there is now a limit of eight subscribers to that channel before you have to pay. Starting price: $1,000. (More inside...)
posted by metrocake at 9:48 PM PST - 11 comments

School Fascism at all-time high? Okay, forget the various and sundry suspensions for alcohol, fighting, or bringing anything even vaguely pointy to school. This guy took innocent pictures of girls in his school with their knowledge using his own camera, and posted them to his own web site. Are we a little overboard here?
posted by umberto at 8:45 PM PST - 24 comments

Speaking of Pat Robertson, if the 700 club thinks that this isn't the mark of the beast, sign me up for the pre-implant kool aid anesthetic. As long as I don't have to carry the smoking man's alien baby, I'll be a good citizen.
posted by machaus at 7:49 PM PST - 16 comments

Design For Chunks "puking in dull bags can no longer be accepted, imagine your delight when you discover the receptacle you are about to puke into is of the highest pedigree." A gallery of sick bags, for designers, by designers.
posted by zeoslap at 5:05 PM PST - 9 comments

Top-secret agents leave Cheney's itinerary in a Salt Lake City souvenir shop. So much for "secret" service. I wonder if it listed Yahoo Map directions to Cheney's undisclosed location.
posted by billder at 3:22 PM PST - 16 comments

"The fraud, the huckster, the salesman are not new phenomena in America; what is new is that they now so strongly control every estate of our society." For the last few days, I've been reading the Progressive Review's Undernews, a sort of progressive news blog-by-e-mail -- and frankly, it's amazing. One of today's articles blew my mind: it's a spot-on encapsulation of What's Wrong with America Today. (Scroll down to "Derivative America and the Enron Generation." This link is to the "Latest Issue" page. Tomorrow I think it will be archived here.) Seriously, read it now. It's worth it.
posted by tweebiscuit at 3:00 PM PST - 36 comments

A Brief History of the Apocalypse
posted by signal at 2:23 PM PST - 15 comments

Pat Robertson calls Islam a Religion of Violence. Citing citing various verses from the Qur'an he concludes "... that militant Islam is dedicated to the destruction of America and the killing of the Jews and Christians around the world. To deny that the Koran promotes violence to many followers would be to deny the truth." Arab response: "We know the word for this. This is called anti-Semitism." Where did that come from?
posted by aaronshaf at 2:11 PM PST - 106 comments

Genome liberation. "Life science researchers -- even those who work in academic settings -- are finding that corporations are just as eager to patent the tools as they are the data, and in many cases, universities are bending over backward to let the private sector have its way. As a result, a growing number of bioinformatics researchers are beginning to look to the free-software and open-source software movements for inspiration in their quest for bio freedom."
posted by homunculus at 1:40 PM PST - 2 comments

How Americans view us... You don't really ... do you? "They responded very readily to Britain and the British: 'Tea... proper... trousers... Monty Python... Jane Eyre... Austin Powers... soccer hooligans... Prince William... dry and witty... educated... not huggy...' "
posted by feelinglistless at 12:58 PM PST - 61 comments

The Tech Museums Awards have announced a call for entries for their 2002 event. $50,000 will be awarded to five winners in a competition "designed to recognize people, companies or organizations which develop or use technology in creative ways to solve global challenges and have a high potential of yielding lasting, beneficial impact. The awards honor innovators from around the world in the categories of health, education, environment, economic development and equality." Just imagine: technology benefitting humanity, and getting financial support for it. 2001 winners here.
posted by mathowie at 12:26 PM PST - 6 comments

Wayward Cow Caught! The fugitive cow, earning clemency after escaping from Ohio slaughterhouse, was captured not far from the scene of the escape. The cow will now spend his days on the farm of former Cincinatti Reds owner, Marge Schott.
posted by Lanternjmk at 12:00 PM PST - 26 comments

Here is a text-to-speech demo from AT&T that's fun to play with.Spanish and German versions due in March. It will say anything you type, apparently.Yes, those words too.Go crazy.
posted by BarneyFifesBullet at 11:44 AM PST - 23 comments

The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick: Following a minor operation of March 1974, Dick had a series of powerful religious visions that he spent the remainder of his life trying to interpret, and which heavily influenced his late work. This is a story by Robert Crumb (originally published in Weirdo) that draws on interviews Dick did about this period in his life. Thanks to Robot Wisdom.
posted by ryanshepard at 11:04 AM PST - 5 comments

