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1 DEPLOY GUNS AND BADGES. Josh Bolten's Five Point Plan is in full effect. "It'll be more guys with guns and badges," said a proponent of the plan. "Think of the visuals. The President can go down and meet with the new recruits. He can go down to the border and meet with a bunch of guys and go ride around on an ATV."
posted by scalefree at 9:48 PM PST - 42 comments

Indicted! No, not him. Today the "most prestigious and recognized plaintiff law firm in the United States" was indicted (.pdf) on federal charges of obstruction of justice, perjury, bribery, and fraud.
posted by brain_drain at 7:57 PM PST - 20 comments

Newsfilter: Cure for cancers 'in five years'.
posted by dash_slot- at 4:58 PM PST - 71 comments

"It's Al-Qaida!" I yelled. "We had a heads-up!" In an exclusive AlterNet interview, Judith Miller says (and her then-editor Steve Engelberg corroborates) that in July 2001 an intelligence source (maybe Richard Clarke?) told her about an intercepted communication between two Al Qaida operatives that were disappointed that the US hadn't responded more seriously to the October 2000 attack against the USS Cole. "And one Al Qaida operative was overheard saying to the other, 'Don't worry; we're planning something so big now that the U.S. will have to respond.'"
posted by kirkaracha at 4:55 PM PST - 23 comments

New York City has been trying to revamp its street furniture for nearly a decade and last Fall, deals were struck between a British architecture firm and a Spanish outdoor firm in a 1 billion dollar deal. Recently the designs for public toilets, bus stop shelters, and (my favorite) a modernized clean newsstand were released.
posted by mathowie at 3:09 PM PST - 66 comments

"...this clip of a Japanese show called Gaki No Tsukai stands out not for what it includes, but for what it lacks - talking and screaming. It takes place in a studio made up like a library, with the participants (including Kickboxing champion Ernesto Hoost) stifling their laughter, screams of pain and retching noises, just like any student did in their own junior high school library." [youtube video, text shamelessly lifted from wfmu]
posted by Armitage Shanks at 2:54 PM PST - 25 comments

"And And God created man, for because I have blessed him. And Noah begat Methuselah three wives of it, and to thee nothing but dust shalt say, This is evil continually." What happens when you put a million monkeys at a million typewriters? You get the Markov Bible! After a million years, that is.
posted by tweak at 2:53 PM PST - 17 comments

Guerilla Gardening is a movement to make public spaces more attractive, by planting in derelict or unattractive public ground. Founder Richard Reynolds has enlisted the help of people similarly dedicated to beautifying public space in UK urban areas, and the movement has inspired other groups. For people who don't want to dig holes in the ground or get their hands messy, there are instructions for seed-and-run scenarios. Apparently, even the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are in on the act.
posted by darsh at 2:22 PM PST - 11 comments

Why not mashup Google maps and NOAA's digital forecast database? Enter a zip code, a city name, or just point and click on a map (continental US and Hawaii only, alas). A 5 day forecast will appear at the bottom of the screen (including some cheesy little pictures illustrating, like rain and fog, just in case you forget what they look like).
posted by jasper411 at 2:00 PM PST - 21 comments

You can't write anything honest, only fairy tales." "This administration," Bob Graham, the former Senator and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told me, "does not seek the truth as a basis for its judgments, but tries to use intelligence to validate judgments it has already made."

"I spent 30 years at the CIA," said one former official, "and no one was ever interested in knowing whether I was a Republican or a Democrat. That changed with this administration. Now you have loyalty tests."
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 1:47 PM PST - 45 comments

Information. One of ten random flash thingys from the 10 ways project.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 1:00 PM PST - 26 comments

Blue Security shuts down It was just a few days ago that Blue Security was beating their chest, straight off a 'victory' over spammers. Now though, the company is conceding defeat.
posted by puke & cry at 11:58 AM PST - 51 comments

