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Sims Survivor - 8 contestants left alone in a house. When the food runs out, who do you think will win? Follow it day by day. Great idea!
posted by Jubey at 11:23 PM PST - 14 comments

HP shareholders vote to acquire Compaq... or not? Stop me if you've heard this one before: One side has already declared victory while the other won't concede defeat until all the votes are counted. The margin appears to be less than one half of one percent, and a manual count is in the works.
posted by jjg at 10:57 PM PST - 4 comments

Does this actually throw any more responsibility onto ISPs? In PA they are now mandated to block child pornography. But only the kiddy porn the government already knows about. Which apparently anyone can get around, anyway. Noble attempt at eradicating a social scourge or pointless burdensome do-nothing legislation?
posted by umberto at 8:52 PM PST - 5 comments

Jandek has been creating some of the most arrestingly bent music around(audio here ) for 23 years now. On top of the strangeness of his music he's so reclusive that he makes J.D. Salinger seem like a party animal. This brings out the investigative impulse in some folks, like this fan who went so far as to take pictures of his record company's PO Box, among other things. Someone else has has created this fittingly inscrutable tribute page . Jandek's music is worth a listen, but be prepared to recalibrate your understanding of the term "strange."
posted by jonmc at 8:37 PM PST - 6 comments

Got bad handwriting? Go back to where the nightmare started and learn to write all over again. Or, if that didn't work the first time, try some more advanced instruction. Perhaps you just want to adopt the handwriting of one of your idols. In that case, I'm way ahead of you. Remember - write with all your muscles, not just with your fingers.
posted by Settle at 7:32 PM PST - 9 comments

Check out the Weblogger CD Swap Now this seems like a really fun idea to me: basically you put your name and address in a "hat" and get the names/addresses of 5 other bloggers and burn a CD of summer music for them. Your reward? Get CD's from 5 other bloggers... is that swanky or what? via Ernie at Little Yellow Different
posted by crankydoodle at 6:40 PM PST - 110 comments

Giant world map stencil - Teach kids that there's more to this wide world of ours than just their hometown with this giant pavement stencil. Learning geography has never been this much fun!
posted by phalkin at 6:03 PM PST - 9 comments

Bringing up Adultolescents Newsweek has a fascinating article on adult children who're still living with their parents after graduating from college. It's hardly a new concept, but this is a good piece. (Especially noteworthy: The parents who spend away their own retirement savings providing for grown kids.) And if you've priced a supposed "starter" home recently, you know as well as I do that this trend isn't going away any time soon.
posted by GaelFC at 5:29 PM PST - 13 comments

Most internet users have monitors that can display more colors than the 216 that are used in the traditional “browser-safe” palette. moreCrayons is a bigger box of crayons; 4,096 colors for the web. A site by our own kirkaracha. [Via Zeldman]
posted by riffola at 5:09 PM PST - 14 comments

i hate spam, but i love spamradio... the guys at spamradio use text to speech software on spam messages they recieve and mix the results with ambient music for truly disturbing and amazing results. from "run your own porn site" to "start spamming now", this is quite a quirky bit of audio.
posted by boogah at 4:35 PM PST - 12 comments

Marconi was a fascist anti-Semite, says The Age. Evidence has emerged that the father of wireless communications blocked all Jews from becoming members of the science-oriented Academy of Italy at the behest of Mussolini, long before Il Duce's racist laws became known to the rest of the world.
posted by brookish at 4:26 PM PST - 34 comments

College Girls: Unpaid Whores. So you think you're a great troller. You think you know how to spin your words with absolute precision to force your opponents into a saliva-spewing frenzied rage. Well, guess what? You're a nobody, an amateur. It's time for you to bow down before the One True Master: Cornell University doctoral candidate Joseph J. Sabia. I defy a single MeFite, of any ideology or political persuasion, to not find at least one statement in this article that doesn't completely infuriate them.
posted by aaron at 4:04 PM PST - 91 comments

How serious a problem is anti-intellectualism? Is it that the academy is out of touch and treacherous? Or are the public egged on to ignore and deprecate the wisdom of left-wing intellectuals by a cynical media, as this author alleges? [more inside]
posted by Gaz at 4:02 PM PST - 36 comments

Bye Bye, Tuvalu...