It's time to stop racial profiling and start profiling rich white men. So says one man's editorial. I think we can all agree -- it'd probably prevent another Enron.
posted by tiny pea at 10:19 AM PST - 30 comments

SF area woman wants to be aeorobics instructor but she weighs 240 pounds. Company says they won't hire her because of her weight. She is suing.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 10:00 AM PST - 123 comments

Fascist fashion vs. Communist chic. Why is one okay, the other not?
posted by Ty Webb at 9:52 AM PST - 37 comments

Muslim states hate us because their culture is backwards and corrupt, according to a Wall Street Journal editorial. The writer, tired of America-bashing, explores the inferiority complex of the Arab world: "Like Third World Marxists of the 1960s, who put blame for their own self-inflicted misery upon corporations, colonialism and racism--anything other than the absence of real markets and a free society--the Islamic intelligentsia recognizes the Muslim world's inferiority vis-à-vis the West, but it then seeks to fault others for its own self-created fiasco. Government spokesmen in the Middle East should ignore the nonsense of the cultural relativists and discredited Marxists and have the courage to say that they are poor because their populations are nearly half illiterate, that their governments are not free, that their economies are not open, and that their fundamentalists impede scientific inquiry, unpopular expression and cultural exchange." via kuro5hin
posted by swift at 9:44 AM PST - 36 comments

The best solution I've heard so far to end the mess in Israel. A Saudi Prince suggests plan that trades occupied land in return for the Arab world recognizing the Israeli state. Is it a viable plan? Will Barak have the courage to give it a shot? Could the Arab nations ever recognize a Jewish state? Could Palestine and Israel coexist peacefully next to each other?
posted by aacheson at 9:30 AM PST - 28 comments

Rotating Ski Slope. This seems a little far fetched, if not dangerous. Skiers travel down the side of the revolving slope at the same time as it moves upwards. The result is that the ski run is effectively much further than the actual 300-metre length of the incline. It is in Wales though - which will be nice.
posted by Spoon at 8:57 AM PST - 12 comments

NY Times on female cruelty (subscription req'd) This is an insightful examination of cruelty by girls struggling for power in complex Middle School social hierarchies. Many points made about "girls" here also apply to young adult women -- at least the ones I know. In our tabloidized, materialistic culture, might adult women abandon such behavior someday? Link posted by Voyageman on a discussion page yesterday. Thank you Voyageman.
posted by mcgraw at 8:55 AM PST - 10 comments

102 Beats. For its third anniversary, Freaky Trigger is trying out a neat project: You write exactly 102 words about a bit of music. Then someone else will do the same. More inside.
posted by Skot at 8:49 AM PST - 7 comments

Targeting Toddler Terrorists "There, at midnight, is a 30-pound, 36-inch-tall peanut with his arms and legs spread, wand searching his body, one security agent removing his shoes to check for explosives and another rummaging through his Scooby-Doo backpack."
posted by waffleboy at 7:18 AM PST - 42 comments

Jim Fitzpatricks Celtic art is pretty nice to look at, and unlike the otherwise excellent Boris Vallejo website, all content is free to download. Also check out his assertion that he produced one of the more famous Che Guevara posters which has an interesting (typically irish) story as to how it went down in Ireland.
posted by kev23f at 7:00 AM PST - 5 comments

In a small Ohio town, a fight over the right to knock on doors You are a Supreme Court Justice. How would you rule on this case?
posted by Postroad at 6:49 AM PST - 38 comments

Can't remember your phone number? At the phonespell.org website you can get a list of all the possible word combinations made by your phone number. If you have 1's and 0's in your number, the possibilities are fewer.
posted by altojen at 6:46 AM PST - 34 comments

Pick a dawg, any dawg. Mine's Dawgspeare. I find this subculture fascinating. Pathetic but fascinating.
posted by Karl at 6:41 AM PST - 6 comments

Why Sex with Cars? I keep asking myself: Is this a well-done fake or is it as serious as it looks like? B.
posted by Baud at 4:34 AM PST - 23 comments

The Elephant's Memory is a beautiful logographic language oriented towards children. In late 1999, the creator wrote an article for Apple's Learning Technology Review[the PDF version is better illustrated] that goes into much more detail than the original site, which appears not to have been updated since 1996. A CD-ROM was in production, with a pre-release reviewed by Intellect Books, but I can't find any info on whether it was finished or is still available.
posted by Su at 2:50 AM PST - 5 comments

A different kind^H^H^H^Hspecies of camgirl. Safe for work, but not necessarily for young children.
posted by louie at 12:10 AM PST - 5 comments