They're on NPR? They're in the New York Times? (archived here as a .pdf). I guess it's no wonder - I can't go into half of the rooms at work without hearing them. And they took in $45 million last year singing "Yummy, Yummy"? Yes, i'm talking about The Wiggles, a pop-culture bitch-slap gift from Australia that has apparently kicked Barney's ass. That doesn't mean that they aren't open to some well-deserved satire.
posted by scblackman at 11:41 AM PST - 44 comments

Email used to be the ultimate application of the Internet, and there are still some interesting artifacts of that left behind today: As a source of randomness Email Roulette (which we've seen before) is my favorite application of email. TPC Remote Printing Service, a free mail-to-fax gateway, is pretty useful in a pinch and is something of an Old Internet institution with a history predating the web. Nearly as venerable is the more frivolous Internet Pizza Server from the days when the very idea of making a purchase over the Internet was funny, and the idea of browsing the web via email didn't seem so peculiar as it does today.
posted by majick at 10:30 AM PST - 12 comments

Amazon S3, now for the masses. Amazon S3 has been discussed previously, but several user-facing services have appeared in the last few weeks that allow ordinary non-programmer end users to take advantage of it. One of the most useful of these appears to be Jungle Disk, a free front-end (free beer!) that lets you use S3 as a webdav-mounted disk drive. It works on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and there's GPL code available (free speech!) that lets other people develop alternative compatible front-ends.
posted by dmd at 9:53 AM PST - 29 comments

NewsFilter: Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the chapel, teh gay menace strikes again. The GOP-dominated Senate Judiciary Committee backs the Constitutional amendment to prohibit states from recognizing same-sex marriages. In a fractious hearing, Republican chairman Arlen Specter shouted "Good riddance!" when Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) walked out. Laura Bush recently advised her party's candidates not to campaign on this issue and to handle it with "great sensitivity." Maybe next time.
posted by digaman at 9:29 AM PST - 99 comments

"If only" is the frustrated utopian refrain of Oliver Ressler and David Thorne's absurdly dysfunctional URL addresses collectively titled "Boom!".
posted by anotherpanacea at 8:26 AM PST - 11 comments

Flash flood! A New Orleans Times Picayune flash animation of exactly how, and where, and when the city of New Orleans and surrounding areas flooded during Hurricane Katrina. Here's the accompanying article. Even as a local, I had no idea how weak the levee systems were. And apparently still are. Here's some more info from a local grassroots group fighting for better levee protection.
posted by ab3 at 8:21 AM PST - 18 comments

U.S. Marines "overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood", according to Rep. Murtha (D - Pa.), whose previous comments regarding the "unwinnable" nature of the Iraq conflict drew retaliation and accusations of treason from the GOP and associates. From reports verified by the military, troops "shot dead 15 members of two families, including a 3-year-old girl", despite initial reports that officially claimed a firefight had killed Iraqi civilians. Some have suggested this incident echoes the My Lai massacre of the Vietnam War.
posted by Mr. Six at 8:18 AM PST - 165 comments

The 10 Worst Corporatioins of 2005 Listed alphabetically, here are the 10 Worst Corporations of 2005 and brief lowlights of the activities that earned them a place on the list
posted by usedwigs at 8:17 AM PST - 36 comments

Music from Morrisania: Dr. Mark Naison, urban historian at Fordham University and principal investigator of the Bronx African-American history project, leads a musical tour of one South Bronx neighborhood from the 1950s to the present, describing how hot summers, open windows and a fertile mixing of ethnic groups influenced landmarks in American musical history -- from Tito Puente to "Watermelon Man" to KRS-One.
posted by Miko at 8:04 AM PST - 8 comments

Hilarious website showing one mans passion for drawing conservative themed art. The real gems are in the archive. My personal favorites include "Team W" and these creepy Reagan ghost ones [1] [2]. Don't forget his epic comic The Patriot.
posted by DougieZero1982 at 7:57 AM PST - 59 comments

1. Make a remix featuring whale sounds.
2. Save a whale.
3. Get discovered for your remixing skills.
4. Profit! The Whale Remix Project.
posted by ashbury at 6:12 AM PST - 10 comments

Homosexual climbs Mount Everest, despite handicap of being gay
posted by jonson at 12:24 AM PST - 65 comments