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Buddhist photo documentaries and more.
posted by plep at 11:26 PM PST - 5 comments

Invest $50 million of a workers comp trust fund in rare coins and collectibles. Lose some of the coins in the mail. Havoc ensues. Prominent Ohio Republican fundraiser and Bush-Cheney 'pioneer' Thomas Noe is under state scrutiny for $10-12 million in missing funds and subject of a federal probe for potential illegal Bush campaign contributions. Oh, and did I mention his wife Bernadette was chair of the Lucas County Board of Elections during the 2004 election? Suddenly the once-popular donor finds himself a political pariah as heads begin to roll - could this be the tip of an iceberg that will unravel the red state infrastructure? Follow the Toledo Blade's stellar investigative journalism as this story unfolds. Maybe the national media can watch and learn.
posted by madamjujujive at 11:15 PM PST - 25 comments

Website claims the advent of the first news network devoted entirely to good news. Is it legitimate? That's indeterminate. But I like the idea.
posted by krysalist at 8:22 PM PST - 30 comments

The "I" Word: Ralph Nader calls for impeachment. In addition to Nader, various groups—including veterans—have announced a campaign to seek congressional help to investigate whether President Bush has committed impeachable offenses in connection with the Iraq war. Let's hope Nader and the others don't get tagged with the "T" Word (Treason). Again and again and again and again and again and again, strange things seem to happen to those who criticize the Bush admin's policies: What cost [Ret. Maj. Gen.] Riggs his star? Riggs was blunt and outspoken on a number of issues and publicly contradicted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld by arguing that the Army was overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan and needed more troops.
posted by jenleigh at 8:04 PM PST - 127 comments

Jeffrey Zeldman's site is now a decade old!
posted by riffola at 7:26 PM PST - 22 comments

Video games are stupid [Windows Media, nsfw audio]
posted by Pretty_Generic at 5:29 PM PST - 59 comments

David Lynch's Daily Weather Report
posted by buriednexttoyou at 5:07 PM PST - 27 comments

According to Stanley Fish, "Students can't write clean English sentences because they are not being taught what sentences are." The solution: make them invent their own language. After a generation that privileged content to the exclusion of form, is the pendulum swinging back the other way?
posted by myl at 4:30 PM PST - 137 comments

The Amnesty International Report 2005 was released recently, detailing both the abuses and positive changes for 149 countries, including the Americas. Meanwhile...
posted by exlotuseater at 4:26 PM PST - 11 comments

WSJ - "FedEx's newfound enthusiasm for a frontline role in the war on terror shows how the relationship between business and government has changed in the past few years. In some cases, these changes are blurring the division between private commerce and public law enforcement."

"FedEx... has granted customs inspectors access to the company's database of international shipments, which includes the name and address of a shipper, the package's origin and its final destination. The databases also include credit-card information and other payment details that the government is not entitled to solicit outside of a criminal investigation. "Our guys just love it," says one senior customs official overseeing inspections at international courier companies." [UPS, nor even the USPS will provide this much assistance to the DHS without a warrant.]

"Two years ago, after intense lobbying by FedEx of the Tennessee state legislature, the company was permitted to create a 10-man, state-recognized police force. FedEx police wear plain clothes and can investigate all types of crimes, request search warrants and make arrests on FedEx property."
posted by pwb503 at 3:40 PM PST - 39 comments

TELEVISIE FAVORIETEN! Download sound and watch video clips from your favorite dutch television programs!!
posted by onkelchrispy at 3:40 PM PST - 11 comments

A game of double bluff The UK and EU are keeping the poorer nations exactly where they want them: beholden to their patrons. (George Monbiot in the Guardian.) See also Oxfam's critique of the Doha round of WTO talks.
posted by adamvasco at 3:10 PM PST - 3 comments

Brudda Bu's Ukulele Heaven has excellent info on ukulele creation and history. If you want to play, you can learn all of your chords at Ukulele Strummers. If you are looking for some easy songs, try Ukulele Boogaloo for an eclectic songbook with tablature right on the page. Ukulele Beatles Fun provides strum-along Beatles tunes in a flash app. Finally, for the more advanced, Dominator provides beautiful transcriptions of songs (scroll down) by artists like Herb Ohta and Jake Shimabukuro.
posted by Roger Dodger at 1:51 PM PST - 5 comments

Tape Babies. The Tape Species are generally passive and although they regard themselves as art objects do enjoy human interface. They also enjoy climbing trees, tearing down signs and floating luminously through the air. [via]
posted by nebulawindphone at 10:58 AM PST - 14 comments

Clear Channel launches pirate radio station. Though the DJ braodcast his desire to see the defeat of corporate radio, WOXY, whose signal was bled into by this two-faced entity, discovered that the IP for the station's domain pointed to Clear Channel Communications.

Clear Channel even went so far as to ask for donations.
posted by Pinwheel at 10:35 AM PST - 40 comments

Jedi mind tricks:No. AI mind tricks: yes. You need to read this. Not that you will necessarily know when you need to be aware. From Wired.
posted by birdsquared at 10:24 AM PST - 23 comments

Paul Krugman and Daniel Okrent get into a pissing match. In his final column as New York Times ombudsman, Okrent stated that Krugman, the New York Times columnist, "has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults." The paper gave the two of them some webspace to discuss the matter. The result is catty and entertaining, but the tone is certainly more vicious than I'd expected. They really don't seem to like each other very much.
posted by Tin Man at 9:43 AM PST - 70 comments

The best E3 wrapup I've read this year. Also the only E3 wrapup I've read this year. But there are pictures! And amusing musings! It's also by Our Boy Mefite kevspace.
posted by WolfDaddy at 9:08 AM PST - 33 comments

Seven Minutes of Deadwood [NSFW] - one episode worth of Deadwood profanity.
posted by srboisvert at 8:43 AM PST - 44 comments

Hey Timmie and Susie! Uncle Benjamin Franklin is here to explain the United States government to you. Yay for him! And when you're done, you can look at the official kid pages of the CIA and the Navy JAG!

Want more? Sure you do. The US government loves to help shape young minds! Here's the kid page that explains why outsourcing may be sad for daddy, but it's here to stay. Lynne Cheney (author, scholar and wife) tells you kids about the Constitution. And maybe the most important of all: the social security webpage that lets you know why social security is so gosh-darned important. That's all for now! Bye kids! Call us if mommie and daddie smoke pot or underreport quarterly returns, ok?
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 8:00 AM PST - 17 comments

Last Saturday afternoon, protesters used Nashville's public Musica statue (which features nine bronze nude dancing figures) as the backdrop for a protest against such disparate issues as abortion, strip clubs, and homosexuality. Calling themselves the Pure Life Revolution, the group describes itself as "a prayer and repentance movement on behalf of purity, justice, righteousness. We are a moral outcry for society." [MI]
posted by ChrisTN at 7:17 AM PST - 34 comments

Nifty Super 8 box covers.
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:10 AM PST - 10 comments