"In 1998, BAS predicted the demise of more ice shelves around the Antarctic Peninsula. Since then warming on the peninsula has continued and we watched as piece-by-piece Larsen B has retreated. We knew what was left would collapse eventually, but the speed of it is staggering. Hard to believe that 500 billion tonnes of ice sheet has disintegrated in less than a month."
speccy piccy this.(link via Ethel)
posted by lagado at 3:14 PM PST - 18 comments

AOL's UK tax break to end...next year?!!? To those that hath, shall be given. For some years now, the worlds largest online service (now part of the worlds largest media co.) has been allowed a $30m./year exemption from Value Added (sales & services) Tax - VAT. This has been blamed on European Union legislation by Customs & Excise, who await the Brussels behemoths decision - as we all do - with baited breath. Is it just a case of sour grapes by their rivals, especially Freeserve, now owned by one of Europe's largest media companies - Wanadoo - or was there a real distinction between ISP and Content Provider? Surely, there must be a defence for this - 'Devil's Advocate', anyone? From TheRegister.co.uk
posted by dash_slot- at 1:23 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

In a world of frustratingly cyclic bloodshed, peacemakers show the way according to an article by William Pfaff at the IHT. AC Grayling at The Guardian says that true heroes are those brave enough to make peace. With terrorism and counter terroism raising the temperature of rhetoric and war across the globe, will a new wisdom emerge where cooler heads prevail?
posted by will at 11:09 AM PST - 9 comments

13-year-old girl dies after being hit by puck at Blue Jackets' game: A 13-year-old girl died after being hit in the head by a puck that was shot over the glass and caromed off another fan at an NHL game. Brittanie Cecil died Monday night, two days after she was hurt at the game between the Columbus Blue Jackets and Calgary Flames, Children's Hospital said. It was believed to be the first death of a fan hit by a puck at an NHL game.
posted by dagny at 10:38 AM PST - 40 comments

amazing documentary about the children on both sides of the Israeli occupation. check it out if you can.
posted by aLienated at 9:48 AM PST - 8 comments

Clueless! But wouldn't this have made a big dent in the middle east peace process?
posted by BentPenguin at 9:13 AM PST - 28 comments

"This is William Shatner's world. The rest of us just live in it." Warren Clements of The Globe and Mail on the Shatner phenomenon: "Shatner, who turns 71 on Friday, is in a golden stage of his career. . . . Shatner sticks his popular cultural head up more times than a target in a Whack-a-Mole game." No kidding. We sure do like our Shatner links here at ShatnerMetaFilter; here's another one for the pile.
posted by mcwetboy at 8:53 AM PST - 14 comments

If citizens voted for it and juries made of citizens refuse to convict other citizens for it ... Where is the dilemma?
posted by magullo at 8:16 AM PST - 5 comments

The Sybli's raving mouth, according to Heraclitus, speaks without mirth or adornment or perfume: with the help of the god her voice continues for a thousand years: Plutarch - Why The Pythia No Longer Prophesies In Verse... So, what kinda gas was she huffin'? The Sybil on solvents--an archeological update on the Oracle of Delphi (NYT: you know the drill...)
posted by y2karl at 7:07 AM PST - 7 comments

Thank you very much, Mr. Roboto. Both Honda and Sony have unveiled the newest versions of their humanoid robots. Honda favours a more practical design, while Sony's is geared for entertainment. Having just watched AI the other night, I'm wondering when and if people would want to have one around the house.
posted by Stuart_R at 6:33 AM PST - 21 comments

2 hours of Playstation vs. 2 hours with a good Book If true, (big if given source) life as a parent just got more complicted. Maybe our children's toys really do need to be "smart" .
posted by Voyageman at 6:18 AM PST - 43 comments

Robbers escape with $3m (£2.1m) in cash after hijacking a van at Heathrow Airport, London, the second such raid there in recent weeks. Nice to see that security has improved then, at the worlds busiest airport after 9/11. via BBC
posted by MintSauce at 4:30 AM PST - 12 comments

Is Silicon Valley coming back? Newsweek's cover story this week is the return of Silicon Valley after the Bust of 2000, start-ups and all. Does this new round of hype have any morsels of truth to it?
posted by costas at 4:21 AM PST - 3 comments

Damned if you do, damned if you're dead. If families don't purchase an expensive urn for cremated remains, require them to purchase a $45 temporary container. But be sure to stamp it "Temporary Container" on all four sides, advises one industry newsletter. The funeral industry may not be making any friends, but they're making a boatload of money. The Funeral Consumers Alliance would like to help them make a little less.
posted by headspace at 3:13 AM PST - 14 comments

Dali + Lichtenstein = Massurealism? That's one ugly baby. Apparently a lot of the marketing and visual information we're presented with currently has roots in surrealism. But is it art?
posted by Su at 12:54 AM PST - 4 comments